There’s nothing quite like stepping off a wide, flat trail into dense underbrush—especially in the Pacific Northwest, where that underbrush is a ubiquitous green sponge. Everything is wet and smells of a fresh rot, a delightful paradox to pass slowly through. This feeling of straying from the known is particularly sweet when a whole world of Chanterelles lay hidden all around you.

Being new to town, we were quite lucky yesterday to have some friends share their trusted spot for finding the golden mushrooms. This is a secret they share once, so you have to pay attention to where you are if you ever want to go again. The drive took us through a long gorgeous valley, along a blue river to the foothills of the Olympic Mountains. Our first time mushrooming was a year ago and River was a sleeping bundle on our backs. This time round he nearly ran the trail with us, chest out, proud to keep up. Off the trail he beamed, walking (with help) over and under rotting moss covered everything, dwarfed by ferns, all of us dwarfed by old growth trees.

Our camera just crapped out on us the day before or I would have had a hundred pictures of that smiling boy deep in the trail-less woods. I know he won’t remember the particular day, but I hope the feel of it seeps into him.

It was dusk in the shadow of the peaks by the time we meandered out, bags full, and began heading back to the cars. Later, after River was asleep, Elle and I laid our harvest out, sipped beers from mason jars and began cleaning the dirt from the the golden orange mushrooms, glowing about our lives.

Instead of blogging, I’ve been logging hours submitting poems, revising new and old drafts, laying brick for that fabled wood-fired pizza oven, gathering free building materials from around town, and working to step up my papa and husbanding game. All in all it’s been a good run. Had a poem picked up by Willow Springs, where I’ve been sending for over six years (sometimes two times a season), so I got that going for me.  It also broke a long dry spell of rejections. And then, just before bed last night, I received word that my “Ode to Paul Bunyan” will debut at The Collagist sometime in the near future. It feels like a good slap in the face to have all that waiting pay off, though of course, the waiting commences again.

Today River and I had some fab time down at North Beach, walking, talking, climbing over rocks and generally grooving with our rubber boot/sweater combos. It was the highlight of the last week for sure. He’s really in his element out there—focused, calm and patient. I bet we’ll pass many a rainy afternoon there this winter.

Boat School starts soon and I’m nearly ready. Just a grant to finish up, a handful of submissions to mail, and a few inaugural pizzas to bake in that almost-done-oven. Bear with me, Bear.  PS — My wife is awesome, and she didn’t tell me to say that, I promise.

I was on a bus, some version of a Bread-Loaf-last-night in which a party was being held. Yes, it was a party bus. We were lining up to read a poem a piece, but I had left my paper elsewhere. “I know the poem,” I thought and made my way to the front. I begin reciting, accurately, my poem “Elegy with a Rope in It,” lingering on each line while the next was recalled from an unpracticed deep memory. But toward the end, the last four lines, I became subtly aware of the dream—only realizing this minutes later when I really woke—and I composed, in the dream, four lines which felt, in the dream, like four good lines. The only one I remember was the last: “I live to wait for this waiting.”

I suppose it’s been done before: Coleridge claimed that Kubla Khan—one of my favorite Romantic poems—was written in a dream, though he was deep in an opium stupor. The only gauze in my head came in through the window in the form of the Port Townsend winds.

Apparently, the traditional gift for a fifth anniversary is something made of wood. Well, I guess I got our wooden arbor up just in time to celebrate five years of marriage to my beautiful wife, Elie.

Five years ago this morning we had breakfast with friends before a casual walk through the ceremony. There was the talk with my father, walking down the gravel road together; there was the scene of heightened emotion in Elie’s “dressing room.” And then there was us, walking down the steps from my grandparents’ cabin, arriving at the edge of Long Lake, facing a hundred friends and family members. They looked out and over our shoulders at the lake’s unspooling distance, at the trees’ rise.

At one point I played guitar and we sang, leading everyone in a version of Greg Brown’s “Sprind Wind.” There were the little fumbles that made it real and raw and not too orchestrated. And suddenly, we were paddling off in an 85-year-old wood canvas canoe with our people, and one part of our life, behind us. It was surreal to arrive beyond the island and face each other, the weight of all we’d promised right there in the boat. I think we both cried a little, smiling. And then we turned around and headed back toward all those smiling faces and waiting arms.

Elie had asked me to marry her in that same boat on that same lake a year earlier during my parents’ 25th wedding anniversary—that lake that has been in my family’s history for well over a hundred years. And the spot we stood as we joined our lives was not incidental either. It was the same patch of ground where my parents were married 26 years before us.

Our life together has been good, deepened by the addition of River. It, and we, will continue to grow, for which I am thankful. Elie is a marvelous lady; I am a lucky man.

The twig fence is all but done and today the arbor went up. I think it looks great and it feels like the best kind of door—one that is easy to pass through and, I would say, one that leads into a great place.

