Gravel crunched underfoot amid the soggy remnants of maple leaves that had fallen months earlier, while my breath made big clouds into the winter morning air. The towering, thin firs and hemlocks of the tree plantation had been allowed to grow quite tall in this section, framing in the road tightly, while a dark, densely-planted … Continue reading The Big Trees/On The Way To The Sea
I was just approaching the canyon at sunset when the first raindrops began to fall around me in the dust. Looking up into a bruise colored sky, fast moving clouds began to swell behind the dark basalt cliffs, as the last of the sun’s rays streamed through the sagebrush covered basin, turning it golden in … Continue reading Canyon and Coulee
I guess I should have expected the snow, above 6000’ in the springtime. Flurries swirled around my car as I removed my leggings in the backseat and began cleaning my wounds. I was bleeding in four places, the largest of which was a grapefruit sized ooze of blood on my knee. What was supposed to … Continue reading Into the fold: Basin and Range (repost)
In my dreams, I can travel to this place again; the home of dark shadows, of soft moss and towering firs. As I step out of my vehicle into the damp air, I watch my boots squish into the soft earth, mud rising up around the edges. The rain has softened to a light patter … Continue reading From Riverside
The rain had just begun to fall as I stepped out of my car; I could see the drops dancing across the surface of the river even before I felt them hit my skin. Stepping between the boulders that demarcated the end of the road, I wound my way along the edges of puddles forming … Continue reading A Place Inside
I steadied myself against a tree with my one good arm as I paused near the top of the rise to catch my breath. Every exhale expressed as a well-formed cloud; hoarfrost and alder leaves crunched underfoot. In the distance, the roar of a distant waterfall, and wind moving through the treetops. Sword ferns blanket … Continue reading Solitude is Medicine
Alder leaves crunched underfoot as I made my way slowly up a tunneled, tree-lined, abandoned road in the Tillamook State Forest. I didn’t know where I was going. In fact, I barely knew where I was as I wandered the seemingly infinite network of active and abandoned logging roads that crisscrossed the state forests, an … Continue reading Finding Your Forest Home
As I ascended the old logging road, deep in the Kilchis river canyon, my eyes felt pulled to a ridge jutting away from the main path some three hundred feet above the river. The blinding spring sunshine fled through the trees, soaking into the earth, as a faint steam rose from the well-saturated flanks of … Continue reading The Ghosts of Giants
Upon stepping out of my car into the evening air of the river canyon, I felt at once held by the stillness and quiet. There was no sound but the river tumbling over rocks in the shallows, no wind. A bank of mist clung to the air above the water and mingled with the tree … Continue reading Nestucca, Never Home
On the first day after the air cleared of forest fire smoke, I made my way to a trail near my home. Following an old railroad grade, nearly flat except in places where the old trestles had fallen away, requiring one to scramble down into the chasms along a crumbling hillside, and then scamper back … Continue reading The pain is nothing
church ov solitude 