Meltdown

I've been mulling over ideas for a drink in honor of the ongoing nuclear crisis in Japan, but I don't think I can do better than the cocktail I was served at a place called Vintage last night. First the bartender mixed Maker's Mark and Cynar (the Italian artichoke liqueur) with ice in a pint glass. Then she went into the back room for some reason. Then she poured green Chartreuse into a wine glass and set it on fire. She strained the first mixture into the wine glass to douse the flames, then singed a bit of orange peel and tossed it in.

The government claimed it was not strong enough to cause any harm, but I beg to differ.

Oregon wolves

Sharp video of Oregon wolves from ODFW via Natural Oregon:

wild wolves

Springwater Trail, Part Five

I parked across the street from the Wichita Feed & Hardware in the pouring rain.

The trail runs parallel to Southeast Johnson Creek Boulevard. It’s dark and cold and there are no bicyclists and no pedestrians except a man so drunk that he’s stumbling and weaving. He’s got mud on his pants, like he fell down somewhere, and he’s carrying a plastic bag of groceries.

The trail crosses the road at Southeast Bell Avenue, where there’s a convenience store called Bell Station. It looks really old, and I’m guessing the name comes because it was a stop on the old passenger train line that ran where the trail is now.

The online references to the Bell Station Market are a little spotty. Wikipedia calls it “historic.” Yelp says, “they should be ashamed of selling drug paraphernalia in our neighborhood.” It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, where its Period of Significance is described as 1900 to 1924 and its Current Function is “commerce/ trade, domestic, work in progress.”

The trail stretched on along, lined with scrubby areas and industrial storage places. There was a housing development behind a wall. Jackie started acting skittish and pretty soon we came to a no-kill dog shelter, in which a dog was howling.

Then all of sudden we were at the intersection with 82nd Avenue.

Wow, I can’t believe I walked all the way to 82nd Avenue. And still only at Milepost Eight.

Springwater 4: Déja Vu

At times, walking the Springwater Trail reminds me of taking a subway. You’re cruising along, and then every once in a while, you pop up somewhere familiar and think, whoa, how did I get here?

I ended the third segment of the trip at a place called the Tideman Johnson Natural Area, which I had never heard of before. When I was ready to head out again, I looked it up online to find out where I should park, and realized the area is near where I used to walk when I first moved to Portland.

On a hot September day in 1987, I walked farther than I had ever walked before in Portland. I came to a dusty trial and some railroad tracks. I walked by two kids — they looked like fifth-graders — smoking cigarettes. I came to a swimming hole surrounded by blackberry bushes. The blackberries were all ripe. People were sitting on a concrete slab and jumping off of it into the water.

Returning to the Tideman Johnson, I recognized it. The railroad tracks are now a new paved trail. The water flows faster and the blackberries are replaced by young-looking native plants. The banks of Johnson Creek have been restored in many areas, and I just read in the newspaper that three dead Coho salmon were found 15 miles upstream this year, the farthest up that anyone can remember.

It was a cold, sunny autumn day. I kept walking and emerged into a developed area. I saw a house and shed, run down and overgrown, that reminded me of “Sometimes a Great Notion.”

Then I came to Wichita Feed & Hardware. I thought, whoa, how did I get here?

Hayden Island

The Importance of Whale Poop

A study finds that whale poop plays a major role in the health of the ocean, here.

No, there will not be a cocktail recipe for this one.

Springwater Trail Parts 2 and 3

You can enter Oaks Bottom from the north or the south. I’ve always avoided the main entrance to the north because I associate it with death. When I was in college, a kid I knew disappeared, and I remember them searching Oaks Bottom for him (they later found his body in the river). Years later, someone else I knew drowned there. But I’ve been walking Jackie along the bluff above Oaks Bottom and down through the southern part for many years as well. There are lots of birds there, including blue herons, osprey, and at certain times of the year, a pair of bald eagles.

For the sake of the project, I finally parked at the main entrance and walked down trail I’d been avoiding. It’s a perfectly nice, lightly wooded area, with a paved trail that links up with the Springwater trail.

I continued south, past the gigantic mausoleum, until I got to Southeast Spokane Street, and then I went back. There’s a mural on the mausoleum wall that faces the marsh, with native birds painted much, much larger than life. I wrote an article about it once, and interviewed the head muralist. Well, it turns out that he is also dead — he died in a snowmobiling accident this spring.

A few days later I parked near Spokane and took the next segment of the trail, including the part that hasn’t been built yet. You walk on surface streets for about half a mile, heading west away from the Willamette, until you get back to the trail. As you can see in the photo, it’s not quite as fancy as the main entrance from Day One.

We walked through Sellwood and crossed three bridges: one over Johnson Creek, one over the highway, and one over some railroad tracks. If you were leading a group hike, you could work in a little commentary on the history of transportation here.

From here on out, Johnson Creek will be a regular presence. It’s the one remaining of a huge number of creeks that used to run through the city of Portland (or where the city was to be.) For some reason Johnson Creek was never paved over — one of those examples where neglect is beneficial for the environment in the long term. Johnson Creek runs through some of the sketchier parts of Portland. Along with its obscene name, the creek brings to mind trailer homes, abandoned cars, dumped tires, and blackberry brambles.