so this is the new year . . .

So 2005 isn’t that different from 2004 so far, but I think we’re still in transition. These days being home usually is sort of a buffer between trips, semesters, countries, a time to reflect on where I’ve come from, where I’m going and to be reminded what it really feels like to be home. This is the first time in a while that the transition hasn’t felt rushed, and I’ve been able to settle into things a bit more, to dig into all those buried shoeboxes and rediscover my family. I had forgotten how wonderfully bizarre everyone here is! My family seems much more spontaneous and strange than most of my friends at college or in Europe, which was a bit of a revelation. Perhaps they are more comfortable with me than most people. Or maybe most people are just more boring and normal. I’ve also found collections of my parents old love letters, and it is comforting to read the private thoughts of two people my age who would go on to lead inspiring and heroic lives (at least to me), and to realize that their hopes, doubts and dreams were not that far from my own.

I spent New Years Eve with my extended family on my mom’s side for our annual family reunion, which is always around New Years, but rarely actually overlapping it. We rang in 2005 an hour early so the adults could go to bed, but thanks to many party favors and noisemakers, we rang it in in style. I proceeded to stay up many hours later than everyone else working on a very difficult 1000 piece cow puzzle, which was eventually finished with the help of many aunts and uncles sometime before January 2.
New Years Day I went hiking around Multnomah Falls with my dad and Aunt Rachel, and although we were a little damp by the end, it was a beautiful hike, with a variety of waterfalls, fresh snow on evergreens, majestic cliffs and a beautiful view of the Colombia Gorge. Oregon is perhaps the most consistently gorgeous place I’ve ever been.*

My grandma reminded me a couple of times over the weekend that she has two sets of ten grandkids -- one is grown up, and the second is rapidly growing up. I am the second eldest in that younger batch, and it was amazing to me this year how much taller and older my younger cousins looked. Back before my brother was born, my mom and aunt started loading us up in a minivan for annual summer trips around the Northwest, and tradition that continued (often with matching shirts) more or less until annually until we started going off to college. In the summer of 1992, this picture was taken on one of those trips.


Ben (11), me (9), Elizabeth (7), Jon (7), Allison (5), Meredith (2), Nathan (1)

This was the first time we were all reunited in the same place at the same time since those trips stopped, so we decided to duplicate the picture.


Ben (23), me (21), Elizabeth (19), Jon (19), Allison (18), Meredith (14), Nathan (13)

Crazy. We’ve all got longer hair, except for Jon and Ben, who could not be coaxed to take off their hats. Behind us is the still-beautiful Gorge.


*It could, also, just be a matter of perspective, as this John Muir quote points out: "All the wild world is beautiful, and it matters but little where we go, to highlands or lowlands, woods or plains...so universally true is this, the spot where we chance to be always seems the best."