Drift Creek Falls

The temperature in the valley is beginning to reflect the summer season. The mercury is climbing upward, so A, his dog and I gladly clambered into his car and migrated to the coast for a few hours. The heat was already pushing 80 as we raced out 22. As the elevation climbed we threw glaces at the in cabin thermometer. It dropped a few degrees as the miles passed.

At Devil's Lake near Lincoln City we checked out prices for renting kayaks. The sun shimmered on the water's surface, but we didn't stay. We wanted to save that adventure for another day.

A few miles further at the coast fog nestled up to the shore. We stopped to introduce A's dog to the Pacific. They'd never met before and she wasn't too sure she liked its cold salty waves.


After a stop for lunch we sought out the road to Drift Creek Falls. Our directions were one step short of accurate, but after a few tries we found the way. Blue skies and sunshine welcomed us. It was a long trek up gravel forest roads lined with foxglove before we reached the trailhead.


The trail was easy though a bit crowded. Near the end was the 200 foot suspension bridge that crossed the creek. A few minutes further down the trail and we reached the creek just below the waterfall. Bugs attacked me on arrival. As I moved closer to the waterfall their pestering lessened. We splashed around in the water while A's dog watched the small fish swimming between the rocks.

The hike back, though not strenuous seemed much longer. The drive back to the coast was much shorter. And the coast was still shrouded in fog. We stopped for dinner to watch the sunset, but the fog was too thick and the wind was cold. Once back in the valley where we live, the heat hugged the earth hours after sunset. We wished we could have smuggled back some of the cooler weather like the bags of taffy we brought back from the coast.

Summer a la Provence

Experience gets under your skin. Memories bubble there. The smallest scent, sight, or sound can trigger one and it scratches its way to the surface. Some rise, burst and dissipate before they fully register in the mind; the hint of familiarity vaporizes in contact with the present. Others, oppressive and dense, suffocate us, like a like woolen blanked in a summer heat wave. But then there are those, sweet and mild, that you must tip-toe after like a beautiful butterfly. If you pounce upon them, they startle and flee. However, if you move softly, slow your breathing, then - like the butterfly - the memory will allow you to approach and savor it like a crisp apple plucked fresh from the tree, more splendid in its simplicity.

It is this butterfly and apple kind of memory that has played hide and seek with me these last few weeks. In fact, it frequently visits me in the late spring and early summer. While I have never visited Provence in full bloom, I crave its fragrance and flavors as if it were a cherished family recipe. Though my three months there were draped in autumn foliage and the signature lavender fields merely added another hue of brown to the landscape, I remember it in the vibrant hues of coffee table picture books and tourist postcards: thirsty greens, deep purples and earthy browns. My palate also longs for zucchinis, tomatoes, leeks, aubergines, onions and garlic simmered in the herbs of the hillsides, a loaf of fresh bread and a few sips of summer wine.

With no means to transport myself to France on a whim, as if indulgence could ever cure the longing, I seek out substitutions. I intermingle lavender into the potted flowers on my balcony. A collection of herbs grows in my kitchen. My Provence cookbook is flagged with a dozen sticky notes and the shopping list calls for produce in a rainbow of colors. The bottle of ranch salad dressing in the refrigerator goes unused as I make my own vinaigrette from memory. On occasion, ingredients are forgotten, but a few random sprinkles of this and that, and a little extra garlic can always remedy it. Sometimes, I'll even go so far as to rent Jean de Florette and Manon des Sources and spend a few hours in the countryside with a mad thief and murderer. I contemplate brushing up on my French by reading the other works of Marcel Pagnol, but never quite go that far.

After so much travel, I've found that there is no curing homesickness. Returning to the place one pines for, the traveler finds the landscape changed. The friends left behind have new chapters to their lives; and the traveler himself is stamped by his voyages having journaled new adventures without them. Few will follow him down his photographic rabbit holes, and fewer still will understand how the smell of thyme and spearmint growing wild on a sunny hillside one afternoon could have woven new tiny threads into his fabric that somehow alter him. We must savor the present wherever we may find ourselves, but know that it is the past that has seasoned us. These moments will soon enough infuse our brains with new snapshots to pull out in the future like souvenir postcards. No matter how many times we may visit a specific place or what herbs and flowers we may grow in the garden to attract it, we cannot capture the butterfly in our memory. We can, however, enjoy more moments by climbing out of the ruts of the road, taking in other vistas and letting them flavor us.

