What dance do you like best?

Did you know the hoop dance is the most requested? And why? And does it matter why? The hoop dance could mean we are all connected. The dance could mean, as it is performed in all its complication (but seamless),that it is just as difficult and natural as the viewer is. How far apart do we stand from one another while we watch the hoop dance? Just a hoop's distance?

Sarah and I watched a hoop dance in Vancouver, B.C. in June. We stumbled upon it after all day walking around the city in a lot of rain and overcast. We had been down to the beach and were wind worn and giddy and the dancers were energetic and nervous and ready to dance. One man (the adult) was dancing so hard he was making the platform move. He was breathless after each dance, talking into the microphone to explain the dance or introduce another.

And then there was the hoop dance. Sarah's favorite. I'm sortof torn between the hoop dance and the jingle dress dance. A girl dances both. And we talk about school and hoop dancing and watching dancing and wondering whether we could do it, how it would feel, secretly imagining ourselves there, hoops wrapped around our legs, behind our necks. Or jumping with the tin sound of tiny cones falling ontop of themselves.

traffic at 5

Air Canada flies to Castlegar. However, to get from Olympia to Castlegar one must fly to Seattle/Vancouver BC and then over. In essence, much more of a trip than you might want. Out West, driving is over 50% of the day or the trip or the planning. Driving is the essential think time, the down time before the vacation destination arrives and the stress of vacationing hits.

My dad always asks, "Get a lot of thinking done?", when he knows I've been in the car for a while. The trip east or west of the mountains can be extreme even when there is proper distraction. However, when I was planning to show a love-of-my-life where I was from it involved the I-90 drive from west to east encapsulating the overcast moody metropolis of the I-5 corridor, the glacier cut and stuck mountains, the vast sage desert of Vantage and beyond and the dry but beautiful Ponderosa pine hills and valleys of the far east. Without this drive, how would anyone know how far they had come to lay eyes on such beauty (me and the land?)?

Recently a friend joined me in Colville (eastern Wa.) and we hopped in the car to drive some back roads in search of houses and land for sale. I was amazed when, headed out of town, we drove a road I had seen many times but had never been on. We drove up and down giant hills which were dotted with round pinwheels of hay. And ended up right back where we started.