Tag Archives: Oregon

Last Bridge To Rivendell

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Rivendell7811

Often reality and fantasy can overlap for those who wander. Sometimes in small ways, other times in huge overwhelming ways that wash over them as they suddenly see what they’ve only imagined from reading someone else’s verbal pictures.

Such was the case for me when I viewed Multnomah falls for the first time. It wasn’t just the slender falls itself with its graceful plunge of over 560′ into the clear pool  below. Or the bottom falls which fell another 69′ onto a rocky platform where the cool water gathered itself then rushed musically down the side of the cliff to empty into the Columbia river.

That alone would have been awe-inspiring in itself, but then to add the graceful bridge spanning the distance over the lower falls where one can stand and feel the cool mist drift across your senses had to have been done by someone who knew Elves and the magic folk personally. Or perhaps having traveled to those places and experiencing the beauty couldn’t bear to leave them behind.

As you approach up a wide stone staircase to a viewing area that allows you to see the entire scene at once, you are suddenly thrust into another place, another world where anything can happen, where you might meet creatures from a land of fantasy that you only thought was imaginary. A place where magic was possible and you might have powers you never dreamed of before. This could be a gateway that, if you allow yourself and can throw caution to the winds, you might just visit a land of wonder and adventure the likes of which you have never imagined before.

Multnomah falls is just one of the many waterfalls in the real world that you can visit while traveling along old highway 30, a scenic byway that parallels I-84 in the Columbia gorge. If you get the chance, go there, you might just get an opportunity to take a journey to a place you did not expect to go.

Taming The Columbia

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There is an area of the Columbia river that is bounded on one side by I-84 and the Mosier-The Dalles highway and by the Lewis and Clark highway on the other side. It is a narrow spot on the river made more so by the high cliffs on either side which forces the river to run faster and have very choppy water. It also forces the wind, which blows through here screaming like a banshee, to funnel through this valley at a very constant rate. It is located in the Cascade Locks area of Oregon and the border between Washington and Oregon runs right down the middle of the river, invisibly dividing it in two.

I saw these individuals on the river performing activities that I had never seen before, so as an investigator of new phenomenon I was duty bound to stop and, well, investigate. I wanted to find out as much as I could about this strange waterborne behavior. Luckily there were local experts there that were eager to fill me in on the facts.

My questions were quite pointed. “Why do people do this?” “Is there any useful purpose being accomplished here?” “What kind of glue do you use to hold your feet to the board when you leave the water?” “Does it bother the fish to have someone jumping up and down on their roof?” Amazed at my questions and after learning that I was on a fact-finding mission and would be reporting their answers to the world at large through this blog, they virtually fell all over each other to give me the straight story. Setting down his 40oz can of Olympia one thoughtful fellow looked at me and began to tell me about how they were involved in a major environmental struggle to contain the mighty Columbia river and prevent a catastrophic event that could endanger half the western Pacific.

It seems that in times past the Columbia ran down to the sea completely unchecked. There was nothing between its origin and the Pacific ocean to control its riotous, mad dash to the sea. As it did so it’s level would rise to startling but dangerous heights. Countless times trees were uprooted and sand bars washed away, creating mini-environmental disasters. Fish were disoriented and couldn’t tell upstream from down and consequently were swept out to sea to die a horrible death by drowning. Native Americans were fearful of throwing their nets into the river, less they too, would be dragged down to Portland and suffer the fate of being exposed to the white people’s sinful ways in the strip clubs and gin mills of the inner city. It seemed that natural chaos reigned and something had to be done.

The answer was obvious after a fortunate accident occurred. A carpenter named Phil, fell while carrying a plank across a dock and landed on the river astride the wide board. Knowing of the dangers in reaching Portland he immediately removed his shirt and by holding it by its arms to try and flag down help, watched in amazement as it filled with the strong winds of the Columbia gorge, becoming a sail which he could safely guide his way back to shore.

