Below are the 2 most recent journal entries recorded in cascade_ranger's LiveJournal:

Monday, February 28th, 2005
12:58 am	Went on a walk! Dorothy calls me around noon and says she wants to talk. I'm like, "Word. Walking around the woods with a hot redhead. So there." It sounds more innocent when I say it out loud, honest. And y'know, it really was a great day. We hiked up Turtleback and, as usual, the exercise of it got a lot easier to take after the first hour or so. My legs were killing me up until that point but after the first break my lungs seemed to suddenly adapt and after that it was like I couldn't get out of breath. I could run uphill. I just wish it didn't take so much work to get to that point. She's pretty cool, that one. A deep thinker and a big heart. Her most common topic of conversation is how she can figure out a way to help someone. That's the kind of thing that should be more normal. Current Mood: impressed Current Music: X-Files (Comment on this)
Friday, February 25th, 2005
12:11 pm	Entering the fray ... Leighgion, who I should point out had mocked LiveJournal on many on occasion prior to his own use of it, has now inspired me to take part. Again. Go figure. As I sit here, I'm contemplating putting on my glasses so that I can more fully appreciate the beautiful view outside my window. Like most views on Orcas Island, it's great. It's kind of wasted on me, though. I've spent most of my life growing up around more trees than people, and though I definitely like it that way, the concept doesn't hold a lot of charm for me. The sight of all that greenery can be pleasant at best. It can't be breathtaking. Feeling emotional about it would require artificial effort, like stomping my feet at a football game. It's fake enthusiasm and I don't do fake enthusiasm. But they're still nice trees, so I did put on my glasses. The name I picked is a reference to a comicbook setting I worked on for a while, which was rather blatantly stolen from a video game called Wasteland. In the video game, you played the part of a Desert Ranger in post-Apocalyptic southwestern America. I thought it was a neat idea and when I felt like writing a comicbook I decided to write some stories about the Cascade Rangers, a militant society based in the Cascade mountain range. The real-life mountain range runs from Canada into northern California, but it has a special significance to the state of Washington where I live. It divides the state geographically and culturally. On the western side of the range it's all a strange jumble of urban outposts in the middle of some of the country's thickest wilderness, with yuppies and hippies dominating local politics and society. On the eastern side you have this vast stretches of farmland and a lot of cowboy hats. I definitely prefer the western side. Eastern Washington feels like another country to me. There's a push to make the divide official, turning one side or another into the 51st state. I have little opinion on the matter except for a suspicion that all of this division is counterproductive and the hope that if western Washington has to change its name, we'll get something cool like Jefferson. Or better yet, Paine. In my comicbook stories, which were of course never published or even finished, the Cascade Rangers defended the relatively peaceful people of western Washington from the zombie-like hordes of the Atomic Necromancer who held eastern Washington in the grips of a tyrannical, nihilistic theocracy. Nobody every accused me of subtlety. That's where my name comes from. More to follow, eventually. Right now, I have to go lug boxes. Current Mood: awake Current Music: Air America (1 Comment |Comment on this)