Portland, Oregon

 From Gary V, Instagram:

“99% of you who see this are wonderful and great people .. please start loving yourself ❤️ start appreciating yourself ❤️ start understanding that for many Reasons too many of you put yourselves down and beat yourselves up … STOP 🛑 THAT SHIT … I am telling you, you’re great… now believe it yourself - stop comparing, stop worrying about outside noise and judgment - start slowing down and focusing on what actually matters ❤️❤️❤️❤️🔑 SHARE THIS WITH SOMEONE YOU LOVE 💕

https://garyvaynerchuk.com/

 I did. ❤️

 

Well, there’s Portland under the watchful eye of Mt. Hood. All’s quiet on the Western front.

President Administration is trying to convince the rest of the country that Portland, Oregon looks post-apocalyptic. He saw pictures of a riot there in 2020, and assumed the city was now burning.

All’s well. All’s peaceful.

I live about 90 South of Portland off I-5 in the beautiful Willamette Valley:

 

Thirty miles East of Portland you will find this:

The first time I saw that magnificent falls I was eight years old and had, only a few month before, moved from the flat land of Illinois to the mountains of Oregon. I was awestruck.

And yes, I have climbed to the bridge many times over the years. The last time it was with a half-sister I had never met but who called me from Portland and I drove up to meet her. When I found that we were both Biology majors I figured she liked the out of doors, so I suggested we drive the 30 miles to Multnomah Falls and have lunch at the lodge. After lunch and we climbed—walked—there is an easy path to the bridge where we had mist in our faces, and looked over the edge to the tumultuous water that flowed beneath us.

Portlanders are being saved from this:

And this:

 Portland's Food Truck Pods

(Even Somebody Feed Phil's Phil Rosenthal, awed over the food there. ) 

 

Mr. President don't stir up trouble where there isn't any.

 

Bridge Over Four Miles of Water

"Oh my god!" I screamed!

I was 196 feet in the air, on a bridge over water. Ahead, the road disappeared as it appears to at the crest of a San Francisco Street. No, like Disneyland’s Splash Mountain: you're floating log reaches the crest where you know it will plunge down. You try to look over the edge but don't see anything but space.

"Don't look down," I said.

"Yes, stupid, look down. You're driving. And you're doing down there whether you like it or not."

So, I screamed as the bridge-road took a 196-foot dive to a depth just skimming the water.

Sweetpea, lying on the seat beside me, couldn't see over the edge of the window and only knew that I tend to have outbursts once in a while.

So, why was I there?

Well, let me tell you, the Universe wanted to give me a thrill. And me, with my propensity for making wrong turns, it was an easy task.

I was in Astoria, Oregon, having just driven 350 miles from home, and could see my motel sign, a dip down onto a street below mine.

Ms. GPS was talking to me: "Turn left at Portway Street," she said. I spun around trying to see where Portway Street was and drove straight ahead onto the bridge's on-ramp. And then the little twerp GPS was silent. Did she tell me I had passed my turn-off? Nooo.

I was on the Astoria Megler Bridge, a 4.1-mile bridge, the longest continuous truss bridge in North America. It was built to a height of 196 feet at one point, so ocean-going vessels could sail beneath it without knocking their masks off. Or whatever they have on board that sticks up to that height.  

It was also built to withstand wind gusts to 150 miles per hour and a water speed of 9 miles per hour. The citizens of Astoria thought William Buggee, the architect, was crazy and said nobody would use it, but an average of 7,110 vehicles cross it daily, and Semis no less.

I had never heard of the Astoria Bridge, one of the best ways to have an adventure. I was fixated on that span of road ahead that was jacked up over the rooftops with a little bitty car climbing up its sloping entrance. "That doesn't look safe to me," I said, and then I was on it.

 Those aren't bugs up there, a tractor-trailer and a car.

 

 <-----------------------------------

The mighty Columbia. I would call it "Old Man River," but that belongs to the Mississippi. Instead, it's Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean. I have been curious most of my life about the mouth of the Columbia, and I thought the bridge was over the mouth, but my friend, whom I was visiting, said I was over the river, you can't see the mouth as it is out in the ocean.

But there was water all over the place, first a bridge over a bay into the city, then the river four miles wide and its famous bridge.

 

I grew up in The Dalles, Oregon, alongside the Columbia River. We swam in that river before we knew Hanford Nuclear Production Complex upstream was leaking toxic waste into it. We used to watch great flotillas of logs pushed by tugboats being transported downriver to lumber mills. One year, the river froze with big chunks of ice floating downstream. We watched the building of The Dalles Dam, which flooded out Celilo Falls, an area of the river that was narrow, rapid, and created a natural fish ladder where you could watch salmon throw themselves up the rapids and thus gain access to their home spawning grounds. Folklore says that once the salmon were plentiful, you could walk across the river on their backs.

The Native Americans had a treaty with the US government stating they could fish there forever. Well, they got relocated. There are not many salmon in the river now, but some make their way upstream using cement-built fish ladders around the various dams that change the once tumultuous river into lazy lakes.

