Back From Chelan

We had a lovely time on Lake Chelan, with Debbie's brother, David Notkin; David's wife, Cathy Tuttle; their children, Emma and Akiva; and David and Debbie's mother, Isabell Notkin. We stayed at Kelly's Resort, with the family divided between two cabins in the woods.

I brought some sourdough starter along, and was able to bake three loaves of bread in the kitchen of our cabin. It turned out reasonably well, considering that I had none of my baking paraphernalia with me (no baking stone, no spray bottle, no parchment paper, no dough knife). Everyone else thought the bread was marvelous; I know what it could be, though, and judged it merely good enough for the circumstances.

I also brought chips along, because David's a serious poker player, but we never did get a game going. Instead, we played a lot of Dictionary, and David took on Debbie at Anagrams.

Emma taught us to play a wonderful bluffing card game called B.S. All the cards are dealt to all the players. Each player discards face down between one and four cards, supposedly of a given rank — first player discards aces, second player deuces, and so on. After a player discards kings, the next player discards aces. If you don't have anything in your hand of that rank, then you lie! If you think the person who has discarded has lied, you challenge by saying "B.S.!" The discarded cards are revealed: if the discarder has lied, then she must take the muck into her hand; but if she was truthful then the challenger must take the muck. Once the next player discards, it's too late to challenge. The winner is the first player to discard (unchallenged) her last card(s). Play can continue until two players remain, at which point the player holding the most cards is the biggest loser.

It's a deceptively simple game; children can play it straightforwardly, but it engaged my poker brain thoroughly, as card sense and player-reading makes it quite interesting.

I came away from the game thinking that I'd love to watch a matchup among people like Men Nguyen, Dan Negreanu, Layne Flack, and Phil Hellmuth. Or even among the usual suspects like Bill Chen, Patti Beadles, JP Massar, or Spencer Sun. There's going to be card playing at Peter "Fold'em" Secor's party this Saturday; I'm going to see if I can drum up interest in a game of B.S. It should be easy enough to play it for money stakes — perhaps as a reverse freezeout (four players put up $25 [or $2.50, or whatever] each. First player out gets $50, second $30, and third $20; or maybe $60, $30, and $10).

The highlight of the week for me was when I took the ferry on Wednesday to Stehekin, at the far end of the lake, and stayed there for two days at the Stehekin Valley Ranch. Deb joined me on Thursday. The Stehekin Valley is isolated, accessible only by boat or plane (or by hiking in over the mountain passes), with no telephones or electrical power. You go there to be isolated, surrounded by the Cascade mountain range. The buildings of the ranch were maybe fifty yards from the foot of a mountain maybe a mile and a half high, whose rocky and icy peak was only something like three or four miles away in a straight line. The mountain peak on the other side of the river was almost as close. The view from the porch of the dining hall, up the valley, included McGregor Peak and the glacier on that mountain's uppermost slopes. If you love mountain vistas, this is a great place to see them.

Wednesday afternoon, after getting settled in my cabin, I went for a walk, two miles up the dirt road to a trailhead, then on a two-and-a-half-mile hike along the Agnes Gorge. I was completely on foot, like I had gone for a walk, no pack, no water bottle, nothing. (Perhaps I was being foolish — but I did put on sunscreen.) At the trailhead I crossed out of the Lake Chelan National Recreation Area into the North Cascades National Park; and about a mile along the trail crossed into the Glacier Peak Wilderness. I had walked into the wilderness! Way cool!

The scenery ranged from shady pine forest to open mountainside meadows with thrilling views of the surroundings. Early on the trail I could see McGregor Peak behind me. Then, after crossing into the wilderness, the trail rounded a bend and entered a meadow, and ahead of me was the sight of the still-more-magnificent Agnes Mountain. The gorge itself was hidden for much of the walk, until the end, when the trail wound along close to its edge, and I could look down and see the rushing rapids below me. The trail ended beside a hundred-foot waterfall.

The hike was incredibly satisfying to me, to be close to the mountains and the creeks and the forest, completely alone, like I had eluded the consensual hallucination that comprises the maya of civilization and had found myself walking in the real world.

Debbie joined me on Thursday, and we left on Friday, the 4th, to rendezvous with the family and return to Seattle. That night Debbie and I went to Jane Hawkins' new house, next door to her old one in Wallingford, to have dinner with her, Luke McGuff, Vonda McIntyre, and Rich and Linda McAllister (who were in town for Westercon). Afterwards we sat on the roof of the garage of Vonda's house to watch the fireworks over Lake Union. This turned out to be the best fireworks display I have ever seen.

And home again the next day. We spent some time at the Doubletree Inn, across from SeaTac airport, to catch a tiny bit of Westercon. Debbie had to meet with Geri Sullivan about a project to which Geri is contributing; I hung out for a while in the bar, reading, occasionally chatting with familiar people who came by. Then we flew home.