A sad pumpkin story

A few weeks before Halloween K and I headed out to our local pumpkin patch for a crazy pumpkin patch and corn maze adventure. Never having lived in pumpkin-growing country I eagerly awaited my first pumpkin patch experience with more excitement than many of the kids there.

We pulled up in K's shiny red truck and I was immediately struck by the family nature of the event. Clearly we should have borrowed a few kids to make our appearance seem more legitimate. After paying the $6 entrance fee we circled the pumpkin patches clearly planted in stages, making fun of the gourds already succumbing to rot. Once around and the pumpkins seemed puny, not quite worthy of my years of carving practice. Although after having carved a three-foot tall pumpkin for someone in Germany it would be hard to find an equally impressive challenge.

The corn maze was, for me at least, a bigger draw. We wandered around the themed maze having to rely on our knowledge of local geography to find our way around. Eventually, we found the big pile of hay bales that were supposed to represent Mt. Hood. Up we climbed to survey the corn and pumpkins, and the families clustered by the food stand, the livestock and waiting for the hay ride.

After mastering the maze and hay bale Mt. Hood, we required rehydration. Sticky fresh pressed apple cider was for sale. Two bottles were placed into our wheelbarrow and we bumped along to focus on pumpkin selection. K found lots of adorable baby pumpkins, but wanted mostly the ones with the cute curly vines still attached. The rotting pumpkins distracted me often in my search. Imploded, exploded, half rotten, flattened, even one one healthy one placed inside the carcass of a rotten one making it look very much like a skull with an exposed brain, it was the same facination that causes people to stare a train wreck. For a while K and I debated which rotting pumpkin most accurately depicted the state out the current economic situation. We were going to use pictures to make a survey, but unfortunately I accidentially deleted them from my camera before finding a good format for the survey. As for my personal pumpkin, it was a hard choice. I was tickled by the albino and varigated pumpkins. However, I went for the traditional orange with a smooth carvable side and a cute stem. The abundant selection and my indecisiveness led me to find a second that I just could not part with. In the end, one tall and one squat pumpkin followed me home.

For a while they sat on my back porch out in the cold October air. I had big plans to carve them up on Halloween eve. A one-man carving party on my kitchen floor with roasted pumpkin seeds to munch on the next week. Two jack-o-lanterns to set outside my door and greet trick-or-treaters. It all excited me, because I remembered how much fun I had as a kid, both with carving and dressing up. I chose to hold off that long, because last year my pumpkins began to sag and smell before Halloween. Therefore, waiting seemed best. Then came the call I desperately needed, but it also put an end to my plans. My pumpkins sat neglected on my back porch while I went to work, second shift for more than a week. My porch light remained dark and I had to eat the candy myself. Next year, perhaps my pumpkin story will have a happier ending.

The last fruits of summer and a bit of Frost

As the fog lifted I headed toward the local park to explore the trails along the river. I wandered around thinking to myself about the great blue sky, the changing leaves and everything that has happened over the last few months. The smell of nature all around me was intoxicating. My miniature camera took pictures of everything, but later as I reviewed them, the pictures seemed less impressive without all of those intermingling scents or the feeling of sun on my face.

I spent hours there walking only a portion of the miles and miles of trails. At one point as I stood there about to choose between branching paths, that Robert Frost poem I had to memorize in 8th grade came back to me about two roads in a yellow wood. Unlike Frost, I did not stop to question what was down that untaken trail, knowing well I would return that way another day to trample upon the leaves strewn there. Instead, I eagerly chose the path muddy and lined with blackberry brambles. Unconcerned for the remote and unpopulated location I might have skipped a step or two, but there were no witnesses. Also unwitnessed was my tasting of blackberries straight from the vine. Some raced tart to my brain and others, in a slow sweet memory of summer, carried me off to other delicious blackberry remembrances. I shuffled my feet through the leaves to hear that glorious sound crinkling and crackling, longing for a rake to create a giant leaf pile. On that path where anything could have happened, I left behind shoulders strained with worry and a heart full of indecision.

As one hour turned to two, and two to three, I returned to a happy place. Not wanting to lose that euphoria of summer blackberries, dragonflies close enough to touch, gaggles of geese in flight overhead, the strong smell of crab apples growing along one trail, or the landscape festooned with autumn colors, I walked on. When finally my muscles began to betray fatigue, I returned to my little old car.