Soon carpenters were falling in the river with their planks at an alarming rate until all you could see was a field of flag waving, wide board carpenters filling the gorge from one side to the other. It was then that the real discovery was made. A waterman whose main job it was, was to watch the water for suspicious activity, noticed that the more carpenters they piled on the river the lower it got. It was one of those eureka type moments that those Oregonians are noted for. It wasn’t long before the discoveries of jumping up and down tamped the river down, as it were and packed it to a more acceptable level. It was also noted that you didn’t need carpenters to do this. Almost anyone with a minimum level of brain cells could be trained to strap on a sail and go out and ‘Tamp the River’.

Today, right now in fact, if you’re driving down the gorge you can see swarms of maintenance crews out there, sails in the air, boards on their feet, tamping the river for all their worth, keeping it at acceptable yet safe, levels. Yes their gear has changed. No longer do they use the heavy old pine planks of days long gone, nor do they rip up perfectly good shirts to make their sails. Everything is poly-this and Poly-that and the brighter the better although I think that is more due to them not wanting to be hit and sunk by the pesky freighters that sail up and down the channel.

The old salt that was telling me this looked me in the eye and said with a perfectly straight face, “and that’s why we do what we do”. I couldn’t write fast enough. To be able to get the hidden story that isn’t shared with the public at large was an honor. It isn’t often that the truth gets shared as honestly as this and I was more than glad to pay for the next case or two of Oly’s as they called them. The old salt simply smiled at me and I almost felt as if I were taking advantage of them because now I had a story that I could tell that hadn’t been heard before and how could you put a price on that.

Battle Along The Columbia

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As many of you already know the Bokeh Maru, the Institutes premier research vessel, is a remarkable vehicle. Outfitted with all the modern attributes of a world-class media center and loaded down with sophisticated electronic equipment including GPS, a Smartphone, contact receptacles mounted in the walls that interface with portable electronics like laptops, toasters, handheld devices that remove facial hair and a place to recharge batteries in all the professional photographic gear that is needed on an expedition such as this one. The power source alone that is a regenerative unit that provides nearly an inexhaustible amount of power in the form of AC/DC electricity, requires an advanced degree in mechanical engineering just to turn it on.

But perhaps the greatest and most useful device on board is a portable, slightly oversized, hyper-organic computer with the ability to perform incredible feats of observation and analysis of the conditions around it. Programmed with the latest algorithms and lightning fast calculations it is able to instantly react to stimulus occurring in a 360° radius of its location. That is until it goes on overload, reboots, gives you a blue screen and you crash into the guard rail and spill your tea. Fortunately that didn’t happen but it could of.

It, the organic computer named after the Hal 9000’s cousin Leland, was running its wildlife acquisition app as we sped down I-84 along the Columbia river just east of The Dalles in Oregon, when it suddenly sprang into action after locating life-forms just off the hwy and up a nearly vertical wall of rocks, sand, boulders and scrub. Sensing images to be had I immediately pulled over to the side of the road where fortunately the shoulder was just wide enough that if I nearly scraped the side of the Bokeh Maru against the concrete divider placed there to keep foolish gawkers from falling into the Columbia river, I could get far enough off the roadway to avoid being crushed to death by the semi-truck traffic rocketing by at 70 mph.

The life-forms turned out to be Bighorn Sheep, rams to be exact, that were girding their loins in preparation for the rut which would allow them to have unprotected sex with any female sheep they could coerce into mating behavior. There were 5-7 of these bachelor boys who took turns ramming their heads together (hence the name Rams) to see who would get first pick of any females they might blunder into. Half these guys  were so loopy that they didn’t know which way was up after several rounds of striking their heads together with enough force you could hear it over the sound of 18 wheelers screaming by inches away. Their numbers varied as they came and went, as they did battle, then retreated to take whatever headache remedy they could before returning to the jousts again. This went on for hours, all in all a magnificent display of the ridiculous, I mean, they could’ve just sent a nice bouquet of roadside sage or some tasty twigs they located, then after some small talk and a little wine, they could accomplish what nature intended without all that head-banging and bleating. But that is just a personal opinion and not to be taken as scientific fact.

Battle8468

Here two of the Bachelor Boys contend for contendership and the right to do this again with someone bigger. The average good-sized ram will weigh between 250 and 300 lbs. with 30 lbs or more of that weight being their horns.

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Contact! They put every ounce of power they have into these moments.

