My Miss Brooks

Surely there is a character in a book named Miss Brooks.  She would be thin, gray haired, wear wire rim glasses and be quietly unassuming.  She would work in a library.  She would be those things because she was in my young life just those things.  My brother and I would arrive at the limestone Carnegie Library across the street from the courthouse and hike up the stairs to the room with a linoleum compass rose over which my Miss Brooks presided.  She was the librarian who led me to the orange bound biographies that I so loved.  I don't recall library cards or details like checking out. I suspect she and Mom just took care of it.  I just recall that she knew her books and she knew me. Years after she retired, my brother and I ran across her at one of those club bake sales that JC Penneys always allowed  near the stairs that went to the basement.  There in the blue tiled building, ten years or more since we frequented the room with the compass rose, she still knew us.

Miss Brooks was the beginning of my love of books and libraries.  We lived in another place for a couple of years and our family economy only included trips to the library in the summer when the school library was closed.  The school librarian refused to let me check out The Secret Garden when I was in second grade.  I suppose she thought I would not be able to read and make sense of words like; mystified, brilliant, contrary and sentiment.  I suppose that she wanted to keep a small supply of books appropriately apportioned so that older students would have something that would appeal to them.  But I had heard about this story and wanted to read it.  I tried twice at school and when it came to the check out line that librarian whose name I have forgotten turned me away.  I could not understand why I couldn't check out any book I wanted to check out and persuaded my mother to take me to the big downtown public library in the middle of the school year so I could check out this coveted book.  I read it and learned the meaning of words by reading sentences in which those words that seemed beyond the abilities of a seven year old had a meaning.  I don't remember the reading being hard.  I had heard some of those words even if I hadn't read them before. 


We moved back to the town with the limestone library and behold the school now had a library.  It was wonderful to go listen to the warm rich black voice of Mrs. DeGrate (sorry Mrs. D - I don't know how to spell it) read to us.  I felt a little out of step with other kids because I had not read the Laura Ingalls Wilder series in 3rd grade.  So back I went to the linoleum compass room and Miss Brooks to find them.  I don't remember when Miss Brooks retired.  During Jr High and High School, the library became a convenient place for my parents to pick me up if I walked downtown after school. The room with the compass rose had been replaced with another limestone building.  One summer while waiting for a parent the tornado sirens went off and the library staff rounded everyone up and took us about three stories down to a civil defense shelter that I had not known was there. I read late into the night in those summer months, books by James Michner, Victor Hugo, Harper Lee.... 

The Library always had an art exhibit and I began to want to do creative things because of what I saw there. I loved the linsey woolsey coverlets and learned to weave. I planned a trip to Turkey with the help of a library and shopped for a new washer with the help of a library.  I have watched movies and listened to music.  I have driven the highways of the west listening to PG Wodehouse - checked out from the library.  I have planned hikes, designed quilts, grown vegetables and painted watercolors with the help of a library.  Because the library has digitial subscriptions I have researched my ancestors while sitting in my living room, warmed by my laptop.  I have relaxed at the end of many days over many years with a library book in my hand.

I have read countless books from the library to my own children and peeked in the door as one of them acted out at bedtime the songs from a library CD.  We sang along with Charlotte Diamond on a tape cassette as we traveled; "I am a pizza," "Four Hugs a Day".... on long car trips; I have enjoyed the sharing of the great story or doing the fun science experiment that we found in  a library book.   We came to love Raven, Anansi and Brier Rabbit as the characters of many cultures became our friends.  We went to community events that we saw advertised and posted in the library.  We touched pythons and played didgereedoos at special library events.

I have browsed art books and poetry and read books that were healing as I read someone else's words.  I have learned some things to avoid from the characters in books. Characters in books made some mistakes so I didn't have to try that. I learned about racism and bigotry.  I learned about greed and infidelity.  I also learned admirable ways to behave. I learned about generosity and forgiveness about courage and curiousity. I registered to vote at the library.

In my college years, I was fortunate to work in the campus library. So libraries even got me through college, both financially and emotionally.  I found quiet places to study in the library and places that had upholstered furniture. My student apartments were often lacking in that luxury.  I liked to find the quiet places on campus to sit in a comfortable chair and just read.  I could pretend my life was not always surrounded by thousands of other young adults.  I made friends in the library, met fellows that I dated and even the man that I married all in the library.

I now live with that man in a place with one of the best library systems I can imagine.  I never walk in the door without finding several things that I would like to read.  Things that I didn't know I wanted to read or had an interest in before I walked in the door past that "Explore More" shelf.   We are looking at retirement and as we consider places to live.  I'm always asking "What is the library system like?"  "Is there a system?" "Is that community part of the system?"  "How far away would the house be from the library?"  "How does the library feel?"  "What kind of books do they buy?"   "do they exhibit art?"  "What is their programming like?" "Will I find that place where the community comes together there?" 

