SAUVIE ISLAND - mostly

A blue looking-glass
A stiff breeze

A sky’s reflection shattered

An island of wild trees amidst a lock-step sea of cash crops

Excited cartoon bees before improbable flowers

Grass batons conducting wind-songs

Somehow reassuring to find plants confounded

…and happy old buildings perpetually surprised.

Born of architecture and order, but open to new experiences in its twilight years

This barn without people is like a body without a soul

Giant PEZ dispensers

Hay delivery system

After playing softball on Sunday, I find I empathize with this old house.

Lively colors in a dead house

Tree atolls, but not so metaphorical this time

Traitor decoy…friendless and alone

Blinds as elaborate as the Monitor and the Merrimac, designed for a contest of wits between men and ducks. Despite years of hunting refinements, the ducks are still not allowed to use weapons.

That was a big carp…really.

I heard five eagles taking baths.
They resented the invasion of their privacy.

A bug

A bird imitating a stick

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Miller Island Expedition: Columbia River Ghost Cult

My brother Fred sent me a checklist of things he didn’t want to forget for our second attempt at a Miller Island Expedition. Foil pans Steak Beer or whiskey/tequila Bacon Shovel TP Bug spray Homebrew Ghost repellents Scouting Miller Island from the Lewis and Clark Highway (Washington side of river) “Ghost repellents?” I asked. Well, it turns out that Fred had been doing some research and found an old article from American Anthropologist by Wm. Duncan Strong called The Occurrence and Wider Implications of a “Ghost Cult” on the Columbia River Suggested by Carvings in Wood, Bone and Stone. The article, written in 1945, revealed that bone carvings depicting figures with prominent rib cages, a symbol of death, were found in old cremation pits on Miller’s Island. Excerpts from the article: “It can be shown that among these peoples there was an old belief in the impending destruction and renewal of the world, when the dead would return…” “One of the most striking fea...

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The Narrative Image

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