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The impact is so intense that the energy rocketing through their bodies results in one or both of them actually being lifted from the ground. It is impressive to see and one wonders about the longevity of Nature’s crash-test dummies after being subjected to this dozens of times a day. Makes these NFL linemen we hear about today seem like pansy little whiners in comparison with their measly little concussions and all.

Battle8478

After the immediate impact they stand there motionless, or I might say paralyzed, while they contemplate what just happened. At the moment of impact these 250-300lbs. rams are striking each other at speeds up to 20 mph which is the equivalent of a 250lb man on a fat-tired bike slamming into the concrete wall of a Starbucks at 40 mph. One can only wonder what they might be thinking at this moment.

As a trained observer I have theorized that those thoughts may be something like “Holy crap, did THAT hurt.” or possibly a false sense of bravado with one saying “Didn’t hurt.” and the other one responding “Did too!” or perhaps something along the lines of “Where am I? Better yet, what am I?” While these boys are standing there trying to figure out if they walked to work or carried their lunch, another pair begin the same ritual. These bouts can last up to 24 hrs. before they finally concede its dumb and they go get breakfast somewhere.

Although this was a unique adventure as there was no expectation that wildlife would be spotted in the narrow confines of the Columbia gorge, the real adventure was not getting sideswiped by every semi that came down the highway. The rest was that act of reentering 70 mph traffic from a standing start. For those who have never  driven through the Columbia gorge it is one of the principal entries into the city of Portland and consequently every truck in America is required to go through it, sometimes several times a day. And they, the large, malevolent, evil-smelling ogres of the road, do not like RV’s. Or cars. Or other trucks. They don’t even like their mothers, or Jesus, or Country and Western music, so reentering their domain takes an act of courage that many simply don’t have. But the Bokeh Maru does. She leapt into the fray with never a thought for her soft-bodied passenger inside and fearlessly held up her tail pipe in a obscene gesture in the face of that 90,000lb behemoth bearing down on her and pulled into the traffic lane. We lived.

It was on to bigger and better things as we pointed our broad nose to the west and headed for Portland, the city of narrow roads and high-speed traffic. New adventures awaited us.

Light In The Meadow

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After a mind-clearing journey of over 4000 miles through the Pacific Northwest and Canada I’m back in the Director’s chair here at the Institute. One of the largest conclusions I have come to is that there is an incredible amount of green out there in the Pacific Northwest. Everything is green, from the mighty trees that grow right down to the ocean’s edge to the green eggs and ham I got at a local eatery, it’s green. Many, many shades of green, almost too many if one were forced to make a judgment about it. I like green. Don’t get me wrong, it’s one of my favorite colors, but I had never been inside a green explosion before and it took some getting used to.

The trip was fantastic. The Bokeh Maru seemed to respond to the lighter touch of just one person at the helm instead of the four-hour watch routine we had on our Montana adventure where almost all of the crew took their turns at the wheel. Consequently she performed flawlessly. No hesitation, no refusal to go a where ever I directed her and she seemed to enjoy the new scenery as much as I did. I even began to suspect she may have been there before but being a gentleman I didn’t ask. A lady must have her  secrets.

There were new things to see nearly every minute of the day and it was pure bliss to camp next to the ocean with only a small sand dune separating us from the ability to turn left and head for Japan. The waves were relentless and the sound of the rain on the roof during the night was mesmerizing. As a treat I let the Bokeh Maru wet her wheels in the incoming tide and you could hear her squealing in delight as the salt water washed the remnants of the long road trip from her undercarriage. After we left I watched her closely so that she didn’t surreptitiously try and turn back to the sea.

We traveled through the Columbia gorge, then along the seacoast of Oregon and Washington using the famous highway 101 until we could go no further then loaded on to a car ferry aptly named the USS Scratch and Dump to go to Vancouver Island in Canada. Upon entry I had a chance to visit with the charming and polite customs official who was most interested in whether I had a gun aboard, or owned a gun which might not be aboard, and whether I kept guns in my home here in the USA. An interesting question asked was whether I supported the right to own guns. I answered all the questions as truthfully as I could with, No, No, No, and Hell yes. I t was enough to get me into the sovereign country of Canada but not without some suspicious looks as I slowly eased onto Canadian soil. I was asked about the gun thing by Canadians at several of the campgrounds I stayed in while in Canada. It something that our Canadian friends seemed to be very interested in.

