(HI! Welcome to Caterpillar Steps, a newsletter by the writer and photographer Corbin Smith. It’s been a while! I was busy doing other stuff. If you like the newsletter and want to help me buy a laser printer, so I can sell prints of y pictures at farmers markets, you can feel free to deposit some cheddar in my Venmo account, @BigCorbs. Also please share with anyone you think might enjoy it.)
This weekend, I attended a family reunion at my aunt Shelly’s house in Cascade Locks, Oregon. I to be a hearty traveler, taking as little stuff as possible and displaying grit by sleeping on air mattresses and couches. Now I am an old baby who has to pack his CPAP machine with him everywhere and refuses to sleep in anything that is not a bed. I still don’t get enough sleep, because that’s how I am these days.
Festivities were spread across three days, but I was only required to overnight on Friday. Me and my parents stayed at a hotel up the street next to the Bridge of the Gods, a 98-Year Old, 140-Foot High, two-lane bridge that crosses the Columbia River, connecting Cascade Locks to White Salmon, Washington.
When it was time for bed at eleven PM or so, I unpacked my wife, my one true love, my CPAP Machine. I set it on the side table, plugged it in, set up the tubing, completely ignored the humidifier (I don’t like the humidifier. Makin’ throat jerky over here!) and went to attach my mask, when to my shock and horror, I discovered that my mask was missing… uhh…
…okay, so here is a picture of my mask from the fine folks at CPAP.com, your one stop shop for ALL your nightbreathing needs. See that front part, the one that looks like a little masticated elephant’s trunk? That’s where you plug the hose in. It swivels, so your mask will stay on if you toss and turn during the evening. I’m not SURE SURE that it’s supposed to be removable, but it is, and when I was moving my CPAP in or out of the big ass suitcase we took, that part fell off, rendering my entire setup completely unusable. We looked around: it was not there. Panic sets in. What are we gonna DO without my CPAP mask!? I can’t sleep without it. I mean it. Once, early in my tango with this apnea therapy, I could, but now, I cannot. I just lie down in the dark, thinking about if this will be the night when I don’t breathe for one second longer than I can handle, and my big beautiful corpse will get hauled out and dumped into the river by three hotel employees.
A solution: Shelly, ALSO uses a CPAP and she has an extra mask. My parents jet over and acquire it.
(This photo via CPAPNation.com, a CPAP supplies store that is also an advocacy group for CPAP users across America.)
The mask is NOT my customary unwieldy motherfucker that covers my mouth, my nose, and also a big ass portion of the rest of my face. It is one of the little ones that sits on your nose.
I am told people use these things, but I do not believe it. My mask is built for a normal person, whose mouth sometimes tumbles open when they sleep, providing full coverage for their entire head cavity. The NOSE ones on the other hand are for people who never open their mouths when they sleep, which seems fake to me. You just NEVER open your mouth when you sleep? Ever? How can you even KNOW that? Using the nose only mask seems like a pride move to me, not an optimal CPAP application.
But, it’s what I have to roll with at the moment, so I give it a try. I do not like it. First off, lower surface area means similar pressure on a smaller area of my face, which is uncomfortable. Second, it only pumps air into my nose, which fills my t-zone with air that goes WHOOSH out of my mouth if I talk or open my shit at all. Very uncanny feeling! Not a fan! Third: I am not even sure this will work! I don't really KNOW if I open my mouth when I sleep but I suspect I do at least a little, which would render the mask useless and leave me gasping for air. The new mask is therefore both physically uncomfortable and anxiety inducing, which makes sleep impossible.
I try all my shit. Music, podcast, sleeping prone (Don’t ask). I try loosening the grips, I try taking the mask off and seeing if I can revert to the old ways. I cannot. I try something REALLY stupid: strapping the nose mask on in front of my full face mask, to try to make a seal in the big hole where the elephant trunk is supposed to be. This does not work, and also strapping two masks to your head at the same time hurts.
I fell asleep for a total of two hours with just the nose mask on, but it’s not doing the job. I say fuck it, and I wander down to the hotel lobby, where I played Slay the Spire on my phone for an hour or so. It’s four in the morning. I will try to sleep again. Jack shit. I say fuck it, and I get up, get dressed, take my camera bag, and I declare that instead of hunting for sleep that refuses to come, I will go on a walk.
I don’t go out knowing where I’m going to walk but ten seconds in I realize that I’m probably going to walk across the Bridge of the Gods. It’s dark out, there’s no sidewalks. The walk over is fine, a little spooky. Not a lot of cars, because it’s five in the morning. The bridge is very high above the river but I can’t really see because it is dark outside.
I stake out on the Washington side of the river and wait for the sun to rise. Light reds from recent smoke. Very pretty.
The walk has woken me up. I am starting to get a light mania, the adrenaline from the walk and the sunrise mixing with my sleeplessness. I want this sunrise so bad. I want the passage of time. I crave it.
It begins. I am using my long lens, trying to frame, focus and draw my eyes away in three short, sharp motions, so I don’t go blind on the Pacific Crest Trail without even fighting a raccoon.
I switched to my wide angle lens. Still have to put effort into not going blind. This is probably why people use mirrorless cameras now.
I start my walk back across the bridge, taking some shots here and there. It is probably not totally advisable to do this because there’s no sidewalk, but whatever it’s early and I’m sure no one is going to TRY to hit me with a car. The sunrise is so pretty, after all.
The walk back over the bridge in the cascading light of day is more anxiety inducing than the walk over in the dark. The height of the bridge is making an impression on me now. I worry that I will get some strange impulse to jump, worry about the worry, try to sit with it. The street below me isn’t concrete, it’s metal grating. You can see the water looming below you, can put together the thought of the grating disappearing and the water rushing up as you fall. Would I feel it if I hit the water? Or would I be fine?
I get back, get an omelet at the diner next to my hotel. I am keyed up in the way only someone who has not slept can be. My dad tells me he figured out a workaround for my CPAP, one that works but is a too arcane to explain here. I lie down and sleep for five hours and head off to the family reunion, where I am supposed to be taking pictures AND socializing with distant relatives. I did not take enough pictures.
I really like the shade of blue in the low light photo from the bridge.