News from Jules | 05.22.2023 | Back to the Future

In just 3.5 hours, we speedily grunted our way up Misery Ridge, around the legendary Monkey Face climbing wall, behind the epic Monument rocks, and back to the Crooked River, while also pausing to take photos of the ever-changing landscape, to put on sunscreen and to look around in awe.

Or “awww-awwww-awwwww” as my friend kept singing after we rounded yet another bend in the trail and faced something stunning, like the snowy peaks of the whole Cascade Range glowing beneath the blue sky as if all seven mountains were smiling back at us in a family photo.

It was still hard to believe that we were now locals, here at Smith Rock State Park on a Wednesday, once again together on a casual weekly adventure.

I’ve been time-traveling a lot lately. Going back to the future. Vividly reliving moments from the recent past then zooming back into the present through a memory wormhole knitting the moments together as if destined.

Just over a year ago, last April 2022, I did this very same hike, the Misery Ridge & Summit Loop during a trip to Central Oregon.

On the way to Bend to teach a workshop and visit some retired friends for a few days, I drove through the town of Sisters. I recall noticing the Town Population sign: 3,124 people, all the tall pine trees, and so many cute shops along the main street.

“Gosh, this town is quaint. I wonder what it’s like to live here?”

On the way back to Portland, I left extra early that Saturday morning to squeeze in an elevation training hike since I was still hoping to attempt Mount Hood in 2022 before heading to New York in early May.

At the Misery Ridge trailhead, a kind couple offered to take a photo of me. They gladly let me tag along and we soon realized that they lived a half-mile away from where I was housesitting in Portland, and just a couple of blocks from my friend and weekly adventure buddy.

What are the odds in this small world?

Pretty high, that friend would probably chuckle claiming I am connected to everyone.

I’m pretty sure we ran into one—or even two!—familiar faces when my friend and I hiked the Wahkeena Falls, Ecola Falls & Multnomah Falls Loop on a Wednesday morning in late Sept. 2021.

As we marched up the trail of mossy rocks and wet roots, we started our typical multi-hour, non-stop conversation that matched the terrain—sometimes flat and mundane, sometimes steep and deep, with as many switchbacks as the trail, and always distracted by something beautiful but able to pick right up where we left off.

We were sad that the summer was over.

There had been so much fun playing outside—bikepacking in the Columbia River Gorge, backpacking to Mirror Lake with the kids, and camping at Trillium Lake were a few of our adventures together, not to mention everything we did on our own.

But it wasn’t just the sunshine and trees and butterflies and freedom that we missed. It was so hard to be back in the city. Like the ripples of a pebble plopped in a lake, we commiserated and quickly listed off all of the things that bugged us about city life.

Ten years before when we met at a running club in Portland we would have made the same long list of all the things we loved about the city. For different reasons, something shifted for each of us during 2021.

Clearly, we were jaded.

As we came around a corner, I heard my friend sing “awww-awwww-awwwww.” I looked up to see her in front of Fairy Falls, a bright green mossy wall spraying groundwater from within the earth and catching the morning sunlight in rainbow flecks of joy. Of course, I immediately whipped out my mini-bubble wand to add to the magic.

As we turned the next switchback, the conversation shifted to the future. My studio apartment lease was up in a couple of weeks and I was putting everything in storage. She wondered what I would do next.

I tentatively shared something that I’d been thinking about all summer—since I was laid off that Memorial Day weekend in 2021 or perhaps even all year given how much time I’d been outdoors that first climbing season—I wanted to live in nature, perhaps in a small town.

“Me too!!,” she exclaimed to my surprise and delight.

Just like Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer’s recent poem describes:

like a tuning fork suddenly come alive,
struck by her own dreams,
and mygod, its beautiful watching
as aspiration slips itself into her body
and whispers possibilities
and bids her keep her eyes open.

Like the mini bubbles drifting past the waterfall and up into the sky, we blew our ideas out into the world of all the cute places we’d imagined ourselves as locals throughout our travels that summer. Especially the places we had spent a lot of time over the years like Hood River or Manzanita for me, Bend or Terrebonne for her.

So, a year later in May 2022, when this friend who only texts called me on the phone, I knew it wasn’t to chat about my cross-country road trip from Oregon to New York, though we did do that before she finally burst out with her news: “Oh my gosh, we just bought a house in Bend and we’re moving in two weeks.”

I wasn’t surprised at all.

Once again, I was time-traveling, vividly reliving that magical waterfall hike and that conversation, wondering: Did we manifest this? Had we willed this into being that very day?

“Manifesting is the belief that what you want already exists. You don’t have to create it because it is already in existence…your responsibility is to allow it, not create it,” according to Rosenna Bakari’s post on Medium, What You Get Wrong About ‘Manifesting.’

Bakari goes on to explain that our ability to manifest our big desires comes from what we practice in everyday life, not just a gimmick or a daydream, but:

• Faith, the belief that we are held by the universe even when we are short on evidence, and

• Surrender, the ability to allow what comes into life without resistance and to see what it can teach us.

“Your life has to have room for it.”

I was still wondering this two weeks ago, as we came full circle, hiking through Smith Rock on a Wednesday—her driving 30 minutes from Bend, me driving 45 minutes from Sisters—once again together on a casual weekly adventure.

All the things that had to happen for us to be here, now: When we went hiking by the waterfalls. When I let go of my lease in Portland. When I visited Bend to teach last spring. When she moved to Bend last summer. When I visited her this February. When I borrowed their car to poke around Sisters, wandered into an art gallery, and landed a housesitting gig.

These memory wormholes knit all the moments together as if destined.

So, did we manifest this? Had we willed this into being that one fateful day?

Yes and No.

Yes, this is where we both happen to be, but no we didn’t “make” it happen—and it didn’t “happen” to us.

There was room for it.

Letting go of what no longer is.

Sharing dreams of what could be.

Leaning into the sadness.

Allowing for happiness.

And now, basking in the “awww-awwww-awwwww.”

May you keep your eyes open this week.

Love,

Jules

P.S. See fun photos from our Smith Rock adventure on Instagram!