Timberline Ho!

Dave is a friend of mine from back East.

He's a Brooklyn-born upper middle class guy who one day said he'd had enough of New York and its, um, prejudices against people like him and moved out to Portland, the whitest large city in the US (75.5%) . In four years he has shed his New York accent and mellowed, though he is still a very bitter man. Luckily in his case the bitterness is extremely blase and funny and  served up with such an over the top driness any objectionable content is almost forgivable.  He revels in being the Alex Keaton in his lefty family. You can't really do justice to him in a paragraph.

On this Sunday, I am up at 4:35 am and am driving  to the city centre. There, in a riverside condo with views of Mount Hood and a courtyard that looks like Bermuda, Dave resides, working out regularly, eating in, and generally living a stable, self-contained life that could almost be envied, except that he works from 9 to 5.

I'm driving down because I have the crazy idea of going skiing -- yes, on July 29. 

As I've calculated it, this involves leaving Portland at 5:30 at the latest and being in the parking lot of Timberline Lodge, gateway to the USA's only year-round skiing at 7, suiting up, and maybe being up on the glacier by 7:45 to get some runs in on groomed corn. 

 I figure it is the perfect weekend warrior activity for guys like us. Me, a free soul wannabe in the Whitman tradition (stress on wannabe), I have again put aside my objections to ski resorts, as I did in February, to do something that seems slightly extreme and gonzo, a suck at the marrow of life, perhaps -- just once, to say I have done it. This idea appeals to Dave, too. Plus it will not stress his  bum Achilles tendon and questionable cardio condition, as hiking would. And he has skiied before in the Montreal area, and in Vermont, and knows that going downhill is strenuous. 

We have no idea what awaits. Timberline has a website, but it is all but impossible to get the local colour. We assume there will be many professionals or at least snobs. How hard the runs are, or how slushy and disappointing -- we can only guess.

We've hiked before, both in New York State and Oregon, and we had fun (I think) and the wacky adventure quotient was always pretty high -- usually involving getting lost and finding ourselves in terrain that was almost out of our depth. 

I should note (in case he's reading, which I doubt) that this is a guy with incredible drive who can benchpress probably twice as much as me, but our hikes went to illustrate one thing -- the only training for lugging 40 pounds over mountains is to lug 40 pounds over mountains. It was more than a bit like Bryson and Katz.  I now sincerely think Dave was in quite a lot of discomfort on many of our hikes, and I sometimes worried that I was subjecting him to too much, assuming he was in better shape than he was. 

Not to wash my hands, but then again he was the one who always seemed to back a daring plan, against better judgment -- it was Dave who in 2003, while hiking the Timberline Trail, a fairly level trail around Mount Hood, struck out without warning on a rough traverse toward the Silcox Hut, a speck on the mountainside thousand feet above; it was Dave who said it was OK by him if we bushwhacked over a 2,500 foot minor peak in the Catskills instead of walking the highway shoulder back to the car (it turned out to be the most difficult orienteering terrain I have come across).

I pick him up on this July 29. A rendition of "Springtime for Hitler" is his Good morning. A good, cheery sign, though I struggle to make sense of the context and wonder if we have  perhaps not got enough sleep. But pretty soon he elaborates on Bechtesgaden and Garmisch-Partenkirchen themes.

Within one minute we are lost, and heading south toward Salem on the interstate on the wrong side of the river. For all the bridges over the Willamette, I still have not figured out to access most of them. We get turned around and find that Route 26 Business West is a good route at this time of day. There are already signs for Mount Hood, 60 miles away.

We negotiate the deadliest road in Oregon, which is a beautiful fairly straight four-lane road with 20 ft of blacktop between directions of travel. Tired skiers and maybe just this lack of a true divider make for bad head-ons though.

