Goldilocks

Metolius River, Camp Sherman

Judy at Camp Sherman store

Account books behind counter

    October has been a month of traveling.  We stayed in a cabin at  Camp Sherman, Oregon, a small town 3 hours away in the high desert east of the Cascade Mountains. It's dry country, where we smell the scent of Ponderosa pines rather than the heaviness of Douglas fir.  The light is different, too, shining on the reddish bark of the pines.  The Metolius River, a fly-fisher's dream, runs through Camp Sherman. When she was a young surgical nurse at Good Samaritan Hospital, Judy rented a house in from a couple who owned the Camp Sherman store.  Judy spent many of her free days helping out at the store.  The store looks a lot like it did 35 years ago, with cases of fly-fishing lures, and a cabinet of notebooks containing the accounts of locals who buy on credit.  It houses the community's post office and gas station.  From the bridge over the Metolius just in front of the store, we watched salmon and steelhead  trout migrating up the river below us.

Sign on the door of  Camp Sherman store

     We have been attempting to make this trip to Camp Sherman for two years. Twice we have had keys to the cabin in hand, and cancelled at the last minute because of wildfires in the area.  This time there were no fires reported, but we kept a careful watch on the sky. While driving the ten miles back from a side trip to Sisters, we noticed wildfire smoke to the south.  Judy, from long practice, could tell that the fire was on the other side of the Three Sisters mountains, and that the smoke would be likely to dissipate before it reached the road we were on.  It did.  However, Judy still struggled with her breathing, because of the altitude.  Camp Sherman is only  3000 feet above sea level; we were surprised that it was high enough to affect Judy's breathing.

At Camp Sherman

     I was eager to get her down from the mountain and on to our next trip, to Manzanita.  The ocean air at sea level will be just the thing, I thought.  We stayed home for 24 hours and then headed for the coast.  Judy and Mutt Leigh stayed at a motel while I participated in the cleanup weekend of the library cottage.  On Monday evening we moved into the cottage.  John and Rose joined us.

John and Mutt Leigh

The hated halter

     It was Mutt Leigh Mae's first visit to Manzanita, and the first time we needed to take her for walks.  (At home the fenced backyard is her territory, which she faithfully keeps free of squirrels and other monsters.)  We bought her a halter, which she hates, and a leash, and planned on taking her out into the front yard of the cottage.  John and Rose, however, took her for long walks up the driveway and around the neighborhood, poop bag in their hands.  Mutt Leigh pranced on ahead of them, eager in spite of the hated halter.  On our last morning at the cottage, I got up to take Mutt Leigh out.  John was eating breakfast at the table.  Miss M allowed me to put her halter on and attach the leash, but she balked at going outside with me.  She dug in her heels and put her whole 13 pounds into not moving out the door. Instead, she scrambled over to the breakfast table and practically attached herself to  John's feet.
     There was heavy fog rolling in from the ocean; it blanketed Manzanita most of the time we were there.  The moisture in the air caused Judy to cough and struggle for breath.  She need oxygen even more that she had at Camp Sherman.  When we got home to the Willamette Valley, the altitude and the relative humidity were what Judy is accustomed to. We were hopeful that her struggles were the result of environmental factors, rather than  marking a step downward to a new, more difficult plateau with her pulmonary fibrosis.

3:33. Fast for me

  Herta, our implacable strength training  leader, now presents us with a challenge every month.  In July we aimed to increase the time we could hold a plank position.  In August, we tried to increase the time that we could sit against a wall.  September's challenge was to decrease the time it took us to walk/jog around the quarter mile of Milwaukie High School track.

Not what I look like

Really not what I look like

   I am not a fast walker; in fact, I describe my preferred pace as regal.  My first time around the track was 4 minutes 37 seconds.  I improved by 15 seconds the second time, and began to think that maybe I could break four minutes.  Two sessions later, I had still not walked around the track in less than four minutes.
     I did notice that some women in our group jogged part of the way around the track. I  don't believe in running; it's really an  unnatural act, unless a wooly mammoth is chasing you.  However, when Sheila asked if I wanted to jog part of the way, I said yes.  "Do you want me to pace you?" she asked.  She walked with me, and, when I was ready to jog twenty paces, she said, "Do you think you can do twenty-five?"  So I did thirty, with Sheila right beside me cheering me on.  Walk, jog, walk, jog.  I completed the quarter mile in three minutes thirty-three seconds.  What a  difference a coach makes!

Me (tall one) in softball days

    From ages ten through fifteen, I played softball.  My father and Mr. Nelson were our coaches, teaching us girls the basics of how to throw, catch, field, and hit.  Our early CYO games had scores such as 46 to 0.  Sometime we were the 46, sometimes the 0. I was not a natural.  I could never throw far, but I was fast in those days.  Over the years, with lots of patient practice, I learned to be accurate. I developed into a good fielder and a dependable hitter.  I won a trophy, called the Ellen Mueller award, for overall athletics.  Our softball teams became a force to be noticed, and I loved the feeling of team play.

Linda ca. 1963

    One of my teammates, Linda, was a natural.  She was very strong, could beam the ball into home from center field, and was always our clean up batter.  She kept playing on regional teams after the rest of us had diminished ourselves into more feminine pursuits.  Forty-five years later, when my father was dying, Linda wanted to come over to see him.   She told him what playing softball had meant to her. "Thanks, Coach," she said.
     After Linda had said goodbye to my father, she and I caught up.  I told her about Judy, and how happy I was to have found her.  Here's the one question Linda asked me about my new love:  "Is she generous?"  Not the usual polite queries about a sense of humor or hobbies or shared interests, but "Is she generous?"
     I'm thinking now about the generosity of coaches, and I am grateful for the time they took to create a girls' softball league at a time when organized sports were the domain of boys.
   I had to boast to my kids about my breakthrough time of 3:33 around the Milwaukie High School track. David called me a speed demon, and Paul wrote, "Somewhere, Ellen Mueller is smiling."