The Narrative Image

My apartment sits at the base of an extinct volcano…at least I hope so. With luck, the tectonic plate that Oregon rides upon has migrated far enough to carry Portland past the molten magma furnace that fueled Mt. Tabor in the distant past. If you weren’t looking for it, you might not recognize that a small amphitheatre and basketball court are built in the throat of a cinder cone. The following images are arranged in geographical order. The images begin at the public stairwell at the north entrance to Mt. Tabor Park. The route will follow the stairs up to the top of Mt. Tabor, then over the top towards the south. From there, the path will meander down and to the west, stopping to visit each of Mt. Tabor’s reservoirs in order of altitude. While the route through space will be orderly and sequential, the path through time will be random and perhaps jarring. Sunrise – View from public stairs – Oct. 1, 2006 Sunset – view from public stairs – June 5, 2007 Night Rain - Public Stairs, Nor...

Portland typically doesn’t get more than one or two big snow events per year. When the snow does come, it only loiters for a day or two. This puts snow in the novelty category for most of us who live in the Willamette Valley. When weather forecasters begin to insinuate that snow may reach the valley floor, it is not only the children who run shouting to the windows to verify the first snowflake sighting, the ranks are swollen also by every adult who never grew up in Minnesota or some other reasonable facsimile. Early Tuesday morning, in what seemed like a sneak attack, the streets began disappearing under inches of snow that readily packed into an ice-like coating. The public school system authorities, still smarting from criticism for having closed down the schools on a day when no snow really materialized, almost erred in the other direction by refusing to call off school until almost seven o’clock. By that time, traffic had already pretty much ground to a halt and any place with ele...