Tag: Oregon

Jedi

Our dog Ellie sits outside a door with a sign that says Women

I’ve seen this painting on a door many times but was never sure what it was supposed to represent. Regardless I love photographing the artwork in our neighborhood and finally one day had my camera with me as I walked past, only to discover I was unable to approach the entrance as it was guarded by the most fearsome hound. Only a Jedi could get past to approach the door, I thought to myself, and then I noticed the sign that said ‘Women’. And suddenly I understood, right here in our sleepy little neighborhood is a little enclave of female Jedi, fighting the good fight, while the rest of us go about our lives. Each time they vanquish a foe, another little lightsaber gets painted on the door.

Just so there’s no confusion, now when I walk past I say out loud how much I admire Obi-Wan Kenobi and how that Darth Vader is a real jerk (and upon hearing that the pup even let me move in for a nice close-up of the painting).

A painting on a door in the Irvington neighborhood of Portland

There’s more than a little truth to that.

I was eight years old when Star Wars came out. There was my life before Star Wars, and my life after. If there’s been a day since that I haven’t thought about something from that world, there haven’t been many. I don’t recall if I saw it more than once in the theaters, but it didn’t matter, it filled my imagination. All of it. Jedi, the Force, lightsabers, Wookiees, stormtroopers, X-wings, TIE Fighters, the Falcon, the Death Star. Han and Chewie. R2 and C-3PO. Luke and Leia. Obi-Wan and Vader.

Obi-Wan. Obi-Wan changed my life.

As I came of age, I enjoyed a good righteous anger and seeing people get what was coming to them, and wondered why in the gospels we were told to turn the other cheek if the other was struck, why we were to pray for our enemies. About vengeance not being ours to take. I didn’t see that in the national policy of our supposedly Christian country, or in many people I knew. These were central teachings, why were they ignored? What was I missing? And what was their point?

“There are alternatives to fighting.” You mystified me, Obi-Wan. I loved you and needed to understand you.

I was eleven when The Empire Strikes Back came out. Obi-Wan was gone (spoilers!) after sacrificing himself in the first movie, but now I had Yoda. A tiny little kid had a tiny little hero. There’s a scene where Yoda is teaching Luke to become a Jedi and Luke senses his friends are in trouble far away and rushes off to save them, before his training has completed. I had seen enough shows and movies on TV to know how the movie would play out, that Yoda would shake his head at his eager apprentice, with a knowing grin and maybe even a wink to the camera, and then Luke would go and save his friends.

He was the good guy. Right beats might.

Except it didn’t. Yoda was depressed when Luke left. Luke didn’t save his friends, they had to save him. Han got captured anyway.

What? WHAT?

For years Empire made me think about life more than any movie before or since. I knew Obi-Wan and Yoda were fictional characters but I thought often of what they did, and why. About not giving in to anger, even righteous anger that I felt was mine to hold, about how it would harden you. Forgiveness wasn’t just for the benefit of those you forgave, but for yourself. Anger, even righteous anger, maybe especially righteous anger, could destroy you, slowly, without you noticing. Forgive. Seventy times seven. And again.

Stand up for what’s right. Don’t give in to anger. Forgive, forgive, forgive.

I was a quiet kid who kept too much inside, tried too hard to figure things out on my own, and perhaps it’s a little ridiculous that two fictional characters would make it so much easier for me to take messages from the gospels that I loved and apply them in my own life, but so it was.

So it delighted me to no end to see in the new Star Wars movies, The Force Awakens and Rogue One, women and people of color in central roles, unapologetically strong. Representation is important. I love that more people can look up on the screen and see people that look like them, and want to be like them too.

Basalt of the Earth

Ferns grown in columnar basalt at Latourell Falls in Oregon's Columbia River Gorge

At Latourell Falls in Oregon’s Columbia River Gorge, ferns grown not just in the earth but on the columnar basalt near the falls. The ferns must be able to get enough purchase in the cracks of the basalt to not get blown off by the wind, and that wind brings enough water over from the falls (just to the right of this picture) that they can survive. There is lichen growing here too, but not the dramatic yellow lichen that grows further up the cliff face.

I love this place.

Washing (Machine) Day

Washing machines and other appliances wait to be installed outside a new apartment building in Portland, Oregon

Ellie and I came across these washing machines (and other appliances) waiting to be installed outside a new apartment building in our neighborhood. I’m glad to see some (hopefully) more affordable housing going in, I’d hate for our neighborhood to mostly be a bunch of expensive old homes. We’re a part of a historic district, and I share the desire to not see the old homes razed and replaced with massive new ones, but neighborhoods also need to adapt to survive.

