Wild Things of Oregon

Last week, I had to attend a meeting in Sorrento, BC, about an hour outside of Kamloops. Well, since I was in the neighbourhood (only 785 km away!), I figured I might as well go to Portland and visit cousins-out-law Erin and Kiki, and pal Murr (who happens to come with a cat and a large man as well).

All I can say is that I had a wild time.

First, there was a dog --don't ask me what kind-- who was wildly in love with me. Uncharacteristically, I reciprocated.

Vida!

Then there were the cousins. These are seriously good cousins. They took me to watch the swifts roost in the chimney at the Chapman School. This is a big thing in Portland, as you can tell by the crowds. I guess they don't have cable.


They were selling t-shirts and pizza, and they had dead swifts in plastic cases. I did not check out the dead swifts; I just watched the wild children of Portland run around with them, and drank my beer. A local Hefeweisen with fresh orange squeezed in by Kiki. Wildly delicious.

Vaux's Swifts, doing their thing.

Then it was on to one of the wilder culinary spots: Voodoo Donuts. None of us tasted the actual Voodoo donut. When you bite into it, red raspberry jelly pours out. Or you can just stab it with the pretzel.


Erin had an old fashioned maple. It was both of these things, and good.


I had a Tangfastic. A cake donut sprinkled with Orange Tang. Why did I choose this? There are some questions to which we will never find answers.


And Kiki? Well, Kiki did what I wanted to do but could not. She had the maple bacon bar. I had a corner of it. And anyone who has ever eaten a plate of pancakes and bacon with maple syrup can stop laughing right now. With just a little architecture, you'd be where we were. Heaven.


Here are the cousins with a $5 box of leftover donuts that they purchased for Kiki to take to work the next day.


One of the neatest things about Portland is that you can quite easily get to the wild outdoors in a few minutes. From Erin's and Kiki's home in the St. John's neighbourhood, I drove about 20 minutes to Sauvie Island, which sits at the junction of the Multnomah Channel and the Willamette and Columbia Rivers. First up: field o' pumpkins.


It promised to be good for birding, and while I did not get the Sandhill Crane that I was hoping for, I did get a Pugnacious Little Yellowlegs (I've decided to name the birds myself), lots of Spotted Towhees and Steller's Jays, numerous hawks that I could not tell apart, and, best of all, got to watch a territorial contretemps between a Great Egret and a Great Blue Heron.


And I realized that while it's great to get new birds (the Steller's Jay, with its deep blue body and dramatic black head, blew my mind) there is also a great peace that comes with watching the ones that you know already, or the ones that you can't identify, fly around and do their thing. My friend Julie likes to invoke Wendell Berry's wonderful poem, The Peace of Wild Things, when she talks about getting lost in nature. And when someone else has said, better than you, what you want to say, why not?

...I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting for their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

After a couple of days with family, I headed on over to Murr's and Dave's place, from whence we headed out to the Columbia Gorge. Where the wild things are.


Heading up the aptly named Columbia Gorge Scenic Highway, we were presented with a variety of waterfalls. Our little hiking destination (well, it was an easy enough trail that it doesn't count as hiking in Murr's books) was along Tanner Creek to Wahclella Falls but we figured we'd stop and gawk at a few others along the way.

Many of the bridges along the highway and the stone walkways down to the falls or trailheads were built by the Works Progress Administration and Civilian Conservation Corps during the Great Depression, so they appealed to me historically, and to Dave, who worked in the bricklaying trades, professionally. When we stopped at Sheppard's Dell falls, we thought, oh let's walk down a little further and get a good view of the brick and stonework.

Which we got.


But we also got a good view of something else.


This little episode proved that the three of us really are well-suited companions because
(1.) We all immediately went slack-jawed;
(2.) Murr and I decided that Dave should go back and take a picture, and he did;
(3.) We spent the next twenty minutes deeply engaged in a conversation about what the heck it was. And then we came back to it over beers a couple hours later. Next time I see them, I'm sure we'll discuss it again.

We saw this interesting tree on the way out of Sheppard's Dell. Seriously.


We also stopped at Multnomah Falls...


and walked up to this little bridge. Ai ai ai.


But the jewel of the day was Wahclella Falls. We had to decide whether to stop for a quick bite before the hike, or wait and then motor down the road to a brew pub. I signalled my choice, and Dave knew for sure we were friends.

This is Dave and me in a different restaurant, on a different day, with different beers. And with some wild things from Washington. Mmmm.

On the walk into Wahclella, we saw this old guy -- a red legged frog.


Fine chartreuse lichen covered the rocks.


After a few rocky passages, we found ourselves at the double falls.


And down I went among the slimy, slippery rocks.


We took a snap before heading back to the car. I look a little stunned in this picture. Stunned by wild things.


Murr's garden is pretty wild and stunning too. Here is the largest salamander any of us will ever see. Murrmade.



What a trip. It's just about Thanksgiving here in Canada and I am, I realize, truly thankful. For the peace of wild things, for absurdity in the woods, for the friends and family I've been fortunate enough to collect over the years.

Murr, Erin, and Kiki together in the garden my last night in Oregon.

Murr has her own excellent take on the trip, including our adventure with medicalmarijuana, here.