I took a whale watching boat out to see if we could locate Orcas or Killer whales as the more bloodthirsty among us like to call them and we did, plus Humpback whales and a rare white-sided dolphin that had the boat crew all excited. Apparently seeing one of them was akin to seeing a white buffalo here.

I also took the opportunity of making a surprise visit to the new managers of the eastern Oregon satellite office of the Institute. Things are progressing somewhat slowly there as far as the remodeling and refurbishment of the old site goes, but I was assured that as soon as Spring hit they would begin the transformation in earnest. Meanwhile I was fed and watered as one of the family and soon forgot why I had even stopped there in the first place. I even had to stay a second day after the promise of a meal of free-range, fresh cooked fish, Steelhead or it might have been Halibut, that had been swimming freely in the river moments before. I even tried the old trick of feinting extreme malnutrition by sucking my cheeks in and holding a pillow in front of my less than svelte stomach, hoping to get more food the next day but although my new management team lives in a backwater of the Wallowa valley they are smart enough to quickly catch on to my ruse and went out for cigarettes and didn’t return until they saw the end of the Bokeh Maru turn on to the highway. Disappointed but impressed with their ability to spot a flim-flam man I headed back towards Colorado.

We, The Bokeh Maru and I, had been out for nearly three weeks and it was time to get back to work. Before that work could commence however I had to change the color palette in my head from the greens and greys of the Northwest and replace it with the local one so that I was reoriented again. That a meant a quick trip up to Rocky Mountain National Park to firmly plant the yellows and reds and gold that was the aspens and meadows of Fall back in the front of my mind.

The image above is the late afternoon sun streaming through the aspen grove at the edge of Moraine meadow. It was enough to get my mind right again. As time goes by I will be posting images from the trip to the Northwest with the usual accompanying stories that a few of you find interesting. The rest of you that simply look at the pictures then go do something interesting will also not be forgotten as I try and post something to stimulate your attention span. It’s good to be back.

A quick note. As this is a busy time of year for me with the fall color change and the rut happening I will be not be posting every day until I’m home and winter has me locked in. So although I will try my best to get posts out there I will be gone several more times as I try and get the photography done while the opportunity presents itself. Thanks to all of you who patiently put up with my inconsistencies. I will make sure all of  you get entered in my will.

The Maiden Voyage of The Bokeh Maru – Days 11 & 12

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Phototrip7793New headquarters of the Oregon chapter of The Institute

Day 11 Rest & Rehabilitation

Today was spent in cleaning out and burning the few personal effects left from our missing crew members.  Old ginseng wrappers and cans of open beverages with unreadable labels. Remains of old unidentifiable meals that looked organic in nature but frankly could have been anything. Even a few pitifully constructed weapons in the form of sharpened sticks and socks filled with gravel that had been hastily constructed for the ill-fated mutiny that was put down by my trusted but now missing head of security, Big Lemon Kowalski. Remembering the carnage brought about by that big toothed but lovable lug, brought a warm glow of remembrance.

I found a few poems written by our Candace Flavours, known to us as ExcuseMeMs for most of the trip, that she had written to Big Lemon. They were so warm and caring they nearly brought a tear to my eye. Thinking her cold and callous and well, just plain mean, I would never thought her capable of harboring such tender feelings. Here is a partial excerpt from one.

My dearest BLK I love you mostly for your big yellow tooth

And not because you won’t wear your shooths

and tho I love your tattooed feet

they are less fragrant, but you know that, my sweet

I want you always to be mine

Or I will kill you

Love, your candy buttons

There was more, running on page after page ad nauseam, but they are personal and I shan’t share any more of them with you even if you were to pay me money in the form of cash, check, or money order, as I have too much respect for her now that she is gone. They were tender and moving and in some cases extremely explicit in nature, with many of the acts so detailed and graphic that they could only have been Chinese because of all the perverted stuff that comes out of that godless mis-begotten country, but no matter how much you beg, cajole or send me large amounts of money in the form of cash check or money order, I won’t budge. I mean it, so don’t ask.

