Pam Stevenson

You would think by now that I would have a Blackberry to organize my life, but I love my Month-At-A-Glance paper calendar. I pencil in meetings and appointments, workouts and races, dinners and movies. I can see how it all fits together, with one swift look, and it becomes a record of my life that I enjoy reviewing now and then.
Every year at this time, I transition from the old one, chock full of a year's worth of work and play, and begin anew with a fresh, blank At-A-Glance. First, I fill in birthdays, holidays, full moons and any big commitments I know about. Next, I write in my favorite events or perhaps new ones I've heard about and want to try. Here are a few you might want to pencil into your 2010:

HAPPY BLUE MOON!
A Blue Moon is “an event of timing,” says Conrad Jung, a staff astronomer at the Chabot Space & Science Center in Oakland. A full moon occurs every 29.5 days. If there is a full moon early in the month, there is a possibility that a second full moon will appear at the end of the month. This occurrence, called a Blue Moon, takes place approximately every 33 months.
This New Year's Eve is especially special. Not only will the moon be full, it will also be blue. The last time that happened on a New Year's Eve was 1990. Our next Blue Moon will occur in August 2012, but our next New Year's Eve Blue Moon won't appear until 2028. So, live it up now! Ski into Meissner shelter, snowshoe up Tumalo Mountain, or, if you were smart enough to reserve a cabin a year ago, celebrate at Elk Lake.

I'm a backcountry babe. Not in the huck-it-off-the-cliff-poster-shot kind of way, though I do have a highly photogenic snowplow tuck perfected. I mean babe, as in newborn. This past weekend, I not only survived my very first backcountry skiing experience, but totally loved it, thanks especially to some awesome ski partners and the guys at Three Sisters Backcountry. What's not to like about a cozy yurt and a wood-fired sauna nestled at the south end of Three Creeks Lake just below the bowls of Tam McArthur Rim?
Three Sisters Backcountry is the dream made real of Gabe Chladek, Shane Fox and Jonas Tarlen. After many long Central Oregon approach slogs, they started talking about how cool it would be if there were a hut system here, like in so many other mountain ranges. “It took ten years of planning,” said Shane when we met him at the Three Creeks Sno-Park on Friday morning, “but we finally got our permits in September and built our yurts.”

This past weekend was the 30th reunion of the Amity High School Class of 1980. When I received my invitation a while back, I Googled my old boyfriend who was a dark-haired Italian star of the soccer team. Now, he is a rotund, bald banker.
Not ready to face the reality of my years or reminisce about “Stairway to Heaven” and the senior prom, I decided to forego a trip back east to Bethany, Connecticut and hang in Bend. Every year, it feels like a class reunion at the Nordic center on Thanksgiving weekend. I skated around the nicely groomed trails all weekend, catching up with dozens of Bend's outdoor athletes. Ski, chat, ski, chat, ski, chat.

We all know by now that we won't be able to burn off the brandied yams this year by hiking up Mt. Bachelor. In order to reduce “safety concerns” associated with uphill traffic, Mt. Bachelor and the Deschutes National Foresthave designated all areas within the special use permit as closed to uphill traffic except for a designated corridor for access to the cone using Leeway run. No comment, but at least there are other options for counteracting the guilt from that extra slice of Aunt Mabel's pecan pie.
EXPLORE NEW TRAILS IN THE CROOKED RIVER CANYON
If you're not going skiing, you might try a new eastside hike to burn off that sweet corn pudding. The BLM has just completed three new trails in a system beyond Crooked River Ranch near Terrebonne – less than a one-hour drive from Bend.

At the far end of town
Where the Grickle-grass grows
And the wind smells slow-and-sour when it blows
And no birds ever sing, excepting old crows…
Is the street of the Lifted Lorax.

Not quite ready to settle in for a long winter, I got first tracks at Dutchman on November 8 and then headed south. Looking just like a Life Is Good t-shirt, we loaded up the van with mountain bikes, boogie boards and dogs and drove straight through the night, arriving for a glorious sunrise at Malibu.

After a full day of PowerPoint presentations in a dark, windowless conference room in the swanky Nines Hotel in downtown Portland, I desperately needed to move my muscles and see the sky. I dodged out of the wine-and-cheese reception after exchanging a few business cards, and performed a hasty wardrobe change from dress and stockings to tights and running shoes in the back of my van in the Smart Park at 4th and Yamhill.
Aaahhh, my running shoes felt so good as I ran a couple of blocks through the grey drizzle down to the Tom McCall Waterfront City Park. I ran north on the Esplanade along the river, past the homeless people beneath the Burnside Bridge, across the Willamette River on the Steel Bridge and then south down the Eastbank Esplanade to OMSI.

It's that time of year. Soon we'll be seeing witches, ghouls, Michael Jacksons and Farrah Fawcetts lurking all over the neighborhood. A black cat has already found its way into the crawl space under my house. It's not just crossing my path, but living under my path – which explains the cursed condition of my life right now. Plus, Mercury went retrograde and I have Uranus in my sign, opposite Saturn in Virgo. I don't know exactly what that means, but apparently it's not good.
When life feels bedeviling, the only thing to do is have fun with it. So, here are some light-hearted outdoor events to put on your race calendar.

I'm sure somebody will lambaste me for not being hardcore enough, but the cold, rainy weather we are in store for this week makes me want to embrace my inner couch potato and throw a log in the fireplace. This is a great time of year to overhaul your bikes, grind your skis, go to the movies or just get under the down comforter with a good book.
SKI FLICK SEASON
Shorter days. Cooler temperatures. Fall colors. All signs of the changing season. None more so, though, than a proliferation of ski flicks. Last week it was big mountain skiing movie The Edge of Never at the Tower followed by the Powderwhore movie Flakes at McMenamins. If that wasn't enough movie watching, we had BendFilm all over Central Oregon the rest of the week. Personally, I'm not ready for winter yet, so the film I caught was The Women and the Waves, a documentary about women's surfing pioneers. One of my favorite quotes: “When someone said 'You surf like a girl' it used to be an insult. Now it's a compliment.”