The year two thousand and five was the second time I moved to Leavenworth.
If you are unfamiliar with Leavenworth, Washington, it is a town in the foothills of the eastern Cascades. Formerly a mill town, then a busted mill town, now one of the country’s favorite Christmas towns due to the Bavarian theme and facades and enough cheery Christmas lights strung on every downtown building, structure and tree to easily be seen from space.
Due to having the state’s most unregulated and popular river running through it, the Wenatchee, I have been coming to Leavenworth since the late 1970s for commercial boating purposes. The town has changed significantly over those four decades.
My first attempt to live outside of an urban boundary came in 1988. I emigrated to Washington from Texas in 1976 and I had only lived in Bellingham and Seattle before my ‘starter’ wife (her description, though I prefer it to “ex”) convinced me we should live in small town America. In hindsight, which, as we all know, is 20/20, I should have made the best of it.
But I was too much in love with urban culture - coffeehouses, bars, music venues, book shops, unlimited choices of movie theaters - and between those things, being separated from my urban tribe of friends, the fact that it was two decades before the blossoming of the internet and my own selfish personality and reasons, my marriage disintegrated and I returned to the city.
I wasn’t ready for the small town life.
In 2005, I was ready, and in those ensuing years, Leavenworth had acquired “culture”. I attribute Harriet Bullitt, a scion of one of the founding families of Seattle, and someone who knew the valley intimately having recreated there for decades, as the catalyzing force. She contributed an environmental friendly resort, a music center, a performing arts theater and an educational institute for the community.
And those are only the things that readily come to mind.
Urban dwellers seeking refuge and recreation began to see Leavenworth as an easy weekend getaway. Others, just passing through on their way to Lake Chelan, took note of the town’s cute faux-Bavarian look.
In addition, Leavenworth’s cheerleaders had been working overtime and tourism was burgeoning. By 2005, I found the town quite livable.
It also made sense to base my rafting business in the town where the river which was my ‘bread and butter’ passed through. It became obvious quite quickly I should have brought the business base to Leavenworth years earlier. (I shudder thinking back on how we managed to make everything work coming out of Seattle throughout the river season with buses, trailers and box trucks. Like pain, it is easy to not remember it.)
The house and acre I purchased was way above my “pay grade”. I was definitely punching well out of my weight class. But the story about how that came to be is kind of funny. Kismet personified.
The house was ideal in terms of location - about a mile from town in a neighborhood where dogs could roam free and there was ample space between neighbors. If I was going to purchase a house, I really wanted the Wilson Street one even though it was nowhere near affordable for my anemic, intermittent cash flow.
If you recall, 2008 was when the housing bubble burst and it is my recollection that Washington Mutual was at the forefront of the unmitigated disaster that is still echoing down through our culture. Unbeknownst to me at the time, WaMu was notorious for offering just about anybody a loan. This ‘practice’ played large into the collapse that happened later.
In the fall of 2004, I made a blind appointment to talk with a Washington Mutual loan officer in Seattle. I didn’t have any accounts with Washington Mutual. I needed a loan of nearly $300,000 to stake my claim to the Wilson Street property and Cashmere Valley Bank - wisely, I might add - would not budge beyond $150,000.
So, here’s the funny part.
I walked into this appointment and discovered the loan officer was a woman who had been on a week-long river trip with me the summer before. Every summer I took a bunch of mutual friends on an overnight river trip - the Rogue, the Deschutes, the Lower Salmon, the Main Salmon, the Klamath - and Melody just happened to have been invited on the previous summer’s expedition. It was her first overnight river expedition.
But, not only that, she and I, along with a half dozen others, had spent an afternoon playing touch football on the beach and in the shallows of the river in our “birthday suits”. It was - as were all of those particular river trips, which we called Willie Trips, in honor of the organizer - a river trip for the ages. More fun than humans should really be allowed to have.
I got the loan and the rest is history.
Architecturally, Rancho Deluxe, which is not a ranch, is nothing special. A rambler. One story. Wood siding that takes a beating from the sun. Metal roof that I appreciate when it rains. I call it Rancho Deluxe though no one else does.
But what I really appreciate about it is that, a majority of the time, I feel like I am on a river trip. It’s quiet. At night, it’s pitch black dark due to the lack of street lights and the night skies sparkle with the Milky Way and the stars. Sometimes winds kick up and knock over my cheap plastic lawn chairs and set the aspen leaves spinning like tassels and the doug firs swaying in unison.
I’m hemmed in by more that is natural than not. Mountains and ridges surround me. The views are gorgeous and soothing. The sound of the Wenatchee River is ever-present just as it would be if I were on an overnight river trip.
Flocks of Canada geese clip the grasses short and honk in contentment or alarm. Deer wander through at all hours of the day watching over their shoulder for those loose dogs. Who knows what creatures traipse by in the darkness?
Rancho Deluxe didn’t exist in the ‘80s during my first time around in Leavenworth. Not the structure anyway.
It could have in my mind if I had just given it the chance.
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Rancho Deluxe came from the movie by the same name starring Jeff Bridges. I am not going to vouch for it because I don’t remember anything about it. I think I’d watch Hearts of the West or Crazy Heart or The Big Lebowski first.
