As zero hour approaches, I find myself looking around the hotel room. Microwave, television, air conditioner, electric lights. In 24 hours we’ll be heading in to the cabin, where I’ll have none of these. I’ve been trying for about a year now to wrap my head around life off the grid. I’ve lain awake nights, in the darkness, imagining a darker darkness. I’ve seen myself walking around the cabin wearing my Peltzer headlamp, or reading by the light of a kerosene lamp the way the pioneers did in the 19th century. Will I live “up with the sun, down with the sun”? With nothing to drown out the birdcalls (I remember the steller’s jay being particularly noisy when I visited last July), they’ll serve as my natural alarm clock. My deepest anxieties about the place have visited me at night. Dreaming during daytime of my life at the cabin, I’ve envisioned the meadows teeming with wildflowers too various to identify them all; giant old-growth trees, mossy and damp and exuding the redolence of Eden; the Rogue sparkling and chortling in its race to the Pacific; the pond busy with dragonflies and newts and the watchful eyes of bullfrogs. But I’ve never really been afraid of the dark; so why now? Maybe because I’ve always had a light switch within reach? Soon I’ll be reaching with a lit match for wicks, small flames to illuminate what can’t be seen.

I met with Bradley Boyden yesterday and received a hearty welcome. While Gus romped around his backyard, Bradley and I went up to the office he’s built above his garage. There, he showed me the radio telephone, which, he says, I can leave on all the time. It works much like a walkie-talkie. I press a button to talk, release to listen. He said it works well except when someone says something funny; you can’t laugh together! But I’ll get used to it. Apparently, the phone uses very little juice so I can leave it plugged into the solar inverter gizmo all the time. It’ll be just the two of us heading in for the installation. Lang Cook, a former resident who’d hoped to come, can’t make it. And Frank Boyden came back from a fishing trip in Mexico feeling under the weather, so it’s unlikely he’ll come. On the agenda: driving in, mostly likely in the rain; unloading my stuff; turning on the water and the refrigerators; setting up the phone; unloading the rototiller and other equipment that Bradley brought out and had tuned up; clearing the corral trail of some fallen trees; and, of course, fishing. Bradley has promised to give me a fly fishing clinic down at the Rogue. He said when he was there last month he and a friend landed some 30 or 40 steelhead. I hope they’re still in the water. Bradley is hanging around until Tuesday---to give me a crash course at the DHIT (Dutch Henry Institute of Technology)! That's their term for half-assed fix-up jobs of all kinds.

Another disappointing hotel last night. No WiFi. And though the girl at the desk said I could hook up via dial-up, it turns out I need my own ISP dial-up account, which I don’t have and don’t want. So one task today was to come back to Suena, a great new cafe I found in the northeast part of Portland. It was a drive to get here, but I was salivating for one of their three-cheese bagels. Of course, they were all out.

I also need to get to the grocery store later this afternoon and buy a big cooler and stock up on provisions to bring in. Bradley says I can load the cooler in his truck, and this is good because my Honda is packed nearly full.

Finally, I want to take Gus once more to Gabriel Park, where there’s a fabulous off-leash area, a huge fenced enclosure with a mixture of dirt and sand. There were about 20 dogs there yesterday. We made two visits. And earlier in the day we visited Normandale Park on the northeast side of Portland, where there’s an even bigger fenced dog park. Gus received many compliments, and it was cute to watch him run and play. I was a proud papa. All the people were friendly, too!

It’s likely I won’t post again for almost a week, except by Audioblogger using the radio phone. So I won't see your comments for a while!

Wish me luck.

G.