A Brief Distraction From *Gestures At My Life*

Pretend You're Good At Contentment

Hi, it’s me, and I’m a little lost at the moment. What day is it? Bryan and I escaped for a quick overnight out of town this week which makes today (Thursday) feel like Sunday. I hope you don’t mind, but I didn’t stress about getting my Wednesday newsletter out to you on time. You won’t mind a Thursday newsletter this week, will you? Or maybe Friday? We’ll see how it goes.

Morning coffee with Bryan, as we’ve done every morning for 22 years.

This morning I spent a few hours sitting on the balcony of our hotel room overlooking the Columbia River somewhere North of Portland. It was a beautiful, drizzly, northwest morning. The river was dark and moody, the far shore barely seen through the foggy mist. During the first few months of the rainy season, the weather here feels cozy and calming, then we drag into February and cozy starts to feel claustrophobic. 

Moments of quiet and stillness are difficult for me. My mind is noisy with the tick-tick-ticking of action items and forward motions. Even as I sat in the most comfortable balcony chair a hotel has ever provided, I wondered how to best optimize my time so a single moment wasn’t “wasted” – in quotes because I haven’t yet figured out how to mentally include things like unwinding, relaxing, and resting as a to-do list item to be checked off. 

Various shades of gray.

I’m aware of this quirk, and so I fought it. I hugged my coffee, I curled my legs into the chair (because seriously, the hotel did not skimp on comfort – those cushions were six inches thick), and I… did nothing. It was excruciating at first because *gestures at everything undone* but I took a deep breath, and I people watched, I dog watched, I rain watched, I boat watched. I noticed the smell of wildfire smoke in the air. I listened to the rain trickling through the gutters, and I heard the chatter of people fishing from the beach, but I couldn't make out their words. A small dog kept squeaking.

A sunny view of the river on the afternoon we arrived.

The groups who were fishing set up their poles in a row along the shore as far as I could see down the beach. It looked like the handle ends were simply shoved into the sand, but they must have been secured in a stand of some kind. This standing-around-on-the-beach while laughing and eating snacks was not a style of fishing I grew up around on the lakes of Minnesota where we boated to the middle of the lake, dropped a line, and waited for sunfish or lake trout to bite, my chatter and clumsy movements hushed so as to not startle them away. 

Several groups who were fishing directly in front of me appeared to be together. Or maybe the fishing community is one big family where people help each other and share supplies. Either would explain why I couldn’t make out who belonged in the red tent group and who belonged in the blue tent group and who belonged with the umbrella group. There didn’t seem to be any boundaries between them. 

The catch was *this big!* It’s probably a salmon, yeah?

Every once in a while there was a flurry of excitement – whistling or shouting that called attention to a wiggling rod – and the group huddled around it while one of them struggled to reel in the catch. A short, bow-legged man thwacked the fish with a piece of driftwood as it flopped onto the beach. Another man leaned over and appeared to be cleaning the fish right there on the beach, tossing parts behind him into the water, then dropping what was left into a white bucket. I made a mental note to scrutinize my surroundings should I ever decide to swim or sunbathe along this shore.

I wondered how the fishing lines weren’t crossing each other as the river current flowed from left to right. The lines were long and the poles were close together – surely they would become tangled? And why weren’t the lines being drawn to shore by the current?

Two men who each had a kayak kept paddling out toward the middle of the river, then returned to shore, then went out again, and so on. At first I thought they were entertaining themselves and killing some time until the next pole started wiggling. Then I noticed they seemed to be purposeful in their quest, not recreational. Ah, there I saw how they were dragging the fishing lines out, which explained why I didn’t see anyone casting lines. But I was still curious about how the lines weren’t tangling or floating down river once the kayaker dragged them out. 

Poles along the shore, kayaker in the water.

Then I noticed two men on the shore filling a small bag with sand, and the fishing line was tied to the bag of sand, and the bag of sand with the attached line was deposited into the front of the kayak. I watched carefully as the kayaker paddled out from the shore, hoping Bryan wouldn’t step outside just then to distract me from seeing what happened next because I’d become too invested in this Richard Scarry-like ecosystem of fishermen.

Bryan didn’t appear on the balcony, and I squinted to see what the kayaker was doing out in the water. He dropped the sand bag into the water! This was information I could use! I sensed that check-out time was approaching and I couldn’t leave without understanding what I was seeing.

I grabbed my phone and started googling – “Fishing offshore with a kayak.” “Using a kayak to fish in a river.” “Fishing with poles stuck in the ground.” “Using a kayak to drag fishing lines into the water.” – until I found an article about different methods of fishing that included a method called bottom fishing. I resisted the urge to start singing Fat Bottomed Girls¹ and instead googled about bottom fishing for a while until I found a fishing guide website that explained it: 

In Bottom Fishing’s simplest form, you need three things: a hook, a line, and a piece of bait. Throw that bait out, let it sink to the bottom, and wait for something to pick it up. Adding a layer of complexity, we can attach a weight to drop the bait faster or hold it in a position on the bottom in a strong current. The final layer of complexity involves adding additional hooks, swivels, or other terminal tackles to change the nature of the bait’s presentation on the Bottom.

The fishermen were weighing down their bait with sandbags!

I was elated by the success of my sleuthing, and I imagined this must be the high Ronan Farrow feels after obtaining a juicy piece of information from a top pentagon official about who’s really in control of satellite communications in Ukraine.

That view, tho. And those cushions!

Bryan finally stepped out on the balcony to inform me that it was 10:30 a.m. and check-out was at 11:00. I inhaled a deep breath and let it out slowly, realizing I’d been sitting there since before 9:00 a.m. without the tick-tick-ticking of action items polluting my day off. I smiled and allowed myself to feel contentment. Reluctantly. A little bit. And I enjoyed myself.

Thanks for joining me on this morning’s adventure. You get five gold stars for reading to the end!

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Until next time,

Jen

---

News + Notes 🌼

In case you missed it, I wrote in detail about what put Bryan into the hospital last week:

🌼 🌼 🌼

Related, make sure you read Michael Estrin’s recent post about getting a colonoscopy. Then go get a colonoscopy!

I had my colonoscopy. Here's my review.

1. Fat Bottomed Girls (a description I relate to):