The story is that in their off time while filming the movie, Bridges and Stanton would go to the bar and plant themselves in front of this new fangled video game and play for hours, so the filmmakers finally incorporated it into a scene.
The movie also stars Harry Dean Stanton, Sam Waterston, the author Thomas McGuane and - in this clip - you’ll see Jimmy Buffett.
Also, because the pandemic is not over I thought I would share this article from 8/16:
Hi, I'm back as Robin-Schoenthaler-the-Boston-cancer-doctor-who-writes-about-Covid.
(And it’s okay with me if you want to share.)
Today I’m going to talk about talking with family/friends, about trying to keep Covid risks As Low As Reasonably Achievable (ALARA), and about the power of stories.
Massachusetts is still in good shape with a positive testing rate of 1.4% this week. We’re averaging about 400 people hospitalized (remember when we had almost 4000 in the hospital including a thousand in the ICUs?) While the US is having a horrifying 1000 deaths a day, we are having about a dozen. We are holding steady.
We are holding steady even though we have had a lot of reopening, a lot more socializing, and a lot of outdoor recreation. Why are we not having a horrid surge? Maybe it has to do with spending so much time outside, maybe it has to do with many people still staying home, maybe it’s because of pre-existing immunity to older coronaviruses — we don’t know, but all of this is under study.
But certainly our situation is helped by the fact that many people in Massachusetts (not all but many) are being thoughtful about actively weighing the consequences of their actions based on the data and the science we’ve accumulated over the last six months.
When people think consciously about whether it’s okay to meet up/dine out/ ride bikes/go to the beach, etc etc., the most important science-based fact is that the rates of community transmission are absolutely critical.
So decision-making in Boston (with our 1.4% infectivity rate) can be different than decision-making elsewhere in the country (hello Florida) where you can see infectivity rates of 14% and more.
What else do we know that helps to lower our risk?
-- Being outside is better than being inside.
-- Being masked (mouth and nose) is way way way better than being unmasked.
-- Being some distance away is better than being close.
-- Being close for a shorter period of time is better than being close for a long time.
-- Shouting/singing is worse than speaking (and silence is best of all, tell your mother-in-law you read it here).
This is what else we know from the science:
-- The time you can show symptoms is 2-14 days after exposure (incubation period).
-- Getting tested too early can lead to false negatives where the test says you don’t have Covid but you actually do
-- Getting tested too late can lead to false negatives as well
-- Best chance of accurate test: 5-7 days after exposure (with quarantining in between!)
This is what we know intuitively:
-- Being with people you trust feels better than being with people you don’t know.
-- Many of us see risk one way while our family/friends see it another
-- Figuring out your limits ahead of time can help.
-- Talking to people about their situation and feelings about risk can give you important information to help with your own decision-making.
In the world of medical radiation exposure, there’s a fundamental concept about radiation dose called “As Low As Reasonably Achievable” (ALARA). While it’s a big fat complex codified concept (as defined in Title 10, Section 20.1003, of the Code of Federal Regulations (good heavens)), it’s really a pretty simple acknowledgment that every time you expose somebody to radiation, you want to keep the exposure As Low As Reasonably Achievable and so everything we do in medicine is designed to do that.
So here’s a few guidelines about get-togethers with friends and family and how to think about keeping risks ALARA with regards to Covid.
For one thing, have an absolute clearcut rule in your head about symptoms. If you or anybody in either household has any symptoms at all, and I mean anything (sore throat, muscle aches, etc), plans are abandoned. No questions asked, no argument, no hard feelings, the meet-up is scotched. (and don’t go to work either)
Secondly, it’s perfectly reasonable to have an honest chat about exposures with your friends or family before the meet-up. “That’s great that nobody in your house has been sick and nobody has any symptoms. And nobody’s been exposed lately?” (because of the incubation period) “And nobody’s waiting for test results yet, right?” (because of the delays in testing).
And finally, maybe you want to set up ground rules ahead of time. Do you want to dine outside? Go in two cars? Go slow and spaced out on the bike ride? Don’t hesitate to bring this stuff up — due diligence should be considered “de rigueur” in a global pandemic! It’s really the only sure way to get to an “ALARA” risk state that keeps you safe.
All the upheavals and restrictions and changes of the last five months (not to mention the awkward conversations with Uncle Maskless), it’s hard to remember why sometimes.
I am a huge believer in the power of stories to instill in us a sense of our interconnectedness.
For those who need a little reminder about what our health care workers have done for us may I suggest you listen to some of the “audio diaries” kept by our doctors and nurses and respiratory therapists and ward clerks during this nightmare. There’s a map of several dozen 2-3 minute stories maintained by a story-telling group called “The Nocturnists” at http:// coviddiaries.thenocturnists. com including three spectacular stories from Massachusetts.
And for those who want a visual reminder of the suffering this disease can cause — there is a spectacular ten-minute Frontline video called “The Last Call” which shows a New York family’s love story ending with a moving good-bye via Iphone. https://www .pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/coronavirus-nyc-documentary-covid-19-outbreak-last-call/
We should all watch this video, even if it’s wrenching. May the anguish of this wonderful family not be wasted (nor that of the other 170,000 lost to Covid this year); may it serve to remind us to think about the long-term and concentrate on keeping the risk to ourselves and our people ALARA every single time we meet.