A Bench to the Left of Me, A Waterfall to the Right

A horizontal view of Latourell Falls through the forest

I was heading up the loop trail around Latourell Falls when I saw a bench beside the trail and I wondered why it was there, when I looked to the right and all became clear as I saw the waterfall plunging over the basalt cliff. You have a lot of choices when photographing this waterfall, there’s a spot right near the parking lot with a nice distant view of the falls through the forest, you can go right to the base of the falls with a clear (and maybe wet) view of the falls, or you can photograph it here as a view through the woods. I like them all. You can clearly see the yellow lichen that drew me to the falls, although from his high vantage point you can only see a bit of the columnar basalt that also caught my eye.

There are other choices too, such as the classic choice of horizontal or portrait orientation. I like the horizontal picture best for this shot, even though my framing choice leaves out most of the blue wildflowers (delphinium?) blooming below, as I liked the symmetry of the leaves at the top and bottom. With the waterfall I also had to choose a fast shutter speed or a slow shutter speed to either freeze or blur the movement of the water. I prefer some waterfalls one way or the other but I think this one looks good both ways. I prefer the frozen shot as it shows how the shapes the water takes change as it plunges down the long cliff face, and although the picture has more noise due to the much shorter exposure, modern cameras handle this amazingly well (in previous years I would have been more inclined for the slower exposure to minimize color noise).

But it’s the 4K video that really shines. It was hiking in the Columbia River Gorge many years ago that almost convinced me to buy a video camera, solely for the purpose of having long videos of mountain streams that I could play in the background. I’d really like to figure out if there’s an automated program that could find a good place to start and end a track so it would play naturally on an endless loop, as that’s what I’d really like, to be able to just loop the video on the TV and have endless hours of waterfalls as a soothing background.

A vertical view of Latourell Falls through the forest

Layers

The base of fence shows layers of wood, brick, and concrete, all covered by moss

Ellie and I came across this archaeological dig in our neighborhood where the excavation has revealed several layers that allow you to see back in time across Portland’s geographic past. There’s the oldest layer on the bottom that dates from the Concrete Era. What creatures must have roamed the land back then! After that comes the brief Brick Era, followed by the Wood Era. Unfortunately the dig was accidentally left uncovered one night and has now been exposed to the modern era, the Moss Era.

Rigsketball

The Rigsketball van, a van with a basketball hoop on top

I like taking pictures of interesting things in our neighborhood as Ellie and I go on our walks, like old garages, animal sculptures, outdoor art, rock ‘n roll vans with basketball hoops on top …

Mmm hmm. Wait, what?

I was hoping there was more to this van than a hipster having a laugh and indeed there is, it (and another van with different artwork) belongs to Bim Ditson and his band And And And, and in addition to being their normal transportation, is used for the Rigsketball tournament, a basketball tournament they put on each year played exclusively by Portland bands. The hoop is folded down in the picture but apparently extends to regulation height. There’s a nice video that explains the motivation behind the tournament, to me it’s the genuine part of the weird side of Portland, not an affectation but the building of a community of disparate voices.

In Memory of My Father

A view of green trees and moss and plants in the Columbia River Gorge

My father passed away earlier today.

He was diagnosed with an untreatable brain tumor months ago and had been in slow decline since. We weren’t close, I hadn’t seen him in a couple of decades, but there were parts of him I loved. I post this in his memory because many of my fondest memories of him were when we hiked in the hills of eastern Tennessee where I grew up. They weren’t grand scenes or amazing vistas, just what became my favorite hikes – through forests and past mountain streams. This picture is from Oregon, not Tennessee, taken a month ago in the Columbia River Gorge up above Horsetail Falls. It’s too chaotic to be pretty but illustrates one of the reasons I love hiking here, the explosion of green in many shades from the leaves, moss, and ferns. Behind the trees are basalt walls, as covered in moss as the trees. Large ferns grow below the trees with little ferns growing on the tree itself. Not far away are mountain streams that plunge through the canyons in beautiful waterfalls. I think of him most when I hike, wishing we could have had an emotional bond, but very thankful that he taught me to appreciate the beautiful and the quiet and the serene.