Thanks to my lovely, giving wife, I’ve been okayed to spend this month’s mornings hard at work on my writing. So far I’ve submitted work to about a dozen places in the past few days (all individually tailored), which means I still have about 30 subs to go. Afternoons are spent in the yard, digging up roots, planting, working on the pergola, fence and more. Today I picked up a bunch of bricks from a neighbor for a great price and plan to start working on the wood-fired oven I meant to build two years ago. I think I’ll have it up and cooking in two or three week’s time.

Overall, life is busy but good. River seems happy; Elle seems happy; I’m happy for the most part. If I keep on this path, I’ll kick off the writing season with a bang, have our new place in order and be ready to start boat school at the beginning of October. If you are in the area, come visit!

We walk a lot, especially Elle and River. They seem to be really good at meeting people, or drawing them in. Today, outside the co-op there was an amazing cellist plucking at my heartstings. I struck up a small conversation with him that I hope to continue tomorrow at the farmer’s market. I could have listened to him all day, so that dollar I gave him was worth it, even if I could have used it elsewhere.

Then at the park, one of the many folks Elle has met, came up and re-introduced himself. We got to chatting and I learned that his wife had come to Port Townsend originally through Centrum’s workshops. As they live right next to the park she walked over and we had a great conversation about poetry. She happens to be friends with Sam Hamill and Marvin Bell. I shouldn’t be surprised that such conversations are randomly possible in Port Townsend parks, but I can still be amazed.

The only thing that might top that was the meal we ate tonight, almost entirely from our garden. The fence is near completion, and an arbor, pergola and wood-fired oven are on the way.

I still feel between worlds, but we’re getting on with things here. Working the yard, getting worked, enjoying the sun, rain and everything between. Our car battery’s gone dead a few times in recent days, which is kind of how I feel. I get all jump-started, but how to keep the charge?

Been writing like a madman. I mean, about seven—what I would call—decent poem drafts in the last few days. Working over themes of doubt and faith, revising the ms., shaping a new chapbook at the hint of an editor. Thinking about what it is that I’m really trying to say with the collection. Maybe I understand myself more fully now.

Thinking of a certain pond and raft and this poem.

It is still hard to believe that we live in such a beautiful place. We step outside and see mountains in every direction. Water in nearly every direction. And everything walkable. For dinner we go to Fort Worden beach. Lunch is at Chetzamoka. There is no rhyme or reason to these choices, only wonder.

I’ve always been drawn to writing about the places I know and love—to write from those environments in a way that is committed to understanding the subtext of the place, honoring the complexities of each small spot on the globe. And yet, more than ever, I find this writing a placeless work—one that can be done from anywhere. More than ever, my “place” is the computer.

In some ways this saddens me—though I don’t think I’ve abandoned my interest in local knowledge—and in other ways it thrills me. All the good folks I’ve had the pleasure of meeting recently also engage in this practice. We may be in one city or another working away at our words and our manias, but we also hope that what we end up with will mean something to readers all over the place. Moreover, with Facebook and all of our other virtual hangouts, it feels as if we have surpassed the need for a physical place in which to be grounded. Of course, it just feels this way because I’m sitting here in beautiful Port Townsend longing for the chance to be in the same room with friends that each live on a different part of the map. Okay, so what? Matt misses his friends? Sure.

I may be wrong—though I hope not arrogant—in thinking that we have a rare community, one that can stay connected through the personal and through the writing we get out into the world. I can wish and wish to live in the same town as a friend for the chance to talk face to face, but I don’t have to do anything more than read a friend’s work to feel that some piece of their life has landed in my living room, that for a few moments we occupy the same small piece of earth.

It doesn’t feel like a lie to say that I have lived several full lives in recent months. And though I don’t know how to connect them, I guess I remain the thread. The most recent life was an amazing one. It was in Vermont, in the mountains, where all the buildings are egg-yellow or white. It goes by the name: Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference.

The name had been legend to me before I ever knew what it was all about and then, somehow, I had the blessing of being a waiter during this year’s conference. I met incredible people who are also incredible writers. I chatted with my idols. I played a concert with the incredible Alicia Jo Rabins, Ed Skoog and Chris Tarry. I imbibed plenty and slept little. I waited tables and I waited tables. I wandered. I listened to more good readings in ten days than ever before. I gave the best reading of my life to date. I missed my family. I want to go back.

Yusef Kumunyakaa was the poetry divining rod in workshop, cocking his head slowly to the side, smiling, saying, “yeah, I think that is the line. Yeah.” He even gave me the first blurb for my future boat shop when I told him my plans: He stomped his foot on the ground made famous by Robert Frost, looked me in the eye, head atlit, and said, “Now that, now that’s damn interesting.”

Oh long lives the calendar calls short! I guess there is nothing I can truly complain about. Here is a brand new poem draft (of ten minutes ago). It will vanish soon:

****gone****