DRY CREEK FALLS HIKE

It had now been absent for nearly half a year after leading the birds south last autumn for their annual hiatus.

I hadn’t noticed it was coming back because the clouds conspired to hide it – tried to create an impenetrable gray blanket of depression – tried to cover the earth in a glaze of freezing rain and sleet, like a giant black slug.

But nearly two weeks ago, I stepped out of a soul-killing windowless concrete-slab work-box to wash off the stink of my own nervous sweat in the face of a bracing wind that I remembered from the morning and which I knew carried stinging rain in a horizontal fashion.

Instead, the world of gray was vanquished - the gloomy cover shattered –rays of golden sunshine, like rescue searchlights actively seeking abandoned children – warmly touched my face – dried my clammy skin – whispered promises of summer.

I went back inside to tell the others. It’s come back! Winter is over! (The sun - It told me! I felt it!)

By the time they went to look, it was already dark again. Vengeful thunderheads stormed back across the sky dropping sleet and hail to chill the steaming ground and erase all evidence of any heavenly visit.

They ridiculed me in my role as harbinger of spring.

And so it went like that. Tantalizing sun breaks in the middle of the week bracketed by weekends that hearkened back to an ice age or some Russian gulag on the remote Siberian tundra.

Last Sunday, I hoped I might find it again. Once again taking a hint from the Portland Hiker’s Field Guide, http://www.portlandhikersfieldguide.org/wiki/Dry_Creek_Falls_Hike

I left a rain shrouded Portland behind and headed east up the gorge, looking for …spring I guess




On my way to Cascade Locks, I had to pull up short somewhere around Warrendale, to watch the clouds and sun engage in minor battles, the scattered skirmishes of a greater war.

Finally back on track, I started climbing gently up hill from the winter trailhead, doing what I do best – sweating – soaking my shirt – fulfilling my role as hypothermia’s poster child.

Snow fell randomly – here and there– in the still air – only minutes at a time. I always stopped to watch in silence and listen to the flakes landing – like muted whispers – like carbonated bubbles popping at the surface of a stale drink.

"…the woods are lovely, dark and deep…”

I always thought they were made in China, but the abundant fruit of this shoe tree made me reconsider.

Dry Creek Falls.

WARRIOR ROCK LIGHTHOUSE – Sauvie Island

Note: I’ve mentioned this before, but a really great resource for Portland residents who like to hike is Portland Hikers.org: Portland Oregon’s Hiking Network http://www.portlandhikers.org/
The following images are derived from following the Warrior Rock/Point Lighthouse hike as described here: http://www.portlandhikersfieldguide.org/wiki/Warrior_Point_Hike

Even though I was once an art major, I couldn’t think of any more names to describe the colors of mucus that I was able to blow out of my nose. After a week, I was convinced much of it was brain matter. I couldn’t think anymore, most of my parts hurt, and the coughing was starting to aggravate my ribs. When the weekend arrived, all I wanted to achieve was the oblivion of sleep.

But at that unexpected moment in the dark hours before dawn, as I eyed the threshold to unconsciousness... some electric stimulus - a message passed along an ethereal network - the inspiration from a muse, invited me to wander.
The drive to Sauvie Island was an exercise in nearsightedness. Traffic signs gave up their messages only at the last second as obfuscating fingers of fog softened the edges of significant letters. A suggestion of a massive concrete pier lurking off to the right of the road was the only inkling I had that I passed under the cathedral-like arch of the St. Johns Bridge. For all I could see, I might as well have painted all my windshields white and driven through Paris.



Along the beach, the filtered moan of some behemoth cow echoes up the river. The mechanical vibration of its diesel heart is heard best by one's guts. A ship seen only by the imagination traces shock waves in the water – displaced water transfers the message to the river bank, and implies the ship is real.

figments of imagination from some distant country

some vast enterprise, advancing without seeing – by senses someone else imagined

there’s so much water in the air, it’s puzzling that no one drowns

From the river, the sonic fingers of blind ships probe the channel. The mournful lowing, muted by the fog, evokes another kind of wake - not the joyous Dixieland procession that my father longed for – but the somber hopelessness of the lost.

this winter landscape – these skeletons

this vessel of graceful, bounding life - now static – now bound to the earth - matted disheveled fur, like parted hair, revealing a pinkness that reminds me of some common ancestor. The smell strikes me, and I back away – I don’t want to smell like that – I don’t want to get any on me

The air is filled with the noise of flapping. How can the motion of feathers on air sound like such a beating?

people come and people go

for all we know, there’s nothing around the corner

the promise of sunshine, if not today - soon