Like one of those pictures from the early 20th century (Roosevelt at Tahawus etc), except with a pair of Indigos, synthetic fabrics, and the tall trees are layin' down.
Latest installment in the Traveblogue:
It was a fine day to load up a few of the kids -- the two that have not come down with a summer cold -- and head into what has been to me a mysterious low green part of the Cascades, down a certain tributary of the Willamette which has lately scored a reputation as a place overrun by legions of drunken rafters from Portland, but which quickly turns into a pristine valley and runs for dozens of boatable miles before it finally vanishes into a cockpit country of hills that is not completely unlike interior Idaho -- the Clackamas River.
Sounds like an STD, Tiia-Triin said, breaking the vibe and the rhetorical flow of that last sentence -- but she was right. And I should add that you have to drive past Boring to get there. That's Oregon place names for ya. But it really is a beautiful river.
The destination today: Bagby Hot Springs, a rare thing -- uncommercial and developed natural geotherms. At 78 miles south of our current home base in Vancouver, WA, we completely flouted the Sierra Club's recommendations on driving distances for daytrips. So did about 15 other people. But this is light usage, especially for a dazzlingly beautiful Monday. After a few wrong turns when we quit the Clackamas proper, we arrived around noon.
The 1.4 mile hike is worth it just for the old-growth Douglas fir and the swimming holes. We proceeded silently. Amiilia age 6 was Sacagawea/Pocahontas, Tiia-Triin the medicine woman, Morgan the chief, I was the other chief, the outgoing one, and I don't mean as in gregarious.
Amiilia wanted to play the Hunted, with the white man somewhere up in the higher reaches, trying in vain to stalk us lightfoots. But instead of persecution sagas, it was more like playing garbageman to the white man who leaves his microbrew bottles everywhere, even on a shell fungus sticking out from a tree like a coaster.
The springs are well-kept. Even some of the best hot springs have scum, odor, seediness issues, it's inevitable -- but these were immaculate yet rustic. There are private soaking tubs dug out of fir trunks, complete with drain hole and inflow stoppers. The water comes out at a toasty 136 degrees F. and has to be cooled with buckets from the cistern. Morgan took a bath and he also enjoyed playing in a 6ft diameter trunk hollowed out for a good 40 ft toward the crown.
5 comments:
Did Morgan walk all that way? Wow!
No hot springs, nor ocean for us this month, tho we got a very nice letter from Jim and Joyce who are headed to Holden on Sat. - so no hard feelings for our switching to fall. Will catch up with them in OH no doubt.
Commented on the prev., too.
Nah, he's good for about a mile, probably. 1.4 miles one way with skipped nap was not a walk in the park, but we made the most of it.
I personally miss Holden. You'll have to refresh my memory about what you decided to do in the fall, though. I didn't think you were still going to go to Holden Beach. More by email.
Thar ya go, Skip: confirming my decade(+)-old conclusion: that Rikken fella can scribble real darned good.
Kris: you really oughta gather and distil some of this into a travel piece. I'm being very serious. Think, and then pitch. Outpost maybe? If you haven't already...
Thank you sir. There's something to be said for this draft revision thing, I should try it more often. ;)
In a given year, here are so many "in search of" cross-country road trips or "I walked across America to see what was left. Not much" treatments professing to be original takes, The classics have already been written -- William Least-Heat Moon, Peter Jenkins... and even those guys have trouble doing it a second time.
And a lot of this blog has to do with the inpiration and energy of getting something down right after it happens. All I can hope for is that will evolve from an online diary to a real blog soon, get linked to, read and promoted.
In other words: some things are better left uncommercial. :)
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