Pleased to meet you.

My grandparents were Amish and they were nice in an offish kind of way, but no bundle of fun. The best you can hope for with that group is to get into distlefinks.

Country living is romantic, but one has to be self-sustaining and resolute to make art in a place so divorced from any “scene.”

What astonishes me is that the battles over logging and saving the environment go back to the turn of the 20th century — there’s the California resevoir (hetch-hetchy?) that the Federation of Women’s Clubs fought against. Legend attributes the leadership to John Muir but I know that the women were in there fighting.
http://www.hetchhetchy.org/history.html

In a visit to the Mt. St. Helens’ visitor center in the mid-90’s I saw an exhibition of newspapers from the days leading up to the volcanic explosion. That was 1980 and the volcano shared the headlines with logging fights. The only difference between then and now is that the amount of old growth (then about 15% and in 2000, less than 5%).

I feel blessed living in a city where it’s harder to see the ravages of nature — most of it has already happened (add a snort here)

They certainly logged the hell out of your hills. There’s a logging museum up by Coudersport with a display of photos in which the mountains appear to have been attacked by a huge Norelco. Thank goodness nothing like that has ever happened in Oregon.

I believe that you picked a good place to settle.

Alleys are rare these days, so cherish what you have. There’s an old “development” near us, built on a radius out from a central park (with four other rose gardens along the way out from the radius) which has alleys. I too like them, although now everyone has fences instead of the old open back yards that I remember from the olden days.

I leave obos, little cairns of stones, here and there on my walks. It’s fun to see which ones remain or are added to by unknown fellow pedestrians.

The city has a very different appeal to me than does the outback.

Karen,

I actually made a fiber piece using the gingko/rain motif. It wasn’t nearly as nice as the photo. I thought the way the photo scrolled down to the rainy reflection here on the blog was a nice touch.

Thanks for checking in.

But your question made me realize I don’t really have specific favorite spots as I did when I lived in Sendai, Japan, perhaps because I walk less here, or perhaps because of the centrifugal pull of the mountains around that take us away at every opportunity. In Japan I had favorite spots along the river, favorite little shrines where I would leave a chocolate bar on occasion, the parks we went to for the cherry blossom festival, etc. None of these in either town were anything you’d find a postcard of, but they had personal significance because of time spent there.

Regarding place, I’ve started over quite a few times. I always enjoy it. I can easily imagine living around the world, moving every year or two…