The rental place in the day lodge is open when we get there. The exterior  is ugly modern functionalist, contrasting with historic Timberline Lodge behind it, but if the architecture here is French Alps, the inside is already what I remember from  Austria -- the same mountains of gear, Japanese and Russian skiiers, guys with high altitude tans who emanate trustworthiness as they fetch and adjust the gear. But I notice that we have been given identical Salomon carving skis. To their credit, they do warn us that since Dave weighs at least 30 pounds more, we should be very careful not to mix them up. About the runs, they don't say much that is useful, but they tell us there are exposed rocks and pistes that are only 10-15 ft across. 

In Austria, ski lift etiquette always tripped me up. I won't go into the embarrassing details, but here things are more primitive and it is obvious when you should carry your skis and when you should wear them. 

The Magic Mile takes us to Silcox Hut, familiar from our 2003 hike. While on it, Dave tells me a funny story about how his dad broke both his thumbs on separate occasions while skiing, including a compound fracture. 

At Silcox Hut there are three, four wheelchairs at the edge of the snow. They seem to be waiting for something. I point to them. Dave winces.

At Silcox Hut there is a piste map which shows nothing but black diamonds above us. I reassure Dave that I was skiing down black trails in Austria by the second day. Just zigzag, I say. Stay in control. If it looks too bad, we can always slide or ride down. There are no cliffs.

The next lift goes another 1,500 ft vertically up the snowfield to Palmer. It is as I am getting on this lift that I misjudge the arc of the four-seater and stumble, ending up under the chair. The guy, who probably sees only professionals, is taken by surprise and kind of jabs at the stop button, but hits it. 

Well, this is bad. I wonder if they will even let us up to the top. My thumb is jammed and the joint is making a clicking sound. It doesn't hurt badly, but basically I can now crack my thumb knuckle over and over again, whereas before I would have to wait for a while for the synovial fluid to drain back. Suddenly I see Dave's father in a new light.

After this tension breaker, the lift whisks us to the top without incident. On the way up, we see skiers zooming down the slopes at speeds easily around 60 mph, which seems sort of incredible considering most of them have...only one leg. Now this is really something. This is inspiring. Dave claims he saw a  skier with no legs, fitted with a special contraption.  It almost makes us forget the fact that we are going to have to ski down ourselves.

At the top there is  a view of Mount Jefferson looking like an island on a lake of clouds. Oddly there is less of a view of the slope, which  disappears rather quickly out of sight below us. 

No warmup slope. A shelf, and then a dropoff. It looks like the public has been given a 50 ft wide alley on the right side of the snowfield, while the pros and camps generously get the fairway.

It's OK, though, if icy. I start zigzagging, my body still not remembering anything from February, I find that I am still sliding down the hill even though I am completely perpendicular. I bail out -- I go down. 

Then I remember how I would turn the outside of the inside ski into the snow -- they are carving skis after all -- and get the hang of it. 

I'm proud of myself, so much, that for an instant, I forget about Dave, who has just started his descent behind me and who, weighing much more than me, as I noted, picks up a fearsome amount of momentum in only his first slice across the hill. The funny thing is, his technique looks really good, better than mine, but it is clear that he is picking up more and more speed with each switchback until he finally pitches backward defensively and falls awkwardly. 

Well, this was me in Austria. One ski is off. But the woman who stops her run and fetches his ski for him has less indulgence than the person who assisted me. He can't get the ski on -- again, me, except it took 15 miunutes of sliding and Bean-like adventures before I did. I was figuring it would be nightfall before I was rescued.

Unlike me, Dave has brought gloves. Unfortunately, he did not choose to wear gloves for his first run. He has now quickly donned them, but only in an effort to stanch bleeding. "How bad is it," I ask, but he obstinately shakes his head and mutters something about "many layers" and I do not pursue it further. He seems severely winded. 

