and a plant i had not seen before.
maybe its the confluence of dates and events and history and memory, but for whatever reason i set out saturday morning for a hike up to bagby for a dip, and ended up tromping around the timber areas northeast of estacada instead.
grabbed my towel and i started cruising the 205 south headed for clackamas and for whatever reason bounced off at the cemetaries at mount scott to walk amongst the dead and my grandparents. they were still quite dead, but alive and well in my memory and i thanked them out loud for this life o' mine. i don't take to ancestor worship very well, but you know... i carry that genetic code as mine. its as much chance and circumstance as anything else, i know... but george could have hopped off a freight train in some corntown usa, instead of returning to oklahoma for pearl.
anyway. back in the truck and headed out sunnyside road. sunnyside road has been a clusterfuck as long as i can remember and it still is. the developments have been cropping up along this corridor since i was a boy, and continue to do so with all of its uglyness and mini-malls.
still, it doesnt take long to get to farmland. nurseries and livestock. yeah... i'm getting there.
through damascus and i think about some friends of the family that moved here and the kids i played with at that time. the mom was one of my mom's childhood friends, the husband was from the middle east, egypt, i think. us kids... well, we were kids.
boring, and i think about making explosives out of matchheads with a kid that lived off the freeway along here somewhere. its a wonder we survived at all! jeebus!
then sandy, and i remember the long commutes to portland. catching the first tri-met of the day from sandy to dump me downtown so i could transfer up to nw 23rd and get to school. we had moved back to the farm after mom graduated psu and i wanted to finish my year at mlc. i was in the fifth grade.
off the highway and up into the hills and i think about all the mistakes i made here. fuck-ups, errors in judgement, stupidity. lawlessness. idiocy. these things were the later years, when i was becoming the man-boy. the earlier years when i was still just the boy, i was astute and quiet. i drive past my grade school and i think of my first slow dance with a girl and the heat of her breasts against my chest and our joint embarassment at holding each other close and liking it.
i take the road up past the old property, but i dont want to look up the private dead end road or even see the house. bad ending. dont want to go back there.
next, i'm bounding over the back roads to estacada, intent on continuing my excursion to bagby. i don't really care which way i'm going and soon i'm past the houses and mailboxes at the ends of long gravel roads and into the half-forested timberlands. the no trespassing signs make way to day use signs, clearcuts, and wide spots in the road where all manner of human refuse has been shot-up, broken, or full of holes.
i stop at a gated off loggers road at a clearcut replanted in 1993. the trees here are at most ten or twelve feet tall. there is a list of rules for the land use on the gate. nothing wrong with walking here, just don't block the gate, so i set out on foot. its quiet, though i can hear the motorized sound of some equipment or tractor from the valley below. at some point the engine dies down i hear the voice of a man hollering something to someone else. i cant make out the words, but the tone indicates an instruction or direction of some kind, and the motor ramps up again. some dog barks in the hills to the north of me as i find a nice log that looks like a bench so i sit and smoke.
ah.
the engine noises and the dogs go quiet and the silence is periodically interrupted by the occasional prop engine airplane gliding up the valley. i'm here maybe twenty minutes and hear the single gunshot off the next hill to the east. its far enough away that i am not in any danger, but it occurs to me that (a) a single one-off shot indicates a hunter, not someone plinking at targets. (b) i am walking around in thick brush where i can't see clearly more than about 20 feet in any direction. (c) someone with a scope probably could not see what i was, except some large form moving in the brush.
