Letter to the editor

A few weeks ago, the Oregonian published an article about how the high gas prices are causing people to stay closer to home for their travels. People are also embarking on low-cost activities like hiking and camping, more than ever before. This means that the trails and campgrounds close to Portland are getting more and more crowded. I don’t have anything against people enjoying this beautiful place we live in, even if it means I have to hike a little further than everyone else to find solitude. But I do have a problem with people who don’t behave themselves while they’re out there in the Great Outdoors. So I wrote a letter to the editor and they contacted me saying it might be published. I went on vacation and forgot all about it until I thought to check last night and discovered it was published on the 20th when I was gone:

Get ‘nature manners’

In the front-page story “The New Base Camp: Home” (July 13), Michael Milstein reported that more people are hiking and camping ["near Oregon's urban areas"] because in this age of high gasoline prices they like these more affordable activities better than flying trips and road trips.

The only problem is that somebody needs to teach some of these people some nature manners, and the Forest Service and state parks people sure aren’t doing it.

I’m getting pretty tired of litter on hiking trails, obnoxious campers, loud generators in campgrounds, and boom boxes and car stereos filling the forest with noise.

Have a little consideration for your neighbors who are out there to enjoy Mother Nature, not drown it out and destroy it.

Another weekend in nature

I had today off since I work this Saturday, so Greg and I went camping down around Mt. Jefferson (ironically, we barely had a glimpse of the mountain all weekend, not because of weather but because we were never in the right places). Anyway, we had a great time. The weather was warm and sunny and we did lots of hiking where we saw beautiful wildflowers, waterfalls, and lakes. Everything smells like campfire smoke, but I’m not complaining. I LOVE the smell of campfire smoke. It’s the smell of summer, my favorite season. I wish it was July all year. I swear I would not get sick of it.

I’ve made it through maybe a third of my pictures from LAST weekend in the Wallowas. Now I have several hundred more photos. My goal is to sort through them all before my next adventure in the Olympic Mountains, which starts next Wednesday. So I have eight days. I better get busy!

Rejuvinated

Greg and I are back from our six-day vacation in the Wallowa Mountains. Well, we were only playing for four days, since it’s an entire day’s drive away. But still. We had a fabulous time. The scenery was stunning and the weather was beautiful. We had a really fun time and are already talking about going back again. I will write more about the trip later, probably next week since we’re going to be gone again this weekend, camping.

I LOVE SUMMER

I was just sitting outside on the front steps, watching the big bright moon, enjoying this incredibly pleasant evening. It is 10:30, but the temperature out there is perfect and lovely. I absolutely love summer evenings. I love summer. Period. There are no words to describe how much I love this season and all it entails: long days, sunshine, warmth, green forests, wildflowers, hiking, swimming, camping. These things make me very happy, and being deprived of them for nine months of the year is extremely difficult. So for the few brief months when my world is sunny and beautiful, I will enjoy every minute of it that I can.

This post from dooce pretty much sums up how I feel about summer: no matter how hot it gets, I won’t complain, because it’s still WAY better than winter.

Return to the forest

On Friday, Greg and I celebrated the 4th of July by going for a hike, my first hike in exactly two months. (May 4 was the last time I wandered in the woods; I would find out two days later that my foot hurt because of a stress fracture.) It was short and easy but all that mattered was being out in nature again. We went to Alsea Falls Recreation Area in the mountains southwest of Corvallis. Two waterfalls, wildflowers, trees, and three miles of hiking. It felt great to be out in the forest again. I have missed it greatly.

We went for another short hike on Saturday and I’m happy to report that my foot did well on both days. I had no pain from the site of the stress fracture. When I saw my podiatrist last week, he took x-rays again and declared me 85% healed. It will be a year before I’m 100% healed, but at least now I can pretty much return to normal activities. He said he didn’t need to see me again unless I started having problems. Relieved doesn’t even begin to describe how I feel.

Faces

I’ve always been really bad at remembering names and faces. Working at the library, where I see hundreds of different people every day, has not helped my name/face memory at all. The problem, of course, is that patrons will recognize me from a previous visit and think that I remember them too. I don’t feel too bad when I don’t remember them, but I DO feel bad when I don’t remember somebody I should. This happened twice in one day last week. One woman was an artist who’d had her art hanging in the library last month, who I had met and talked to, and I totally didn’t recognize her when she dropped by last week. Oops! Another woman was someone I had met and had a conversation with regarding the planning of an upcoming program, and when I saw her this week I introduced myself – not remembering having met and talked to her before – at which point she kindly reminded me that we had already met. Oh dear!