Libraries have become the measure by which I measure a healthy community.  Libraries are the place where someone knows my name and where I have become who I am.. Thank you, Miss Brooks.

Perry Creek Trail & the Mountain Loop

                                                                             

OK, we have lived here nearly thirty years and we have never taken the Mountain Loop Highway.  Oft touted as one of the great things to do in this county.  To be clear, in our defense for missing this wonderland - there have been several years when the road was closed because of sinkholes and landslides. It always closes for snow. We have gone as far as Barlow Pass and the Monte Cristo trailhead, but there the road turns to dust and we have turned around in the past.  Yesterday was the day.

We started with a stop to get a National Forest Day pass at a gas station in Granite Falls then a stop at the Verlot Ranger Station to ascertain that the road was indeed open this year.  It was.

We reminised as we drove along about the first camping trip we took in this area.  Red Bridge in June.  We got rained out and I didn't sleep worrying about Nathan crawling of the edge of the campground into the river.  This is where Mike found a freezing snowmelt filled side channel irresistable.  Camping in the rain with a crawling child was not great - that trip slowed our camping aspirations down considerably for quite a few years.

We remembered the hikes up the Lake Twenty-two trail, the Heather Lake trail, Mt. Pilchuck.  Tales of scout camps at Wiley Creek and Coal Lake were called to mind.  David remembered a backpacking trip to Monte Cristo with Katie.  But we stopped at Perry Creek.  Three years ago we did this hike with Nathan - we got rained out that day and thought we would do it again.  The next five pictures come from that hike.

This Landslide pretty much closed the trailhead. This first group of pictures is from the hike in July of 2008 

 Because there were tree limbs down (in 2008) we were able to see this Lobaria (the lettuce like plant), a tree top dweller that as it gets knocked out of the trees by the wind supplies the better part of soil nitrogen in the wet forests of the Northwest.

Mosses and Big Leaf Maples like and help each other.  The maple trees will actually send out root fibers into the mosses growing on their branches and trunks.

 

We missed the May lily in the woods behind us this year, they have been closed to the public.

 

The Northwest always has moss along the trail.  

  
  The Mt. Dickerman parking lot is the new trail head and adds a mile to the trail.  It was a good trail to take on a busy weekend.  It is not as popular as the trails that end at lakes.  It was a quiet hike.  We didn't make it to the falls because we wanted to do the whole loop road, but we enjoyed the new part of the trail and a small part of the old trail.  We saw a few plants we have never seen before - one of them a small flowered orchid. 

DER counting the rings - about two hundred for this cedar before it fell.  The nice clean cut was because it fell across the trail.  This tree would have been a seedling when Lewis and Clark came west.  

We love seeing the Canadian Dogwood along the trail.










 Can you guess what this is?

The much touted loop, well was mostly a dusty tree lined forest road, but it did have a few really beautiful pull-outs along the Sauk River.
Most of them were not much beyond Barlow Pass.  There were many small primitive campsites along the river.  They would probably be really nice sometime other than a holiday weekend.

A comment on Disability

I have a friend who is "disabled" who has taught me to think "differently abled"

Perhaps because of this I was struck by this comment of Jennifer Culkin in A Final Arch of Sky.  The book is memoirs of a critical care nurse whose career was ended by MS.  "We tend, as a culture and even as health-care providers, to think of disability in terms of either/or, black or white, can or can't.  When it's largely invisible, when some days you can do things easily, and some days you can do them with a big effort and some days, in spite of bringing every personal resource to bear, you can't do anything at all, what then?  It doesn't feel like disability.  It just feels like failure." 

I thought of my friend, whose disability is not always obvious, and how she has wrapped her mind around the idea that she can do whatever her body allows for that day and counts that as an accomplishment.  She seems to feel no failure.

How does she do it?  How do we keep from labeling our own unsuccessful efforts "failure" when they maybe took all our personal resources in that moment.  Is that failure?  What is failure really?  What is success?

Then there is the Gorge

The final dawdle - before getting that horse heading to the barn feeling - was a visit to some of the water falls on the scenic Columbia River Gorge.  We headed up to the Gorge along highway 197 and had a 10+ volcano moment.   there is a place near where 197 takes off from 97 where you can see at least 10 volcanic mountains from one place.  Try to drive this highway on a clear day!  It was amazing and would have taken an amazing camera to try to picture it.  We will settle for a picture of Mt. Hood taken a little further north. 

The Oregon side  of the Columbia River Gorge has this amazing highway built in the 1930's to attact tourists to the area.  The old highway parallels the interstate, is slower,charming, cool and shady.

We took a hike up above one of the roadside falls to another little falls.  The second falls changes its name as you go up the trail.  At the bottom of the trail it is called upper horsetail falls.  About half way up it becomes ponytail falls.

Along the trail we enjoyed several varieties of small wildflowers and ferns. 

At the falls we found that we could walk behind the falls.  They were not like a curtain of water, but still it is super cool to walk on the back side of a water fall.