...so i headed back to the truck and continued up. drove a few miles more and came to a wide spot of 30 year old trees. stopped and walked past the shooter's gallery of junk. followed the overgrown road to the next parcel which was a recent cut. walked through the cut to the sign that read 'no cutting past this tree' and into the 80 year growth.
ah. now we're talking.
a stream at the bottom of the slope calls me down there and its a quiet spot where the sun shines through the cathederal cedar canopy and i can sit and meditate. i didn't hear or see (except the occasional jet roar of machines clambering out of pdx) another human being the rest of the afternoon.
ah.
yes.
solitude.
i was going to bagby for why? never mind that. everything i needed was right there.
grabbed my towel and i started cruising the 205 south headed for clackamas and for whatever reason bounced off at the cemetaries at mount scott to walk amongst the dead and my grandparents. they were still quite dead, but alive and well in my memory and i thanked them out loud for this life o' mine. i don't take to ancestor worship very well, but you know... i carry that genetic code as mine. its as much chance and circumstance as anything else, i know... but george could have hopped off a freight train in some corntown usa, instead of returning to oklahoma for pearl.
anyway. back in the truck and headed out sunnyside road. sunnyside road has been a clusterfuck as long as i can remember and it still is. the developments have been cropping up along this corridor since i was a boy, and continue to do so with all of its uglyness and mini-malls.
still, it doesnt take long to get to farmland. nurseries and livestock. yeah... i'm getting there.
through damascus and i think about some friends of the family that moved here and the kids i played with at that time. the mom was one of my mom's childhood friends, the husband was from the middle east, egypt, i think. us kids... well, we were kids.
boring, and i think about making explosives out of matchheads with a kid that lived off the freeway along here somewhere. its a wonder we survived at all! jeebus!
then sandy, and i remember the long commutes to portland. catching the first tri-met of the day from sandy to dump me downtown so i could transfer up to nw 23rd and get to school. we had moved back to the farm after mom graduated psu and i wanted to finish my year at mlc. i was in the fifth grade.
off the highway and up into the hills and i think about all the mistakes i made here. fuck-ups, errors in judgement, stupidity. lawlessness. idiocy. these things were the later years, when i was becoming the man-boy. the earlier years when i was still just the boy, i was astute and quiet. i drive past my grade school and i think of my first slow dance with a girl and the heat of her breasts against my chest and our joint embarassment at holding each other close and liking it.
i take the road up past the old property, but i dont want to look up the private dead end road or even see the house. bad ending. dont want to go back there.
next, i'm bounding over the back roads to estacada, intent on continuing my excursion to bagby. i don't really care which way i'm going and soon i'm past the houses and mailboxes at the ends of long gravel roads and into the half-forested timberlands. the no trespassing signs make way to day use signs, clearcuts, and wide spots in the road where all manner of human refuse has been shot-up, broken, or full of holes.
i stop at a gated off loggers road at a clearcut replanted in 1993. the trees here are at most ten or twelve feet tall. there is a list of rules for the land use on the gate. nothing wrong with walking here, just don't block the gate, so i set out on foot. its quiet, though i can hear the motorized sound of some equipment or tractor from the valley below. at some point the engine dies down i hear the voice of a man hollering something to someone else. i cant make out the words, but the tone indicates an instruction or direction of some kind, and the motor ramps up again. some dog barks in the hills to the north of me as i find a nice log that looks like a bench so i sit and smoke.
ah.
the engine noises and the dogs go quiet and the silence is periodically interrupted by the occasional prop engine airplane gliding up the valley. i'm here maybe twenty minutes and hear the single gunshot off the next hill to the east. its far enough away that i am not in any danger, but it occurs to me that (a) a single one-off shot indicates a hunter, not someone plinking at targets. (b) i am walking around in thick brush where i can't see clearly more than about 20 feet in any direction. (c) someone with a scope probably could not see what i was, except some large form moving in the brush.
...so i headed back to the truck and continued up. drove a few miles more and came to a wide spot of 30 year old trees. stopped and walked past the shooter's gallery of junk. followed the overgrown road to the next parcel which was a recent cut. walked through the cut to the sign that read 'no cutting past this tree' and into the 80 year growth.
ah. now we're talking.
a stream at the bottom of the slope calls me down there and its a quiet spot where the sun shines through the cathederal cedar canopy and i can sit and meditate. i didn't hear or see (except the occasional jet roar of machines clambering out of pdx) another human being the rest of the afternoon.
ah.
yes.
solitude.
i was going to bagby for why? never mind that. everything i needed was right there.
posted by warpup at 11:47 PM
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