By Ashley Lodato
About 10 local teens had an Outward Bound experience over the weekend when they participated in Outward Bound’s leadership course practicum at the Mazama base camp. Outward Bound offers a 50-day semester course for aspiring outdoor leaders and part of that program involves facilitating a three-day outdoor experience for younger students. The local students braved a fairly rainy weekend and enjoyed some rock climbing, hiking and environmental education during their time at Outward Bound.
Meanwhile, James DeSalvo, Eric Bard and Danica Kaufman ran a wet and muddy Lake Padden Trail Half Marathon in
Bellingham — for James, a mere five days after annihilating the competition at the Vancouver Marathon. Danica reports that despite their comparatively advanced ages, both James and Eric finished right up there with the elite 20-something runners, and although she is humble about it, Danica, too, had a much bigger crowd of runners behind her than ahead of her. Further south, Laura McCabe and Katharine Bill kicked back with a nine-pitch 11b/c climb in Red Rocks, Nevada. Just another low-key Thursday on Levitation 29 for a couple of moms.
At a dinner party the other night, people somehow got on the subject of names of animals when they’re in groups, such as “a gaggle of geese” and “a pride of lions.” Once we heard the seemingly obscure but delightfully fitting names for groups of owls (a “parliament”), crows (a “murder”) and apes (“a shrewdness”), we were unstoppable in tossing out names for groups of different types of people. An ephemera of artists. A chaos of first graders. A swagger of teens. A conceit of celebrities. A stealth of hunters. I proposed “an intellect of book clubbers,” but the three men in the room at the time laughed and amended it to “a gossip of book clubbers.” “Fine,” I thought to myself, “you foam of homebrewers.”
One neighbor developed his own particular niche in housewares and furniture, suggesting “a nesting of bowls,” “a cuddle of spoons,” and “a hinge of cabinets.” Well, you see where that might go. A slump of couches. A stance of stools …
Once you start to look at groups this way, it’s hard to stop. A prying of journalists. A Lycra of athletes. A wail of babies. A defense of neighbors. A movement of architects — oh wait, that’s only for those who perch huts on ridgelines.
