Down Time? Who needs it!

Ian and I spent Saturday night in a cabin up by Mt Baker Ski area, with basically the same group of people (minus some peripherals we didn’t like much and one central we like a lot) from the Dave Matthews camping trip last summer. It was ideal. The house had five bedrooms, a large hot tub (or, rather, pretty warm tub) outside on the back deck above the Nooksack River, an airy living room with a couch, a window seat, two IKEA rockers (the kind that don’t actually have runners but that kind of bounce, almost without you being aware of it, except way down deep where you’re wondering just how hard you’d have to pump to snap the thing in two and land on the floor), huge pillows and a wood-burning stove; and a large kitchen and dining area. Oh, and also a small sauna. I say small because, try as we might, we could only ever get five people in. Actually, I’m okay with that—the hot, steamy closeness would’ve pushed me over the edge into horror movie-esque claustrophobia if it had gotten any harder to get to the door.

Our original intention had been to ski a half-day Saturday and a whole day Sunday with the gang; the Northwest has had some very early snow this year, to make up for (fingers crossed, everyone!) last year’s rather lame showing. We did (ahem) however, not make it in time. I was knitting and only occasionally glancing up to admire the passing countryside of our short cut, Ian was driving, we were both heartily enjoying The Penultimate Peril as read by Tim Curry, when Ian sucked in his breath and pulled off the road.

“What’s wrong?” I gasped, worried for the sake of my car (not my husband, as I’ve learned that Ian’s rather alarming breath-sucking almost invariably sounds worse than the situation warrants, but it’s funny).

“We’re in Concrete!” he cried. About an hour past where we were supposed to turn onto another small highway that would actually take us where we wanted to go. There’s nothing like opportunity, though, so instead of immediately retracing our steps—careful figgering made it clear we’d ski for about an hour if we stayed with our original plan—we drove into town to look around.

I assume that Concrete High School draws a student body from a wide radius—perhaps everywhere west of the mountains—because the school was giant, and seems to be all there is in town aside from a small airport and a gas station/diner down by the highway (Route 20, before Loup Loup Pass). The notable thing is that the high school is built on an overpass over the main road to the airport . . . It’s weird. Actually, even with the crazy architecture, probably the more notable thing about the school is that Tobias Wolff went there, and the movie of his memoir This Boy’s Life was filmed partially in Concrete (excellent movie if you can take shows about child abuse. Remember, the victim survived and has turned his life into a lucrative writing career . . .) Anyway, after our 1.03 minute tour, back we sped to the correct route.

Since we were no longer in any hurry, we stopped to have a leisurely lunch at the North Fork Beer Shrine, Pizzeria, and Wedding Chapel. Being already married, we stuck with beer and pizza, both of which were shockingly excellent. The pizza in particular was stellar—the Greek, with kalamata olives, peppers, marinara, feta, parmesan, and a drizzle of balsamic reduction (hello? Aren’t we in North Fork???), and—this was a stroke of genius—we added anchovies. Yeah, I agree—didn’t see that coming. And I really don’t know why we did it—I just looked at the ingredients, saw that anchovies were an option, and suggested to Ian that we get some. Ian is a big fan of the small fishes, and continually hopes that he can bring me over to his side so I’ll allow him to eat his smelly sardines in the house (I still won’t), so no objections from him. And the server was overjoyed. She raved about how much she loves anchovies herself, and always wants them added to everything—pizza, lasagna, you name it. She declared, however, that anchovies and jalapenos just weren’t quite the thing. But then, then, I think she was so inspired by our pizza that she convinced the kitchen to sabotage our order so she could have some, too! Yes, it’s true—after about 15 minutes, she came out and told us that there had been a slight accident with our original pizza—a little bit of burning on one side—and so they, oops, had to eat it, and oops, had to make us a new one. Hmmm . . . but she also really liked the fleece pants I made for myself (and, clearly, my taste in pizza), so any subterfuge was forgiven.

By dark everyone had arrived at the cabin with beer and wine and chocolate and pizza fixin’s (power of suggestion. We had had a brief cellphone conversation with Car 3, at the grocery store while we [Car 1] were at the pizza place; Car 3 realized—literally—when we were eating pizza that evening, that Car 1 had, in fact, had pizza at the pizza place earlier.)

Skiing the next day was fun—bright and sunny, warm, very much like spring. Three of us, including me, carried flasks (it’s the thrill of drinking in public, like it seems like you get to do at baseball games, which gets me every time), but didn’t get into them that much, as we were all recovering from a night of beer, wine, and intense sweating. Two things I noted as different though were that the crowds were primarily young punk snowboarders (I’m not against snow boarders in general or in particular, which is good as everyone else in our group boards) who were really good and desperate for some mountain action rather than the snow bunnies who plan a day and go because it’s convenient not because they just can’t help it. One particular young punk kid leaped over two of our friends when they were sitting on the slope, well in view from above—perhaps his behavior made all the rest of the kid-boarders look like punks.

Because we had the cabin for two nights, we all had a quick steam and soak before hitting the road back to Seattle (three folks stayed the second night), and because it had been so good, we convinced everyone to stop for pizza—yes, again—at the Beer Shrine on the way home. I felt a little guilty as we drove and drove and drove to get there, farther and farther than I remembered it being, because the ones who were staying were driving back to Glacier. But then I remembered that this was the group that had willingly—no, exuberantly—taken an approximately 100-mile detour from Dave Matthews last summer so that we could go to the Brick in Roslyn and not sit in I-90 construction traffic.

The point here is that I have learned to live in the moment well. Ian and I leave for two weeks in Thailand Sunday morning at 2:55am (not, alas, a typo), and our last weekend before the trip was spent not packing, but hanging out with friends. I haven’t always lived in the moment (different than living for the moment); a few years ago I remember constantly wanting to get on to the next thing. I realize now that I wasn’t happy then, and even things I enjoyed carried a taint of my depression. Now, though, the moments are all good.