The Gospel According to Marc:  

Well, yet another summer has come and gone and, like an amnesiac, I can’t account for my time.

I partly blame the weather here in Oregon. In a state where it rains so often I’ve considered building an ark, I’ve learned to approach recreation with two sets of plans: Dry and Wet. I’ve just had too many Fourth of July picnics that have looked like a scene out of The Hound of the Baskervilles. I can’t even imagine the stress of trying to plan a summer wedding outdoors; forget the wedding planner, you need a meteorologist and a crisis counselor.

There are, however, two times when you can depend on the sun coming out in Oregon: when you have to work and when you have out-of-town company. With the former, you can rest assured that even if it’s sunny and 75 degrees all week, storm clouds will form just as you’re getting in the car for the Friday afternoon commute. And as for company, this is just nature’s way of tormenting you by having out-of-staters crow, "The weather’s beautiful here! What are you complaining about?

But even when the sun does shine, I’m too busy making hay—fever, that is. Despite never having suffered from allergies before moving here, it turns out I’m allergic to Oregon, which resulted in me enduring five years of shots just so my eyes wouldn’t swell shut like Sylvester Stallone’s at the end of Rocky. People visiting third world countries require fewer injections. (And still I suffer. I can’t get through summer without antihistamines and through winter without anti-depressants.)

So the appeal of Oregon’s hale and hardy outdoors eludes me. I’m what they call the indoorsy type. My idea of roughing it is no cell service and a black and white TV. Sure, I’ve never visited Crater Lake, but why would I? It’s not like there’s a night life.

"C’mon," my nature-loving friends will say, "there’s nothing like sleeping outdoors."

"Yes, there is," I reply. "It’s called homelessness."

I truly love nature, but I prefer to view the great outdoors from the great inside, preferably of a BMW M-3 convertible. Or just shake a Sierra Club calendar in front of me and we’ll call it done.

Occasionally I’m lured out of my cocoon with an invitation from someone who’s done all the hard work of planning an excursion or, better yet, owns a vacation home. Be forewarned: even cushy country homes have their hazards, like having to fly-fish with your host. I once spent an entire day standing around in a stream and the only thing I caught was a cold.

Still, the promise of not having to carry my belongings on my back like a Sherpa did convince me to go white water rafting once. In fact, our inflatable barge was able to transport a camp stove the size of a decommissioned battleship. The raft was piled so high with equipment it looked like a floating version of The Grapes of Wrath.

But as much as I enjoyed the desert terrain on the river (no pollen!) I don’t think I’ll go again. The life vest made me look fat. Or maybe it was all that food.

The charity of a friend with a beach house has made me a regular visitor to the coast but I find the experience an exercise in frustration. You see, like children and dogs, if there is water around I feel compelled to get in it. But a dip in the ocean at the Oregon coast leaves me looking bluer than Leonardo DiCaprio at the end of Titanic. So instead I content myself with walks on a beach so windy I’m literally sand-blasted.

These activities aside, I am still a bummer in the summer and I can’t help but feel that I have in some way failed, that I am bad at having fun. I may live in the City of Roses, but I hardly ever take time to smell them. And the fact that it’s light until ten o’clock only reinforces the feeling that I should be making better use of my time.

But as I look back on all the fun in the sun I’ve missed over the years, I see a pattern emerge, and I notice something that has nothing to do with hay fever or the great outdoors or even Oregon itself. Indeed, what has stopped me all these years has been WORK, and my doggedly ambitious pursuit of security and success.

I’m telling you, having to make a living is really getting in the way of my social life.

And that, my friends, is the Gospel According to Marc.