Kar

By Erika Kar Do you know Lisa Picklesimer? Of course you know of her chocolates and caramels. Those boxes that appear at all the local shops sometime around Thanksgiving and don’t stop with their temptation until just after Valentine’s Day. And if you are in the Mazama Store on Tuesdays and Thursdays, you have definitely seen […]

The beginning of October seems to usher in a brief quiet season. The amount of cars bombing down into the valley begins to slow, the line at the Mazama Store shortens, and residents’ shoulders and jaws relax. It won’t be long, though, until the snow falls on the valley floor and a new crop of people make their way into our narrow little valley. Imagine though, if you will, if the Early Winters Development of the 1980s and 1990s actually came to be.

By Erika Kar Skyler Fitzmaurice, son of Peter Fitzmaurice and Shannon Skibeness, is on what could be an adventure of a lifetime. Skyler, a junior at Western Washington University, is enrolled fall semester in Sogndal, Norway, at Høgskulen på Vestlandet, or in English, Western Norway University of Applied Sciences. His major at WWU is outdoor recreation. […]

By Erika Kar If you have ever doubted my commitment to writing the news of Mazama, now is the time to set those doubts aside. Why? Because not only is there a lack of Mazama news, but also because my computer seems to have given up the ghost and I am writing this on my phone. […]

By Erika Kar It rained! Not much, but enough to wake up to the smell of the forest, and not the forest-on-fire smell that has become the norm either. Instead we got the smell of leaves, earth and a freshness that causes even the busiest of people to stop, close their eyes, point their nose into […]

By Erika Kar There’s this guy that I used to see walking on the road every now and then. He wore a leather kilt and black beret with a feather stuck in it, carried a rucksack and walking stick, and he looked like he probably lived in the woods. I would wave to him when I […]

By Erika Kar Babies are pretty popular. Babies are the great uniter. Even the surliest of us will at least muster up a half-smile at a baby video on Facebook. Politicians try to rouse up good feelings within us by kissing babies, especially when a camera is around. But there is one baby that tends to […]

By Erika Kar Let’s take a break from thinking about fire and smoke, at least for a few minutes. Instead, let’s think about something very opposite of fire and smoke. What is it? Pickleball! Now, you may be thinking that the opposite of our current existence would be something more along the lines of snow, tradewinds […]

By Erika Kar Friday night and early Saturday morning brought the storm that we had all been expecting. The sky was lit up in Mazama with bolts of lightning that would have been beautiful to watch, if not for the feeling of impending doom. Welcome to August in the Methow. At approximately 6 a.m., residents of […]

By Erika Kar Everywhere I go, people are telling me that I need to write about the swimming hole. OK, that is not exactly true. One person, aside from my family and the voices in my head, has suggested that I write about the swimming hole. But one out of 250 people is 0.4 percent. So, […]