Tag: car

Mitsubishi Motors

Mitsubishi cars on display in the middle of a tall building in Tokyo in 2005

From my visit to Tokyo in the spring of 2005, taken on the way from the office to the hotel. I had never seen cars on display this many floors up before, you can probably tell I’ve spent very little time in big cities.

Ash Tuesday

Ash from the Eagle Creek fire covers the green hood of a Subaru Crosstrek Hybrid

I washed my wife’s car on Monday morning, its lovely green paint shining in the sun, but this is how it looked Tuesday morning. A bit of a bloom from the crepe myrtle above the driveway had fallen onto the hood, where it was surrounded by the charred remains of trees in the Columbia River Gorge, ash that had been drifting down throughout the evening and night. A fire started on the Eagle Creek trail over the Labor Day weekend, possibly by teens setting off fireworks, and with high winds and a parched forest it soon spread to other parts of the Gorge, including several areas I’ve been hiking this year and will be back visiting soon. Walking to the train this morning in our Portland neighborhood the sun was deep red even well after sunrise but by evening when I returned home you couldn’t even see the sun so thick was the smoke in the air.

It’s too soon to know the extent of the damage to the forests and the trails as the fire is still raging, but this is the sort of area that is burning, looking down into the Oneonta Gorge, taken on a hike in the spring when everything was a luscious green. Move away from the mountain streams and much of the surrounding forest is not so damp, especially not after such a hot dry summer. My thanks to all the firefighters trying to contain the blaze and protect the historic structures and the small communities in the area, and who led about 150 people trapped on the Eagle Creek trail by the fire to safety.

Lush greenery surrounds a mountain stream in the Oneonta Gorge

Marooned

On old red Honda Civic is parked in front of an old maroon house

This is not my beautiful house and this is not my small automobile, but I was drawn both by the old Honda and the abundance of maroon, one of my favorite colors. The Civic was red but on the damp day, and against the maroon house and maroon tree branches, seemed maroon in spirit. I never had a Civic this old but the first car I owned, and the first car I enjoyed driving, was a little red 1984 Nissan Pulsar that my step-father found for sale. Within a couple of years of buying that car I had earned enough to buy my first new car, a 1992 Honda Civic Si, that I loved and drove for many years and many miles.

And though the house isn’t mine, the neighborhood is, Ellie and I passed this scene on the far end of our walk as we turned back towards the general direction of our house. I’ve loved living here (we’ve been here 15 years) and this little scene reminded me both of my past and my present. An old car and an old house, both making me smile.