March 22nd Windward, Herland Natural Burial Forest
Alena, Stephanie, my brother John and I headed to Windward at 10am. We drove up 84 and stopped under the bridge of the Gods to buy salmon from “Joe’s Fish” that operates out of the big red truck. An hour later we had crossed the Columbia River gone 20 min on WA State HWY 14 and climbed up16 miles of HWY 142 alongside the stunning vistas of the Columbia Gorge to arrive at Windward. I was so happy to introduce John to the Windward community members and walk the Herland Natural Burial Forest with him. What a deep pleasure to have the opportunity to show my younger brother the place where my body will be given back to the earth after I die. We walked the forest for a while and stood looking off at Mount Adams, visited the huge tree where the Earth Path was held during the last two Surrender gatherings and told stories of my experiences on Windward property. Alena, Stephanie and I set up our sleeping spaces in the fifth wheel and John got set up for 2 days of outdoor camping in the Adirondack shelter. Alena and I reviewed the spaces that will be available for accessible camping for alter abled people during Surrender. John looked around at all the gravel and mud roads and reassured me that my dad’s golf cart will be able to traverse the hills and ruts if I am careful. He will be shipping it to me before June and I will take it from Portland to Wahkiacus on a trailer. Lindsay, Walt, Andrew, Opalyn, and Rueben welcomed us all warmly. Kari came back later in the day. Ed and Jonah were both in PDX.
March 23rd Walk in Woods, Planning a temple building.
Kari and John got to go for a long walk in the woods.We visited with the 1 year old pig Quiche, the goats, the sheep, the ducks and Kari;s dog Madrone. We had a lovely Windward lunch and Lindsay and I did several hours of organizing work for Surrender. Alena and Jonah got to discuss their Healing Path work. Kari and Stephanie got to do some planning for the Dancing with Death path work. Andrew and I sketched out our ideas for the Temple building we plan to break ground for this summer. The Temple will be used for many activities including LLR Aphrodite Temples, New Culture Summer Camp evening programming, Surrender evening Programming, and Natural burial rites and life celebrations. I would love to also provide wedding and handfasting ceremonies in this location. Priestess ordinations are another possibility. We will be doing straw bale construction and create a spiral shape. The entrance of the spiral will be on the right and moves people to the back and left before entering a circular interior space. We painted signs white for the work party and after dinner almost everyone played the “WHO AM I?” game which entertained and stumped us for more than an hour. I was “Venus of Willendorf”. We agreed to take Kari with us in the morning on our exploration of Sam Hill’s Stonehendge replica and the Maryhill museum.
Tuesday March 24th StoneHendge, Maryhill & Historic HWY 30
The day got off to a fabulous start with Kari using Alena’s ukelele to serenade us and get us ready for the road. Our faithful driver Alena let us use her wonderful car. We missed meeting up with Stephanie and Daniel and decided to have breakfast in a dinner before heading to the Concrete Stonehendge replica that Sam Hill had built as a memorial to Soldiers from Klickitat county who served in World War One. As you can see the weather was glorious and the views spectacular. Then we went to Maryhill museum catch up with Stephanie and Daniel. There were wonderful photos of first nations people on the way to the cafe, several wonderful terracotta images from Rome including an Aphrodite. I stopped to take a picture of myself with a cut out of Sam Hill.
We had to drive back up to Windward to drop Kari back home and to pick up Alena’s special blankets and pillows that she accidentally left. Driving up 142 alongside the Klickitat river is so lovely, that no of us minded and we swapped kari for Stephanie and headed back across the Columbia to Multnomah Falls and to drive slowly from there to see the waterfalls along historic HWY 30 ending at Crown Vista. I had not known you could drive right into Troutdale from there but Alena knew the way from the time she had spent going to college at Mount Hood Community college. It was a stunning winding luxurious drive full of natural beauty. One of the hihglights for me was Alena blasting Justin Timberlake’s “Bringing Sexy Back” at top volume while we drove the circle of asphalt around Crown Vista.
We got back home to Mark, the kittens (Lightening & Thunder) and Oxytocin Acre around 7pm and started to get ready for our longer journey to the Olympic peninsula in the morning.