We stopped further on the road at LaTourelle Falls.  They come out of the top of these wonderful columnar basalt cliffs.  The top edge is very square.

The trail beyond the falls takes you closer to the bridge.  It is a concrete bridge which impressed David with it's beauty and engineering.  Concrete apparently is strong in compression, but not so strong in tension, thus the bridge supports had to be designed to put the parts in compression.

 Our final stop along the route was a view point called Crown Vista, which has great views both up and down stream on the River.  The river itself was somewhat swollen, like many American Rivers this year, but was probably not technically in flood stage.  It is pretty hard to have a flood plain with these basalt cliffs as it's boundary unlike the Missouri, which is ten miles wide in the Omaha area.


 

Better than the pictures

The second unit of the John Day Fossil Beds is called the Painted Hills Unit.  I have seen photographs and paintings of this area before.  It is better than the pictures. 

One short trail takes you an a board walk around one of the colorful mounds.





 They ask people to stay off of the mounds.  Up close they look like this and do seem that they would crumble if walked on.


 The colors come from different minerals in the soil.  Some formations of this type have a lot of clay in them and are used for commercial applications for things like kitty litter.

 

There was a great overview spot where the light changed several times as clouds moved through.  It was stunningly beautiful.  

Shortly after this last picture was taken, we picked up a guy who was having car trouble and took him to the next town 60 or so miles away.  It must have been good karma, given that our tire didn't go flat until after we had dropped him off and gone on to the next town, found a motel and eaten dinner.  No we don't normally do that, but you can't leave someone with gray hair on the roadside 60 miles from civilization.  He turned out to be a retired Forest Service Biologist, who pays for his travels by selling his photographs.  None of these pictures are his.  :-)

John Day Fossil Beds

This little spot in the center or Oregon has had an interesting geology and is known for it's fossils. Coming in from the east the first of three areas we came to was the Sheep Rock Unit.  It is named for this rock formation.

You enter the area through the canyon you can kind of see in this picture if you follow the roadway to sheep rock in the background.

I suppose if you know someone who has private land in the area, you could see fossils in situ,  At the National Monument, you see them in a museum and some fake ones along the trail. 

 
We didn't make it to Leaf Hill in the Painted Hills Unit of John Day, but we saw many fossils in the museum that represented plants that we are even familiar with like beeches, maples and oaks.

  It is tempting to bring home a rock from the Blue Basin where we walked in a short trail to see this interesting geology.  The pictures don't show quite how blue it is - it is a pale swimming pool aqua.

 The picture on the right shows one of those fake fossils, and possibly shows excavation sites in the Blue Basin.

Cathedral Rock (below)  is a formation that dropped from a higher elevation and is unique in the area.  I'm going to have to read more about this one.

 The surrounding hills show many layers of lava flows.  This view of Sheep Rock (on the right of the picture) shows those many lava flows and some of the same formation as the Blue Basin on the side of Sheep Rock.

More Dawdling

Instead of speeding along at 65 miles per hour through Oregon we left the freeway and followed a slower road.
Before I inspire you with the beauty of the journey, I should mention that many of the small communities shown on a map do not have gas stations.  At one point there was a sign that said no fuel for  80 miles.  I think it had been about 40 since we had last seen a gas station.  So if you go, stop and get gas when you see it.  We were fine, but we like to drive from the top of the tank when we are traveling.  I should also mention that we were decidedly blessed.  We got up the next morning after our drive in the middle of the "service free zone" and found we had a flat tire in the motel parking lot - 1/2 mile from Les Schwab.  It could have happened out and about miles from any service.  We often seem to have tire adventures when on vacations.

Horses in a roadside meadow of irises

wild irises in meadows and pastureland alongside swollen streams and creeks and rivers

Larches intermingled with the pine forests,  Larches are a deciduous conifer, whose needles turn gold and fall in the autumn.

The forest trees are more spread out than our dense forests west of the Cascade Range. 

 

Big mountain views in relatively narrow valleys.  This is the Strawberry Mountains.

Just a sample of one of the many wild flowers

Then there was being behind a cattle drive for a mile or so.

 

Out and About

We made an unexpected trip to Utah for a funeral.  A sad and a happy occasion, an opportunity to express love and remember a dear soul.  On the way home we decided that we needed to take a couple more days.  We realized that anything resembling "time off" was going to be hard to come by this year so we dawdled on the way home.  It was a beautiful dawdle.

Our first dawdling stop was Shoshone Falls in Idaho.  We had stopped there for the first time about a year ago and were chagrined that we had never stopped here before.   The top two pictures are from this year, showing the snow melt of a record year finding its way downstream along the Snake River.  This is one of the stops for the same water that flooded the Hancock cabin.
This picture was from mid-July in 2010, Quite a difference.  Last year there were kayaks down below the falls.  This year you couldn't see the bottom of the falls for the mist.  Last year many rocks were bare; this year water covered the extent of the roaring falls.