Chris Walsh (chris_walsh) wrote,
Chris Walsh
chris_walsh

Give me some sugar, Past Me

Once, I decorated with sugar. (No, not Sugar from Survivor: Gabon, but I liked her. Which I didn't expect to. Anyway.) A few years ago, I'd taken myself slightly east of Portland, into the Columbia River Gorge, and stopped at Multnomah Falls Lodge. I had a neat chat with a worker there who said that sometimes kids ask if Multnomah Falls ever stops falling; the worker said they tell children Yes, here's the control for it and point to a heat control behind the counter. Kids' eyes go wide at that.

I also ate dinner. Sit-down place; I had a salad. Condiments and sweeteners were on the table, including sugar packets with the lodge pictured on front. I saved one of those packets. Later that day, hen I was home again, I taped up the packet on an inconspicuous part of a wall in the kitchen, just above the counter.

It was an odd kind of flair, but I simply liked noticing it every once in a while. A pretty lodge in a lovely spot in a gorge that's made me gasp with its beauty -- beauty really nearby, and yet another reason I'm glad I live in Portland -- represented by a little packet of sugar. A packet which had certainly traveled plenty before even reaching me: wherever it was harvested to wherever it was packaged, shipped eventually to the lodge that stocked it, waiting for me.

Last night I finally removed the sugar packet from the wall, rubbed the packet so the sugar would be less clumpy, put the sugar in the tea, and soothed my throat post-shift at the call center.

That sugar finally -- finally -- reached the ending it was supposed to have. You've done well, my many-years granular companion.
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