//////////|*|//////////

This litany of mounting minor injuries almost seemed competitive, and I felt a bit disappointed that I didn't fall much and had little to offer up against Dave's tally. There were no further incidents, no news-making collisions with members of the US Paralympic ski team or exposed rocks. Things briefly looked up when I found myself in a half-pipe and misjudged the path of a snowboarder high on the wall, but I plowed to a stop. Then we skied back to Timberline Lodge on a late season trail and the snow ended abruptly 100 meters short of the lodge, but much to our disappointment we came to a stop well shy of the rubble. There was some chafing around our ankles from the hike back to the rental place. Annoying, but nothing to brag about.

Dave's skiing day was over by 10am. I handed him the car keys and a beer and left him to an easy chair at the lodge while I went up, by his leave, for two more runs.

Final injury tally: For Dave,  a scraped knuckle, bruised fascia around his ribs and a mild sprain of his shoulder, which may be more of a impressive looking bruise. He says it has made for good water cooler conversation, and that it has done wonders for his work social life.  Me: My thumb is back to normal, but my legs are not. I had a charley horse and such incredible muscle soreness in my calves that I have been unable to run or get any exercise for the rest of the week. But Dave wins. 

Final verdict: B for Timberline. Positive: Surprising amount of terrain for just one glacier and 2,500 vert. drop. Negative: The day is effectively over by mid-morning, even if you don't get injured.

Notes on Oregon life

I think Seattle was the place where a person was most likely to recover a lost wallet with the cash still in it. That was according to a Reader's Digest experiment conducted about 15 years ago. Based on geography and general attitudes, Portland is probably close, but considering the general flakiness it's probably also the place most likely for the wallet to be lost a second time by the good Samaritan before your money eventually makes its way back to you unspent.

Anyway, I had a dead battery yesterday, with my toddler sleeping in back and a cell phone I had forgotten to charge, so it worked out being a little impromptu experiment.

Laurelhurst Park near the Belmont-Hawthorne neighbourhood, the enlightened capital of bourgeois bohemianism, is not a bad place to be stuck, especially if you consider that a few weeks ago I was 16 miles down dirt roads at Mount Adams running the fan and radio in a similar way with the engine off (though alone and not with Morgan).

But there I was in the twilight, sitting glumly, hood up and one cable already dangling from the positive terminal, people in new cars, all with tired kids in tow, going home to get dinner started or to one of the many cafes. I had had some battery trouble in Estonia, and it's to the point where I don't know if I should even ask anymore -- everybody's got some modern car they are afraid will be damaged (and I guess may well be) by some sort of reverse flux reaction that is part of the altruistic act of sparing a little juice. And I don't like asking for favours, period. I don't like karmic debt. Though I have accepted help in the past, I'm getting to be more of  the person who would walk to a store to buy a new battery before calling or asking, just out of general obstinacy.

This was out of the question. Just the other week some 34-year-old guy had been arrested here in SE Portland on charges of child abandonment. (This is front page news for the Oregonian, which didn't, as NPR, use it is a peg for discussing foster family statistics.) His face was greased and he himself was behind a stranger's house, naked from the waist down, his two kids in the car parked on the street. Of course there was history of meth, and so on, but let's be honest, after a long hot day of minor misadventures in Portland, I didn't look so hot. I glanced in the mirror -- yup, dirty face. Pants were stained and would be better removed.

The first people I asked for a jump looked intimidating with tattoos and such. The guy riding shotgun, obviously better at thinking on his feet, answered on behalf of the Silent Bob driver: "We're pressed for time cause his wife is locked out of the house." Then, after I was about 50 yards away, they noted to each other that this was a good answer, even though the driver wasn't married, then looked guilty when they realized I had heard them. What a bunch of losers.

So I did abandon the sleeping Morgan for 5 minutes. I locked the car, and jogged a block and a half to the Shell station on 39th and Stark: the clerk, who looked like Lee Harvey Oswald in the movie JFK -- on speed -- looked up and took in my sad story nodding with a concerned frown, then swallowed the last of his taco, and said, with enhanced gestures, "And why are you telling me this?" 

