Winter

2/27/11

First the big news, Tara and I will be at Holden for another year!!! We’ll be here till July 2012. I got a promotion to Utilities lead from utilities assistant, which means a little more responsibility, and I am looking forward to it. Tara will continue to work in the craft cave.

The winter has been quiet and enjoyable, and I couldn’t ask for much more. I skied every day this past week, not a bad way to get some daily exercise. I get done with work around 4:00 throw on my boots and skins on my skis, skin up for 20-30 minutes, take a run in beautiful powder, and head in for dinner. After 2 months of not being used, my powder skis are finally back in action! Last week I went out with a couple of guys to the Big creek valley, about 2 hours from the village. We found a huge open slope with a foot of powder, and made a day of taking laps up and down the slope, it was amazing. During the few hours we were out there we saw three avalanches come down on the east facing slope on the other side of the valley. As the sun warmed the rocks and snow, it loosened and started to drop, which made for some incredible sites and sounds. We decided to get off the slope we were on well before the sun hit its upper reaches, which coincided nicely with the time we wanted to leave to be back in time for dinner, you can’t miss pizza night.

I was planning on heading up to big creek yesterday to explore more of the valley. I had my gear packed, and was about to take off when I remembered that I was responsible for power outages, I checked with the other people who can turn the power back on and they all had plans, so I had to stick around the village. But I had a decent back up plan, brewing another batch of beer. So I took a quick ski run with Brian covering outages for an hour, then I dove into my newest hobby.

I have found brewing a great way to spend some time. It is a long 8-9 hour process, but it is relaxing, and I love investing the time to make a quality product. Since we don’t do too much cooking up here, this is a good outlet for making something and being involved in our food, or in this case drink. At Holden it is very economical to make 5 gallons of beer. The hops we picked in September, I use the yeast slurry from someone else’s beer after it has been fermenting for a week, and the 12 pounds of barley cost two bottles of the finished product to our brew-master/barely supplier Terry. So it is free. It is better priced and better tasting than what you can buy in the store. Barley, hops, yeast, and water not a bad way to spend your time in winter. Maybe some time I’ll document the whole process and post it here, we’ll see.

In about three weeks we are taking off to Southern Utah and Northern Arizona to visit Arches, Bryce, Zion, and Grand Canyon national parks. We are going to hike to the bottom of the Grand Canyon and spend two nights down there.

bvl





Growing Barley, beer in progress, beer.



Skis


Looking across the valley where we saw the avalanches



Turns



Our slope in big creek, we only skied the bottom 1/4, and still skied over 500' each run.

Christmas letter

After 4.5 years of marriage, this may be our first official Christmas letter, but I’m not sure. Either way I’ll start at about this time last year. I was teaching high school Biology and a bunch of other classes at Mt. Vernon Christian School. Tara was teaching K-8 ELL at Lucille Umbarger elementary in Burlington. We both loved what we were doing, but also wanted to do something different, like teach abroad, the Peace Corps, etc. The problem was that filling out applications is just not very fun. But there was one application that we were really motivated to complete. It was an application to volunteer at a Lutheran/ecumenical retreat center/village called Holden Village, which is located in the heart of the North Cascades. I had been there the previous September with a group of students, and loved it. Any way that is the only application we sent in, and once we got the letter informing us that we were accepted, there wasn’t much point doing any other applications because we really wanted to go to Holden.

So back to the spring. I climbed and skied down Mt. Baker in March. We went to Hawaii in April with Tara’s family. Once we committed to Holden, Tara got a year leave from her job, but I didn’t (didn’t try either). Saying goodbye to students was tough, but I’ll take that as a sign that we did some good in their lives. In May we went out to Holden, for Tara’s first visit of the place where we would spend a year. She loved it, which was good considering she had committed to live there for a year. It also turned out to be a very restful weekend as we prepared for the end of school. Since we were moving out in the beginning of July, we didn’t plant a garden this past year. We missed that spring ritual, but were looking forward to Holden. We helped our friend Kevin butcher his 22 chickens, and it was a great learning experience for us (I learn by doing, Tara learns by watching…) for when we have our own birds and we got paid well: a bird that weighed 6 pounds after it was fully dressed (pretty big!)

In June, after school got out, we both took art classes at the North Cascades Institute on Diablo Lake. Tara took a watercolor class to inspire and improve her watercolor skills. I took a drawing class hoping to move my drawing past a third grade level.

As the seasons moved to summer, we moved to Holden with some great help from family and friends in packing up our apartment in Mt. Vernon, putting some stuff in storage and giving lots to Goodwill. A quick word about Holden: it is nearly impossible to describe. It is a Christian community that welcomes all people to enjoy the beauty of the mountains, streams, and lakes, and to see God’s presence in the beauty of creation and in community. As I write this, it is snowing, and the current snow pack is over 50” deep. If it wasn’t snowing, I could look out our window and see two different peaks that tower 4,000’ above our valley. For more info you can go to www.holdenvillage.org, or come visit!

Here is what he have been up to since we got here in the beginning of July:

I work in utilities, which includes monitoring, maintenance, and improvements of our hydro-electric power plant, water filtration plant, sewer system and heating systems. It has been a great learning experience, and I am loving working with my hands for more than a summer. Tara is the craft cave coordinator where she teaches classes that range from basket weaving and tie dying to book binding and card making. She also supervises up to six volunteers in the summer and teaches guests how to use the village’s twelve looms.

We have both learned to drive a bus for the village to bring guests 10 miles up the valley from the lake. Summary: don’t drive off any of the nine switch-backs. We also took a wilderness first aid class. Summary: don’t get hurt. We are in the wilderness.

In November we did an overnight trip to Holden lake, where Tara caught the biggest fish I have seen caught in that lake. It was a peaceful starry night with deer browsing just feet from our tent. It was a little unnerving to hear animals that close in the inky darkness, but I reminded Tara that if there were deer around, there wouldn’t be any bear to harass us (she actually believed me!).

While here, Tara has become a prolific weaver. She also learned to knit and has made about ten amazing hats in the two months since she started. I have hiked a lot, climbed the two closest peaks to the village, caught some fish, done some back country skiing and developed a distinct appreciation for the sauna and its frigid dunk tank.

We also are the sponsors/pseudo-parents for a student who is boarding at Holden School for her senior year. Alisha is from Minnesota, and it has been really great getting to know her and her family. We joke about how great it was to skip the diapers stage and the terrible two’s and go straight to an awesome teenager.

In November we went to Spokane to visit Tara’s brother who is a freshmen at Whitworth University. It as a great time to catch up, and we got some awesome wool sweaters at Value Village to keep us warm during the winter.

In the beginning of December we visited family and friends in Mt. Vernon and Lynden for a week, where I returned to my role as Uncle Jungle Gym, and Tara drank a good number of Starbucks lattes.

In closing, I’d like to share the prayer that we say often at Holden (it’s fittingly called the Holden Prayer.)

“O God, you have called us your servants, to ventures of which we cannot see the ending, by paths as yet untrodden, through perils unknown. Give us faith to go out with good courage, not knowing where we go, but only that your hand is leading us, and your love supporting us, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”

Blessings to you and your family in 2011.

Peace, Brennan and Tara




Here are a few pictures from the year