knary
looking for a coal mine
<table width=450><tr><td>Welcome to a favorite local road.
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Click on images for larger view.
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Part 1:
I giggled behind a foggy face-shield. It was raining yet again. I rolled on the throttle, giggled, and shot around another lazy oregon driver. Through low hanging clouds I headed west out of portland towards the coast.
The work I'd left at home was stressful enough, there was no reason to push it out here. I slowed and dropped in behind a white pontiac that was following a blue mini-van. Moments later, I spied the lights of a local police cruiser that had pulled someone over. The pontiac and I played the game and slowed a little bit to the speed limit. As I passed him, the officer jogged back to his car. With a spin of the wheels, he pulled out and passed me. Sliding in behind the white pontiac, his lights lit up. "Please...please...please..." I was surprised he didn't grab me as well.
And there it was, the other cruiser, a half mile ahead with another victim. He dashed out and grabbed the mini-van.
Somehow I had escaped. Nervous that my turn was next, I let traffic overtake me. Not more than a mile ahead, another car was parked in front of yet another cruiser. I tried to keep an eye on both the road ahead and the cruiser receding in the mirror. I was lucky. I giggled behind a foggy face-shield.
Past the summit of the coast range, I turned left onto Lower Nehalem Road. It winds for some twenty five or thirty miles or so along the Nehalem river. The river drains a small weathered and rumpled piece of the coastal range, a total of about 310 square miles. All but a few scraps of the forest is new growth. Before the lumberman came, the spruce and hemlock and fir of this area were amongst the most majestic in all the northwest. It isn't what it might have been centuries earlier, but it still has a particular damp and moss wrapped charm. As the forest tries to return to what it once was, the steelhead and salmon, sheltered and fostered by the mighty forest of the past, also try to return from record low numbers.
Moss clinging to Quaking Aspen.
As generations march along, we gradually lose touch with how it once was. These trees we see everyday, and see as wilderness, are young and small and crowded. Time has taken away even the remains of most of the ancient groves. Amongst the spindly new growth, this remaining stump and a few others were shockingly massive.
Don't doubt that I do support most environmental causes. At the least, I see them as a balance to our ever urgent needs of the moment. But my need on that day was to ride - a not altogether altruistic and environmentally friendly thing to do.
I was eager to be welcomed into the dark tunnel of trees with branches hanging low from the weight of waterlogged moss, the sky barely filtering through. The first time I saw it, I was taking up the rear of four GS's, their red brakelights looking like christmas ornaments in the gloom.
Coming around the bend, I was shocked to see the gaping white sky. Those welcoming trees had been cleared back from the road, striped and piled, ready to be hauled away. The reddish wounds in the bark bright against the gray and vivid green.
<i>part 2 coming soon...</i></td></tr></table>
---
Click on images for larger view.
---
Part 1:
I giggled behind a foggy face-shield. It was raining yet again. I rolled on the throttle, giggled, and shot around another lazy oregon driver. Through low hanging clouds I headed west out of portland towards the coast.
The work I'd left at home was stressful enough, there was no reason to push it out here. I slowed and dropped in behind a white pontiac that was following a blue mini-van. Moments later, I spied the lights of a local police cruiser that had pulled someone over. The pontiac and I played the game and slowed a little bit to the speed limit. As I passed him, the officer jogged back to his car. With a spin of the wheels, he pulled out and passed me. Sliding in behind the white pontiac, his lights lit up. "Please...please...please..." I was surprised he didn't grab me as well.
And there it was, the other cruiser, a half mile ahead with another victim. He dashed out and grabbed the mini-van.
Somehow I had escaped. Nervous that my turn was next, I let traffic overtake me. Not more than a mile ahead, another car was parked in front of yet another cruiser. I tried to keep an eye on both the road ahead and the cruiser receding in the mirror. I was lucky. I giggled behind a foggy face-shield.
Past the summit of the coast range, I turned left onto Lower Nehalem Road. It winds for some twenty five or thirty miles or so along the Nehalem river. The river drains a small weathered and rumpled piece of the coastal range, a total of about 310 square miles. All but a few scraps of the forest is new growth. Before the lumberman came, the spruce and hemlock and fir of this area were amongst the most majestic in all the northwest. It isn't what it might have been centuries earlier, but it still has a particular damp and moss wrapped charm. As the forest tries to return to what it once was, the steelhead and salmon, sheltered and fostered by the mighty forest of the past, also try to return from record low numbers.
Moss clinging to Quaking Aspen.
As generations march along, we gradually lose touch with how it once was. These trees we see everyday, and see as wilderness, are young and small and crowded. Time has taken away even the remains of most of the ancient groves. Amongst the spindly new growth, this remaining stump and a few others were shockingly massive.
Don't doubt that I do support most environmental causes. At the least, I see them as a balance to our ever urgent needs of the moment. But my need on that day was to ride - a not altogether altruistic and environmentally friendly thing to do.
I was eager to be welcomed into the dark tunnel of trees with branches hanging low from the weight of waterlogged moss, the sky barely filtering through. The first time I saw it, I was taking up the rear of four GS's, their red brakelights looking like christmas ornaments in the gloom.
Coming around the bend, I was shocked to see the gaping white sky. Those welcoming trees had been cleared back from the road, striped and piled, ready to be hauled away. The reddish wounds in the bark bright against the gray and vivid green.
<i>part 2 coming soon...</i></td></tr></table>