I thought I was in New York (except there were no pay phones, either). Where was gentle Portland? But no sooner had I thought this that luck turned. A guy with his family stopped in a Saturn and was game, although he hadn't jumped a car before. We probably didn't let it load long enough. It didn't take. Then someone who lived on Belmont returned to his BMW with his 2-year-old daughter and wife (I had written them off because the car was so sleek) and said he had to go back as his daughter had bumped her nose but that he would return. He did, with a sleek VW. He offered to put me and Morgan up if I didn't get anyone from Vancouver to pick me up. He was a nice guy, he didn't know much more than I do about mechanical things. There was a hint of noblesse oblige but that is what noblesse does. Anyway thank you, Portland, even though you didn't get the Subaru started. 

In the end, it was Amer, Portland-born, who made the trip from Vancouver and gave me a proper jumpstart.

____*_____

Community salmon bakes and class mixing at playgrounds is for real -- that stuff does happen here, there is more egalitarianism in places like Portland's Belmont than many small towns. And this is original Craigslist country -- though it is nearly impossible to explain to someone back east who does things by the book how it can ever be a good thing to rent a property to someone and forgo the background and credit check. It probably isn't, anymore. But EQ does work, if there's enough of it, and people with emotional intelligence can often recognize each other from afar.

But there are aspects of the Pacific-beatific scene that can be simply irritating -- because it is so lackadaisical. 

I don't think it is worth looking for regional cultural differences anymore in the mass media level, but definitely it's true that The Oregonian runs some nutty local color stuff on the front page, and that this belies a certain characteristic local attitude. I'm starting to put my finger on it, gradually. Maybe it's not even hippie-related. I think it's the attitude of Not Following Up. 

One such front-page item (it may have been nationally syndicated but I'm sure it didn't make the front page in many cities) was titled "Death Comes on Little Cat Feet". Basically, the story was this: Cat in nursing home, otherwise aloof, curls up near patient. Within a few hours, you guessed it, said patient is dead. Repeat twenty-five times. In Oregon, this qualifies as a cute story, a forum for liberal journalist to speculate about sixth sense and whether such an amazing animal as this feline reaper could be used for advancement of science. Meanwhile, although I think dogs should be allowed in restaurants and old people need pets, something inside of me is screaming: What are these people dying of? Test that cat!! What if it's toxo? Worse, what if the cat is a murderer? Good lord, why is a CAT running around inside a care facility for people in fragile health, anyway?

It's kind of what I like to call Murder, She Wrote Syndrome or what some call the elephant at the table -- a small town in coastal Maine experiences a murder a week, and there is a sharp socialite dame who not only knows who committed it, but she makes her living writing about it. It should be obvious here what is going on, even if the people of the coastal Maine town have never seen Basic Instinct.

(BTW, there's something to the Oregon-Maine connection, not just the Portland-Portland parallel, and the fact that Oregon has doubled for Maine in movie adaptations of Stephen King works.)

I think there is really a laziness in Oregon about making the logical inference and following through. Sometimes there are tragic results. Certainly it's the case with the various high profile missing person cases in the past year and it also extends to the general view on things. For what it's worth, my wife's first impression of downtown Portland was that half of the people were stoned.

_____*______

Speaking of drug news, read just today that Trey Anastasio had pulled a Jerry Garcia -- no, not slipped into a diabetic coma, thankfully -- but was involved in a high-profile drug bust, way back in December. Except that Trey was not sitting sedately in a parked car in Golden Gate Park but was weaving over the centre line someplace along the Hudson at 3:30am. Is he, like, commuting? Why isn't he with his family in Vermont?

I have to say that I have totally avoided Phish news, since I found them more than a bit pathetic in their decline into a mediocre jam-band, "wading in a velvet sea" (embarrassingly) instead of what they were doing before -- breaching the "divided sky" and, generally, just soaring. Because of the early period, Anastasio is totally deserving of his place as #70 or so on the top 100 guitarists of all time list -- listen (ignoring the lyrics of course) to the "serious" albums Junta, and also Picture of Nectar, Rift. It is hard to believe that was once Phish, and that personality-wise they were once a bunch of cerebral misfits who were cool by dint of their optimism and playfiulness. 