Now that I seem to be bonding with my new site manager and his lovely wife I am beginning to feel the loss of my last two crew members, less and less each moment . In fact our new Mrs. Assistant Site Manager made us an extraordinary home-cooked meal tonight in which I may have over-indulged somewhat, and being in the throes of calorie saturation found myself unable to remember what, old what’s her name looked like. Or that monkey-faced big toothed baboon she had been mooning over.

Perhaps I’ll think about that tomorrow.

Day 12 New Digs

Today was a new day and a fresh start. After convincing our newest major employee to give up that tissue sample and DNA material, I assured him that we would cover all his legal expenses if any thing were to come of our future business dealings. Fortunately he didn’t ask me to sign any documents attesting to that fact so we headed off to look for a suitable site to create our new headquarters. It wasn’t long before we noticed this incredible find. It was remote, had a single power-line coming in, and seemed mostly abandoned so we proceeded to acquire it under the Oregon law of Finders Keepers.

Giddy with our initial success we immediately began to make plans to get started with the remodeling needed to keep wild animals out until winter made it too difficult for them to brave the storms and attempt to gain entrance.

First on the agenda, besides breaking down the front door to gain entrance, was to begin making notes for the materials needed to secure the premises from, like, the afore-mentioned wild animals and possible old owners who may be testy due to their poor planning and could be lurking around to cause mischief in one way or another. So it was lots of fast scribbling and quick note taking as the ideas poured forth in a flood of enthusiasm. Luckily our new assistant site manager knew how to write, so much progress was made this morning. Soon trucks bearing loads of flattened cardboard boxes to replace missing window glass and magic markers to write warning messages on the cardboard saying “Don’t Even Think of Coming In Here” and “Stay out! We mean it” and other cryptic messages such as

“The State of Oregon allows the use of deadly force in the protection of private property if the new owners, hereafter called the squatters, deem it necessary to keep out previous owners, hereafter known as previous owners, who didn’t think it was a good idea to leave someone home to protect the property they have now lost.”

would be arriving if they could ford the creek and climb over the snow fence. Of course the drivers would have to be blindfolded to protect the location of our newest headquarters but that was a surmountable problem.

There were many other tasks to be taken care of such as finding out why there were so many bleached bones lying about the well, and what was that black crust around the edge, and why there was that persistent scratching sound coming from behind that locked door leading to the basement. We decided that it was nothing as the low guttural moaning that accompanied the scratching was receding, and it appeared that what ever it was seemed to be going to sleep for the night.  We decided to leave the new Assistant Mrs. Site Manager there overnight to guard the place as we needed to get back into town and round-up some of these supplies and to make sure we had a hot meal in preparation of the next days activities. We left her with a flashlight, the .22 with the few shells we had left, a power bar and the warning not to open the door to the basement.

I had few qualms about leaving them in the morning as I had to continue my journey homeward the next day. They seemed more than capable and I was sure if Mrs. Assistant Site Manage was ok in the morning all would go well and the newest site would be up and producing useful data soon.

The journey was soon coming to an end and I was already waxing nostalgic about it but there were at least two more days to get home yet so anything could happen. Tomorrow I would enter Utah and head South. Stay tuned.

The Maiden Voyage of the Bokeh Maru – Day 10

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Day10_7474Somewhere outside of Livingston Montana

I awoke slowly this morning to the gentle rocking of The Bokeh Maru. The wind was picking up and the low rumble of faraway thunder rushed by leaving nothing but silence in its wake. I listened for the sound of Big Lemons gravelly voice gently coaxing the crew to their morning tasks. I wondered where the sound of ExcuseMe… I mean Candy’s, iron-toed Doc Martins were as she would move down the aisle kicking the late sleepers out of her way, when suddenly I remembered and realized all the comforting sounds of the morning routine were gone, along with her and Big Lemon. The Bokeh Maru was empty except for me.

Yesterday, as you remember, closed with the disappearance of Candace Flavours and Big Lemon Kowalski going into that strange building in Livingston Montana and disappearing without a trace. I jumped up, ran outside, thinking I would find them coming out of the building, sheepishly holding hands and ready for breakfast. But they didn’t of course, they were gone. Everything appeared to be back to normal, there were no flashing lights or strange humming sounds, the doors were all locked and the morning traffic went by on the road into town as if nothing strange had happened here. The only link to last night was that strange storm building to the North. There wasn’t a sign of my last two crewmen and friends. Well friends if I had liked them better. I ran frantically about calling their names but it was as I feared they were gone.

