Through the end of the 2019-2020 school year, The Camasonian staff would like to share CHS staff and students’ “silver linings”, those things that make quarantine life more bearable as the school year winds down.

Social Studies Teacher Eric Linthwaite says:

Most of my silver linings will be like everyone’s: sleeping in, time with family, time to read and cook and enjoy my home without constant pressure to go here, now there, chop-chop.

My unique answer, though, would be: epic tree-climbing. I was already a mountain climber, but with the whole outside world closed, that meant the crags and cliffs that I love, not to mention the true mountains themselves, were off-limits. As fate would have it, I moved into a new, much larger home on nearly 2 acres of full-grown forest the day the closure began. Once I was done unpacking boxes, I started using the skills I learned to climb monster walls like El Cap on the 250-foot tall Doug firs that towered over my new home. 

I named the first tree George and installed a huge American flag on it, complete with solar-powered lights, 200 feet up in the sky where, when you’re there and the wind is blowing, you move back and forth like a boat on the ocean. That took weeks to complete and when done, I spent weeks more building an ethereal Tibetan prayer flag display over the extensive Asian gardens on my property, putting hundreds of feet of gaudy flags up high above the bright rhododendrons, inter-connecting a dozen giant cedars and firs into a mathematically alluring system of individual flag-temples which blow in the breeze, spreading karma in all direction, punctuated by the sounds of the wind chimes I’d slung high up in the trees too.  

It was total zen, albeit well punctuated by endless Zoom meetings. 😊