But I got to cross that bridge and the Columbia from the perch high above the river, a glorious sight, and better than a roller coaster. Sometimes the best adventures come from a mistake. Mid-river, Oregon changes into Washington State, so I had to drive to Washington to turn around and retrace those four miles back across the river. 

 

 

 

Sweetpea, my little dog, was so excited when we got to the hotel, she ran in circles around the room, up and up over the beds.

The following day, my friend told me that she once walked that bridge with a crowd of other people. Pedestrian crossing is allowed only once a year in October. A shuttle carries the people to the Washington side, dumps them out, and makes them walk up that incline (as punishment perhaps) back to Oregon. Her comment: "There weren't enough porta-potties."

I picked up a small newspaper from her coffee table called, as I remember,"The Columbia,” where an article explained the value of tugboats. The ocean-going ships—those tremendous rigs, cargo ships, and such-need moving water rushing past their propellers to make them maneuverable. In slack water, they are sluggish. The day's heroes are the lowly little tugboats that usher the big guys into the docks.

Prettier than a tugboat, this little lady escorted me down the hill from my friend’s house. 

 

 

 

 

 

Velkommen*

*Welcome,

It's been a quiet week here in Junction City. Strains of Garrison Keilor (Prairie Home Companion with its news from Lake Wobegon) just wafted through my head. I found some old cassette tapes and have listened to that master storyteller.

I drove our pickup truck to my dental appointment because I wanted to listen to tapes. I had broken a tooth, but now I have a beautiful totally white crown—no more need for a gold base anymore, so it seems. I don't want to bore you with my tooth story, but the making of the crown was fascinating, especially for an old dental assistant from the dark ages.

No more taking impressions with gunky stuff in trays that stretch the limits of your cheeks. No more need to cast plaster in the gel mold. No more hand-carving of the wax image that will be your new tooth. And no need for melting the wax to cast the gold that will make your crown.

It's done on the computer, with pictures and a CNC mill in the back room. Water sprays on a block of porcelain the size of a sugar cube while burrs carve out your beautiful tooth. (One visit, you're done.)

And all this high-tech stuff is right here in Junction City.

Saturday, (I guess it wasn’t so quiet) we took in the Scandinavian Festival that happens every year here in Junction City—except for the years when viruses shut it down. 

The temperature was reasonable, a bit hot, but okay. My main reason for going is for the fresh potato chips. Well, I throw in a bratwurst with sauerkraut, and dinner is handled. The potato chips are the best. A genius man with a cutting device places a potato on a spit, affixes his hand drill to a rotating cutter, and zip he spiral-cuts an entire potato. They fry it up in oil (that has to be reasonably fresh for the Festival only lasts four days.), add salt and viola', a treat.

 

Sixty-one years and counting.  

Between 1890 and 1900, thanks to the completion of the railroad, Scandinavian immigrants, tired of droughts and grasshopper plagues of the Midwest, came looking for a place more like home. 

They found it in the Pacific Midwest.

In 1961 after the freeway cut off visitors to Junction City, residents organized the first Scandinavian Festival.

 Four thousand visitors were expected. Ten thousand came.

 

 

 

 

 

You Know What?

 I got this on the trail: The universe doesn’t know the difference between a penny and a million bucks.

I can hear you…don’t go there.

We will explore this concept later on…

For now, the second video is up, and you know what joined us?

Dogwoods. Exquisite blossoms right beside the trail. Who would have thought? I probably will never again find the road I took that day. There is a web of logging roads in that vicinity. I took a wrong turn on the way home and ended up in a blackberry patch.

Poor truck.

But, as I have told my grandson, “I’ve never been permanently lost.”

But I got the video. Jewell’s Happy Trails #2 – YouTube  

Rob Breszny, who writes for The Eugene Weekly under “Free will Astrology,” expressed this week exactly what I am going through. I like him—mainly because most of the time I agree with him. Isn’t that the way it goes?

I got a kick out of this article. 

“Aquarius-born August Strindberg (1849-1912) was a masterful and influential playwright. He also liked to dabble in painting and photography. His approach to the two fields was different.”

While he was a polished writer, he would always be an amateur at the visual arts,” he said, “And I intend to stay that way. I reject all forms of professional cleverness or virtuosity.”

“Just for now, Aquarius,” wrote Breszny, “I recommend you experiment with the latter attitude in your own field.”

I’m doing it.

In walking my trails, videoing them, and placing them on YouTube. I’m exposing myself as a rank amateur.

I need the walks, and I figured many of you need a breather, So, come hang out with me. We’ll explore the trail, and I’ll babble, or turn down your volume and be with nature. It would be nice to have a conversation instead of a monologue, but you weren’t there. 

Hang in with me.

Maybe I’ll get the gist of YouTube videos—like turn my camera sideways, or make shorter ones.

My purpose of these walks was to talk my walk, and put out my take on The Law of Attraction.  The term The Law of Attraction, might annoy the heck out of some, and attract others. Putting out subjects is like sifting through the sand for shells. Some people want to collect shells or use them in their art. Others will use the sand for playing, building castles, or melting it down for glass.