But everything that was interesting about them, other people seemed to find uncool. At some point -- after Garcia died, when you'd think they should have risen to fill the ostensible void --they started getting funkier and more monochordal, and people lapped it up, even though in Bittersweet Motel Trey says, in so many words, that what the crowd was lapping up was "urine", a weird, crass remark. That's around the time when other people started talking --  guys whom I didn't know, but who were diehard old Vermonters who had been touring with Phish since the early 1990s -- of drugs, things like ecstasy, of tensions within the band.

But even from these people, there was always that sort of knowledgeable shake of the head, like ah, Trey knows better, or it's his own movie and he wants to be a rock star. Certainly Anastasio is a guy with boundless irrepressible friendly energy, like an Irish setter, right down to the red - you can't keep him back. But certainly there is a Garcia-like tragedy here -- enablers pushing their hero faster, higher, until the trademarked blissed-out yet assertive expression on his face becomes a rictus --  I don't know. 

It seemed from the news that he was busted for prescription drugs. Sort of understandable -- Xanax is sort of what an intelligent person might take. Touring must be stressful beyond belief.  But the possible "felony charges" raised my eyebrows, and only after some digging and finally googling "heroin Anastasio"  on a hunch was it clear what had happened: A plea bargain so that the really  unsavoury part -- the packet of black powder -- could be hushed up. 

But I suppose  Trey knows better than the authorities, the courts, the people who emulate  him. Perhaps, like Garcia, he gets his "visions" from Persian? 

At least he seems to have his physical health. If all this is true, he's lucky. 

Anyway,  the release of that Big Pink, rootsy, back-to-the-land (though no less mediocre) album called Farmhouse in the middle of the monochordal funky years? Well, it faked me out. Apparently he's up to Lexington, one-two-five just as much as he is in that barn.

Books

I'll repost a summer reading review later.

Generational male bonding - 24 hours

I was thinking of a midweek getaway to Kah-Nee-Ta. It's a high-desert, Indian-reservation resort that Portlanders know fondly, especially slightly older ones (like of our age and up), probably remembering when they as kids had stayed in the tepees and used the waterslide. (Though by far not everyone has been there, it appears to have "survey says..." spontaneous recognition. When we told Amer's mother that we had gone to hot springs, she immediately asked if it was Kah-Nee-Ta.)

Kah-Nee-Ta was profiled nostalgically in the weekend section of the Oregonian the week we arrived, and I have to say I am susceptible to this form of advertising. But after visiting the resort's own website something didn't quite click. Maybe it was the fact that the four-sided fireplace in the lobby invites guests to relax, read a favorite book or sip some warm coffee and share conversation. Now personally, I accept such invitations, but I also like my coffee hot.

Or maybe it was  that the teepees went for $69. "What do they come with," asked TTT. "Let's see," I said, figuring I already knew the answer and finding it hard to imagine amenities dangling from the sides. It turned out apparently a frame, canvas, and concrete floor was included in the price.

Concrete is a modern material. I like concrete. Who has time for stonecutting, anymore? But we concluded that Kah-Nee-Ta was -- how to put this nicely -- for people who couldn't read the big print. Probably a place where offices had their summer retreats and could gamble, without stigma  -- or where city folk bored of staring at salal, pathfinder, and thimbleberry bushes under fir trees (which really is the basic milieu here) go to get a taste of the West, real Indians etc. Which was fine and dandy. But we'd had plenty of it in Wyoming and Idaho.

Since I had no other ideas this time, and the coast once again, for all its promise of amazing Amalfi vistas from the car, was a windy 65 degrees, TTT elected to stay behind and do what women do at such times -- rest. I agreed that the boys could camp out -- Morgan and me. Since he had held up so well and in fact enjoyed most of the two week car trip West, a night of fresh air not too far would be a neat adventure.

