The Narrative Image

How it looked Saturday Morning Midweek, I saw a picture of Multnomah Falls in the Oregonian (Portland’s big daily newspaper) that showed the giant waterfall as a kind of hybrid water/ice sculpture and decided I’d try to see it for myself if daily temperatures would agree to stay close to the freezing range until the weekend. Multnomah Falls is situated toward the west end of the Columbia River Gorge, an eighty mile long canyon that stretches east through the Cascade Range. This high walled ‘funnel’ turns out to be an excellent conduit for frigid arctic winds that seek an avenue to the Portland Metropolitan area. Anticipating ice, I stopped at REI Friday night and picked up some traction devices that are supposed to allow a person to walk on ice. There were three options, but the two in my price range were All Purpose Traction Aids by Due North and the Yaktrax Walker. I chose to try the Due North offering since I couldn’t see how the little metal bands on the Yaktrax wouldn’t slip on ...

I was able to visit the coast on the day after Thanksgiving. I had been dealing with an important audio-visual project and when I wasn’t planning for a trip, I was scanning pictures until early morning and if not, I was worrying about it. Either way, I wasn’t getting much sleep. And then I got blindsided by a cold that I couldn't get rid of. So, on the 18th, the presentation went off without a hitch and I was finished and then all the details of Thanksgiving were over and suddenly I had a moment when I didn’t have to do anything (not counting a growing stack of dishes) and like I said, I was able to go to the beach. But it didn’t appear to be such a great day to go to the beach. Snow was threatening to fall in the passes, and rain was enthusiastically falling everywhere else. Once or twice a patch of blue sky hinted at an alternative to November’s moisture onslaught, but mostly these hints proved to be cruel teasing. By some cosmic gift of timing, I ended up at Oswald State Park in...