Both are artists.

You see, I believe everyone is an artist. They just express themselves differently.

I have a friend who sews so beautifully that you can’t tell her work from the professionals, but she doesn’t think she is an artist. Pfff.

In Seth Godin’s blog recently–he writes daily, so it’s hard to keep up with him—this time he wrote about the benefit of the doubt.

“The benefit of the doubt is what happens when instead of being skeptical, we’re inclined to believe.”

Godin says, “We grant the benefit of the doubt to the big man on campus, the homecoming queen, the tall person, the celebrity, the person who apparently has amassed a lot of money, the one who fits our cultural mores, the male, the white person, the conventionally pretty one, the conventionally abled one, the popular one. But it also might be the class cut-up, the insurgent or the renegade.”

Yet there are others…

There is so much rabble it is hard to tell fact from fiction. I am encouraging people to follow that still small voice that lives within. It’s our internal guidance system. Unless we have completely put aside our rational mind we know when something rings true.

From my horse-training days, I remember Pat Parelli saying to never call your horse a derogatory name, for it builds barriers instead of bridges. 

Now, wouldn’t that also apply to people?

For a moment, I step out of time. I go to the forest and walk a trail. I smell the sweet fragrance that seeps from the trees and the ground cover, and the brush alongside the trail.

And I come home refreshed.

That’s my wish for you.

Joyce

P.S. I have a novel now on Amazon.com. Kindle and paperback. I’m entering a contest, so I needed both. It’s a big deal for me, for I have spent the last week formatting the paperback. It finally worked. I figure if people buy the book they would want a Kindle version, but rules are rules. If I sell a paperback I would make the whole sum of 89 cents. Cool. All I need is to sell a million copies. Hee hee.

The Girl on the Pier by jewell d

Amazon.com : The Girl on the Pier by jewelld

Joyce’s YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/JoyceDavis0001/videos

Subscribe to my You tube Channel and I will love you up one side and down the other.

FEATURED

Ablaze

 
The forest along the McKenzie River was ablaze. 

“We literally had minutes to make a decision,” said Jeff Ziller, a Fish Biologist for the South Willamette Watershed District.

He had just received an emergency message that the Leaburg Dam had pulled all three gates. It would be drained to avoid any catastrophic debris pile-up if the dam’s power went out.

“Do we act quickly and release the 1.2 million trapped fish at the hatchery, or do we let them die?”

They decided to save the fish. 

So, with an okay from the National Forest Service and the Oregon State Police escorting them, Ziller and 6 others set out to release the trapped fish.

The police lit the way through the smoke with strobe lights. One hundred to 150 salmon were trapped in a fish ladder. Seven hundred adult salmon, plus juveniles, would quickly be stranded in a pond as the Leaburg dam drained.

Seven hundred thousand Spring Chinook salmon,150,000 to 200,000 Steelhead, and 12,000 t0 15,000 catchable-sized trout fingerlings were released into the river. 

We were driving along the McKenzie Highway through the burn that happened last September. I checked my phone for the fire’s date and found the story of the fish rescue in Catch Magazine. 

I remembered the red skies from our house some 100 miles away and ash afloat in the air, but I didn’t remember the date, and this day was the first time since the fire we had driven the highway.

Sparks from downed electrical lines caused the fire. Extreme winds drove the blaze to an almost immediate engulfment of forest that burned 173,000 acres and destroyed 400 homes. It is officially called The Holiday Farm Fire, Labor day, September 7, 2020. I can’t imagine what it was like for the people living there.

When we first moved to Oregon west of the Cascades, I said I didn’t think I was in Oregon until I saw the McKenzie River. It is beautiful with a raging river and old-growth trees surrounding it. 

Last Saturday, however, we drove for 20-30 miles through blackened trees and decimated hillsides. Within these areas were oasis’ of homes intact, surrounded by their green lawns and flowered borders. It was remarkable how some were spared. Magical almost. Strange to see the evidence of a burn weaving, engulfing complete hillsides while leaving other places untouched. The little town of Blue River, slightly off the highway, is completely gone.

The fire stopped before McKenzie Bridge, and just beyond it was our destination.

Since I am videoing forest trails, I wanted to film the one I had walked several times before. It is one of my favorites. And so, as Husband Dear, Sweetpea, and I walked the trail down to the river. I captured it on my phone/camera. It will be posted eventually on YouTube, Jewells Happy Trails as # 3. 

I didn’t talk on this walk.

Perhaps I will add commentary when I learn how. I wonder, though, it is so beautiful, and when you come to the roar of the river, it is magical. It would be lovely to give people an experience of a peaceful trail through an old-growth forest, to walk among the trees, and watch the green go by. I’m sure some have never experienced the giant grandfather trees, with the delicate and beautiful ground cover that flourishes beneath them.

I need time to think.

Up from the ashes of Blue River….

Chinook Salmon on the McKenzie