My happiness was tinted with loneliness though. After an amazing yet ordinary adventure the only one who would remember it was me. And that was one road I rather not be taking. But sometimes, as Frost suggests, we'd miss out on the unique experiences that brought us to this point and stage in our lives if we had taken another road. So I'll eat my blackberries where I find them; I'll stop to smell wild pears along the road; and I'll wonder at the strange animal slithering against the river's current, because there is no point in denying ourselves real moments of happiness just because we believe life might have been better down a different hypothetical road.

Chasing Waterfalls and Smelling Roses

Rounding out two months in a new location I thought it was time for a new hiking adventure. The weather was cooperative today with cool, crisp air and a clear blue autumn sky. After spending nearly $50 on a tank of gas with the gas gauge extended beyond full, I was ready to drive my old car anywhere the roads would take me. I decided on a trip to Silver Falls because there is always something magical about a waterfall. What it is about them that mesmerizes us, draws us out in masses I cannot explain; but anywhere I've lived waterfalls have coaxed dollars out of peoples pockets time and time again. Why does gravity at work fascinate us so?

I debated stopping at the bank bank first. I knew that the state park required a $3 day use fee and I had less than one in change. My feet, however, were eager to trample through the mud and convinced me that I could find one somewhere along the 25 mile route to the falls. No need to drive three miles in the wrong direction I reasoned. Ha!

That warm sun and a fully functioning heater kept me toasty and smiling. Driving on out of town I sang along to my favorite country stations, selecting songs happy and upbeat like "All American Girl". The speed limit creeped up as I rolled on out. 25 mph and I was still shivering. 30 and I was just praying the car would make it up the steep hill. Forty and I started looking for some sign of a bank, but there wasn't one. 45 and I thought maybe I should have stopped at Walmart because they would at least give me cash back. 55 and I just hoped that there would be an AMT in one of the towns along the way. At that seven mile turn off I looked out at nothing but fields and an empty road. I considered turning back, but optimistically pushed forward. At the first junction with a road leading elsewhere I turned right and raced 55mph toward a settlement of 3,000 people. If there was a bank, I didn't see it. There was a grocery store. So I bought some water and apples, (good for hiking), and a cucumber to take home to my falafels. As I went to pay with my new debit card I forgot the pin number, but it didn't matter I wasn't going to be able to get cash back anyway. So that was three miles out of the way to make a tastier falafel when I meant to be hiking.

Back on the road to the country highway I debated turning back again, but rationalized against it by telling myself there was one more even bigger town along the way. So I sped through the sunshine until I saw that sign for my next detour. The Oregon countryside, hilly and green, spread out like a hundred other views, more ordinary than the short rolling hills of Wisconsin and none dotted with fences and horse pastures so familiar in the hilly Kentucky countryside. The occasional Christmas tree farm reminded me that beautiful bright days like this are coming to an end and maybe, just maybe, we'll have snow this year. As I continued, I wondered what it was about my driving that caused my engine light to turn on and off at random intervals even after it had just been reset. A good twelve miles later, the town finally emerged from behind a clump of tall dark green trees at the top of a hill. Unfortunately, when I reached the center of town I turned the only way I could on a one way street. It was unfortunate because I soon realized I was at the end of town, any ATM there might be was definitely behind me, and I couldn't find a street to turn left onto. Finally, I did, and had to share the narrow space with a large black truck going the other way.

Headed back into town I still couldn't locate an ATM. As I was about to turn left to head back up that one way street I saw a sign for a grocery store ahead of me, so I changed my mind and my lane. But as I was about to pull into the parking lot, I remembered that they too do not give cash back, so there was no need to buy more stuff there to romance up my falafels. Instead I turned into a fast food place, ate, and mentally regrouped for my ATM hunt. Again behind the wheel I still couldn't find one. I was doing 27-30 in a 25 zone despite trying to go slower and there was a cop in my rear view mirror. Frustration had me unwilling to care, I figured he could go ahead an pull me over, maybe then at least he could give me directions to an ATM too. Instead, after following me for several blocks, he disappeared from my mirror when it seemed there was no place to go. Having passed another supermarket I stopped and turned my car around on a narrow road with ditches on either side. This time I loaded up on enchilada sauce and shoe polish, proudly getting my cash back!