Since there was nothing to be done I began the procedures to get the
Bokeh Maru up and running. Taking one last look around to see if I had missed anything I pointed the Bokeh Maru West and headed towards our satellite facilities in Oregon, where I planned on spending a few days recuperating and conferring with my Department head. I was hoping there might even be the chance to pick up some new crew members if he had staff to spare.

Running the Bokeh Maru alone was a new experience. For one thing the missing weight of 31 crew members upped her speed from 38-39 mph to nearly 70. That was a welcome surprise. I never would have guessed that the wind resistance of those hanging on up on the roof would have made that significant a difference. The quietness was also a factor. Normally there would have been the sound of the many different languages spoken by the various crew members and the sounds of casual curses in everything from Urdu to the various Malaysian dialects ringing through the cabin. It was sad but at the same time I found myself enjoying the solitude. Mostly I missed Big Lemons shiny yellow tooth gleaming in the sunlight coming through the windshield as he quietly polished it with a bit of  emery paper. I even found myself looking about for ExcuseMeMs, but more for the fact that I didn’t like her standing behind me very much.

I began to enter the countryside where The Institute had set up it’s western observatory when the first shock hit me.

Day10_7805remains of our Oregon observatory

Our observatory was a shambles. I had been on an inspection trip just a year ago and it was up and running. Who broke all the glass? Where was my $149, on sale at Wal-Mart super-quality far-reaching telescope? Why was it a crumbling ruin? Where was the dome? That was really expensive. Why was the fence down? What happened here? I would have plenty of questions for my site manager you can bet on that.

I received another shock as I neared our Oregon headquarters. Our regional airstrip where The Institute’s planes were hangered had been reduced to a squalid flight school and sightseeing operation.

Day10_7783the remains of our once proud fleet of aircraft

I was stunned. How could a successful operation that was generating tens of hundreds of dollars fall into such rack and ruin in  less than a year. Heads were going to roll.

I pulled into our headquarters later that afternoon, wishing that I had Big Lemon with me to help educate the local management team when I discovered they were gone, all of them. In their place, living in the Institutes main headquarters, were people I had never seen before. Threatening to evict them immediately I asked them for an explanation. They told me they had bought the place from the guy who lived there before, my manager, the bastard, and showed me the bill of sale he had given them written on the back of a grocery bag with a felt tip pen. Upon conferring with a local attorney it turns out that sales completed with a felt tip pen regardless of what they were written on, were not only legal in Eastern Oregon but irreversible. It was just, “So Sad, Too Bad”, for me.

I did the only thing I could do to salvage what was left of the situation and that was hire the two of them to be my new Oregon representatives of The Institute. They turned out to be a wonderful couple, especially her, and he seemed trainable so I guess we’ll try and make the best of things. The upside is I will need to visit the headquarters here in the beautiful Wallowa valley to check on training and the rebuilding of the Observatory and our airstrip.

I did find out that my previous manager, the bastard, had succumbed to the temptations provided  by the high-rolling con artist that was producing videos for “Young Girls Gone Crazy” and needed our various off-site locations as backdrops for his videos. The story was the entire production was just a front for hard partying sorority girls and others of questionable repute.

The only way I had to deal with the property loss and damages was to bring in Batchu Sen, my Macau affiliate, as a partner. I gave him the photos, fingerprints, tissue samples and DNA that we take from each of our site managers and he will do the rest. He’s still upset over the loss of Big Lemon and is in no mood to be forgiving. If we didn’t have an understanding backed with various documents in our safety deposit boxes I would be concerned for our own well-being.

I’ll be offline for a day or two as I begin the process of indoctrination I provide all new employees of The Institute. It takes a while to build the bond necessary to have the excellent relationships The Institute has with all of its employees and we work hard  at it.

Then I’ll be piloting The Bokeh Maru through Utah and ultimately home to the World Headquarters of The Institute in Colorado.