playground – Boolie

Calm in the Storm

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Ellie basks in the warmth of the rare winter sun in Oregon, taken in December 2017 at her turnaround point that morning, the dragon statue at Irvington School. My team had been laid off a month earlier, and though that threw us into a period of uncertainty and stress that at times it feels like I haven’t fully recovered from, I so loved getting to walk her every morning that I sometimes have to catch myself from remembering this period overly fondly. We always started our walks at the nearby dog park but after that I let her choose her path and thankfully since I started saving the GPS tracks of every walk that fall, I can look back now at the routes she chose, depending on what she smelled with that amazing nose and what her body felt capable of that day.

Water Finds a Way

There is a playground near one of the entrances to Irving Park, a while back they added these water features so kids could cool off during the summer. The city shuts the water off in the cooler weather when nature brings her own water, normally as rain, but sometimes snow or fog. These pictures are from a few days apart, at the top of the hill is my beloved dog park where in both pictures you can see people playing with their dogs.