I grew up knowing I was loved, unconditionally, I never felt like I had to earn it through good grades (which I had) or being good at sports (which I wasn’t). That’s a powerful gift to give a child. He never encouraged me to seek money or power and get blinded by the rat race that I saw in some other fathers. There were plenty of happy times, like playing ping pong in the basement as I grew up. I’ll never forget the joy I felt the first time I beat him, or realizing years later that he must have let me beat him as a kindness. We camped and hiked. We spent hours in his workshop in the basement as he made things with his table saw and other tools, despite the fact that his son hadn’t inherited his mechanical skills and would be far too absent-minded to ever use dangerous power tools.

But as I grew into adulthood I came to realize that being in a close relationship with him was going to be destructive emotionally. The details aren’t important but by leaving them out I don’t want to make things sound worse than they were, he wasn’t abusive, but he had a way of seeing the world, and a tendency to take things in a negative light, that made it hard to get close to him. One incident in particular during my college years, after I spent a summer with him and thought we had set a more positive baseline for moving forward, made it clear to me that I was going to have to keep him at an emotional distance and hope for better in the future.

One of the last times I saw him was when I was in graduate school and he came to pick up his old Pontiac that he let me borrow when I needed a car to go between school and home on holiday breaks. I didn’t need it anymore as my stepfather had found a used car he thought I might like near his hometown and that ended up being the first car I bought. Dad came into my apartment for a while and when it was time for him to go, as we walked to the door and he turned to say goodbye, he had tears in his eyes and I wanted to grab him by the shoulders and let him know that this was the side of him I wanted in my life, the part that took pleasure in spending time with me and didn’t want it to end. I didn’t expect our relationship to be perfect or even easy, but at least open and honest. It wasn’t to be. He had a vision of me in his head that fit a narrative he needed it to, something we all do to an extent with others and even ourselves, but his was a wall I couldn’t climb.

At some point during those years I asked him if I could keep a picture he showed me, he was surprised and said yes but couldn’t understand why I wanted it. I didn’t tell him but it was simply because he had the most wonderful smile on his face. Not the kind you make when you smile for the camera, but a natural one, caught in a moment of pure joy. I hadn’t seen that smile in a long time and hoped one day to see it again. I never did but I’m sure others did and I’m thankful for the friends he had over the years, even if we couldn’t be close I’m glad he found happiness with others.

That picture, that smile, was a reminder of the beautiful part of him and it’s how I’ve visualized him for the many years since. It’s not that I don’t remember the bad, the bad is obviously why we’ve never been close, but I didn’t want to forget the good. We sent email occasionally over the years but never very often, but there was never a point where I felt like we could have a meaningful relationship. He knew about the blog but I don’t know how often he read it if at all. I sent him an email months ago when I first heard he had a brain tumor, letting him know how good my life was and how I still loved to hike like we had when I was growing up. I tried not to phrase it as a goodbye, he was still in decent health even though the long term prognosis wasn’t good, but it was a goodbye. I have no idea what he thought of me over the years or in the end, but I wanted him to know I love my life and am grateful for his part in that.

When I was young we were traveling somewhere to camp when someone in the car asked him what he would be if he could be anything he wanted (like me he was an engineer). He said he’d want to be a forest ranger and I laughed, thinking he was goofing around, and asked him what he really wanted to be. He said no, really, a forest ranger, and he said it in a way that even as a child I realized he was speaking a fundamental truth about himself. I reflected on his answer often, he didn’t choose a job that would make him wealthy or famous, but one that let him be out there in the quiet, near the trees and the babbling brooks, helping others enjoy them too. I didn’t ask him why he didn’t become a ranger, maybe he chose a higher paying job with a family to raise, maybe he realized that about himself too late. Maybe I took him too literally.

I don’t know if he continued hiking through the years, but even if not it was certainly a gift he passed on to me. He also was interested in computers even in the early 80’s and bought a Mac when they first came out to use in his business, he let me type my school essays on it at night and I fell in love with computers because of that beautiful thing. We had a wonderful dog that was with me through most of my childhood and if you’ve been here long you know how much I love my pets. Part of me feels like my father’s son, part of me not at all. I’m sure I could have been a better son, but even at the end some of his behavior reminded me why he hasn’t been a meaningful part of my life for so long.

The tears I shed as I write this are for decades of frustration, at wishing I could have known more of the beautiful part of him. I’m thankful that some people got to know it, and that for a while I did too.