With two crisp tens rubbing against each other in my wallet I motivated my little car up the hills back to that main road. As I go closer to the state park, I found more people set on the same adventure. The car two spots ahead of me set the pace for the slalom into the park. At the entrance to the parking lot I happily got in the long line of cars leading up to the ranger booth. I was going to go hiking! I didn't even mind paying for it. But then, I noticed that people weren't paying at the booth. They were using the automatic machine. No big deal, I thought. That is, until I saw the sign that they only took ones and fives. I could have risked putting my ten in, but didn't want to. I made a u-turn around the empty booth and checked my change, but no there really wasn't enough. Briefly, it occurred to me that I might just park without paying and risk getting caught. After coming all this way, it was disappointing to turn around. I wasn't about to give up just yet. So I went back out to the road and further down in search of another alternative. A few miles down there a smaller parking lot appeared. Needing to use the facilities, I parked and got in line to use the smelly, sink-less outhouse style toilet. Under other circumstances I might not have, but well, sometimes you use what you find. Next to the same was another automated parking machine, unwilling to accept anything other than ones and fives. So I shuffled back to my car shivering at the chill still stiffening the air like starch on a shirt collar.

I figured there must still be some place where a real human being would happily accept my Mr. Hamilton. If anywhere, there ought to be someone at the campground entrance. As I tried to pull back onto the road from the outhouse experience, a car came rushing down the blind hill honking angrily at me for pulling out in front of it. In all fairness, I couldn't seen it when I started; it only appeared in my rearview mirror. Annoyed already, that honk pushed the last button I had to push. At the first chance, I pulled off the road and was thanked with another angry honk. I sat there for a moment fuming, mentally throwing pebbles at the little red car zipping away. I know it isn't nice, but I figure if they felt inclined to honk twice they'd given me a few new not-so-nice names and modified them with a few unnecessary expletives.

Eventually I got out of the car and headed over to the fence to grab my only glimpse of a waterfall. Gravity in motion.

Back in my car I ventured over to the campground and once again found a closed up booth, this time without even an automated pay machine. That was enough for me. I could have just gone on and not paid. Probably most people out there would have, and no doubt they think I'm stupid to drive around in circles and then leave without getting any exercise, but that is exactly what I did.

When I got home I walked over to the large park two blocks from my apartment and took a half an hour walk around it. That worked off most of my frustration. Then I stopped in the rose garden section because I felt I really needed to stop and smell the roses. Fall really does seem to be coming. Most of the blooms are post peak, with bleached, withering petals and a thickening carpet of them on the ground. But there was still was still beauty there. I wished I had brought my camera. I sniffed around, but only found one type of rose with a deep, intoxicating fragrance. It was pale yellow with a blushing pink on the petal tips. Beautiful and seductively innocent. Cliche as it sounds, after a long annoying drive to nowhere two whiffs of that rose made it a not-bad day.

An unadventure

Somehow I decided to make a major change. So I left my home of four years and school to move back to Oregon for no reason in particular except that it is closer to my family. It is a struggle to make people understand why I would choose to leave and pick some other place to live. But I'm happier here. Well, I'll miss those great hikes back in Hawaii, but I'm sure I can find something to do here too. Somehow people seem to think that smart people have to achieve things, and somehow I was lumped into that category. So I've been trying to fit into that mold, but really I do not want to argue about things that most people cannot understand. I don't want to be committed to a career or a course of education that leaves no time for anything else. If it comes down to a choice, academia loses. When I started in academia it was for something other than the to impress other academics; but I feel like there is a message that only academics matter.

So now that that decision has been made and there is time for life, what does one do to fill the time to make it more meaningful? So far, most have my time has been dedicated to arranging a living space, as well as getting financial institutions and the government to recognize me as an Oregonian. With the new restrictions it can be downright maddening. No proof of residency, no bank account. No proof of residency, no driver license, no car titling, no car registration. With too many bills paid online this could have been a maddening circle of no evidence. At least it finally all did come together in time to register to vote.

So now things are winding down and this little fish needs to figure how how best to get about exploring her new fish bowl and making new fish friends.

Bring on Bali

So I finally got around to booking my next great adventure. Soon I'll be swimming off for a summer of exploring Indonesia. Not since Peru has a trip made me so nervous. See, I love to travel and visit new places, especially those off the beaten track. But somehow the anticipation of traveling alone overwhelms me. If I knew that it would all be okay, that I couldn't possibly get sick or robbed or injured in any other way, I'd go with much more abandon.

There is so much to do between now and then, so much to prepare. I'd much rather just get on the plane and go. Everything will be fine once I get there. I'll deal with the challenges that arise because I'll have to, and it will be okay. I know this, I just have to remind myself.

Tonight I'll dream about climbing more mountains, photographing mist on rice fields, layovers in airports, temples and ruins, hikes to villages I've never heard of before, ferry rides between islands under a hot equatorial sun, collecting word lists and hiking up volcanoes. Tonight I'll dream of all these things, and wish that my airplane had already landed.