I've also noted that extended exposure to the four other kids here produces a raised-by-wolves gleam in Morgan's eye and a lot of annoying bad habits (not to mention the plain old fact that he becomes less verbal and less focused). Having fewer people around and spending quality time with one adult and maybe one other kid is more civilizing and socializing. Go figure. We're not a bunch of Rudolf Steiners, here, but maybe we do slough off some good influence in a well-meaning way.

__*__

11:15 am: Everything's packed. Some dry goods, bagels, fruit and sockeye salmon filets bought from Fred Meyer that need to be grilled ASAP. Don't want to deal with spilled olive oil so I throw two slices of bacon into a Zip-Loc. 

There are some lingering clouds so Option A is looking good -- basically Kah-Nee-Ta without the Kah-Nee-Ta: Head an hour east on I-84 through the gorge, camp somewhere east of the Cascades, then go to the Wonderworks Children's Museum in The Dalles, only open for two hours each morning. But TTT says the museum is not essential, if we camp, we might as well camp. Again, I am thinking she is right. 

I haven't explored the other side of the hill myself, though I'm itching to, and I don't see any campground symbols on the map. So it might have to be rough camping, which is not great in this case; or a state park campground on the Columbia -- and a hot riverbank penned in by the interstate doesn't sound so hot, even with sprinklers -- ick.  

And tomorrow is July 25. IKEA is opening its first store in the metro area, which is expected to literally snarl traffic for miles. I don't want to end up in gridlock in the afternoon coming back. 

Boy, what a lot of contingencies...but finally I decide on the Mount St. Helens area -- I remember from my climb that Pacific Power has some nice recreational lakes  nestled at the foot of the mountain just 40 miles north. 

11:45 It's time to eat, so once we're out of the rural surbubs (I think the last street sign I saw was 500th something Ave.) we make our first stop of the day, at Lewisville County Park. Morgan eats some leftover omelet from the cooler and sits on a stump, which is one of his favorite activities. (Useful parenting tip: Get your toddler a stump. The older the better. No substitute for toys, but a great base station.) Like most parks, no matter how negligible, this one has the $3 use fee, and I just can't be bothered. We're on our way again.

12:00 We finally get gas south of Amboy, which Morgan has been reminding me we need to do. I like the name Amboy. I think of the another volcanic site in the Mojave with the same name, of the Amboy Dukes and early garage band psychedelia. 

Route 503 North through the foothills and farms is a very slow road. Every few hundred yards there is a 35 mph posted curve. Not sure if this is because the landscape, right-of-way issues, or if the road was built based on old lumber roads. It's a mix of prosperous looking farms and trailer parks.  Could be anywhere. It's nice. We're playing 91.5 Oregon Public Radio and occasionally switching to 92.3, a commercial radio station.

12:15 We pass that odd perfectly-shaped conical hill about 30 miles north of Vancouver. I'm going to have to find out what that is -- slag heap or minivolcano. 

12:30 We pass the lower chain of lakes, Jack's Store and the Mount St. Helens climbing register. I notice a sign for Lake Merrill and turn left. The road climbs up. 

12:45 Lake Merrill is a long lake at about 2000 ft. Accommodations here seem free but cramped. We continue toward Kalama Horse Camp.

1:00 Kalama Horse Camp is within the national forest. What a great place, and we have it to ourselves. There is a lodge-style indoor shelter with a woodburning stove and glass windows, unlocked. surrounded by about 20 campsites with turnouts for horse trailers. What's great is that there is no graffiti or vandalism or trash. The road is washed out three miles further up.  A network of ski and horse trails starts here and the routes slab up ravines and hills toward the big mountain. 

Morgan sees the huckleberries before I do -- there are about three different kinds. I tell him to avoid the red huckleberries just to avoid confusion later if there are any baneberries growing around. He will listen to me on the red berry count (even if this means picking them and throwing them down ostentatiously with a sound of disgust), but I am not sure if he can really tell plants apart. There is some salal, which is of course edible, but isn't recognizable as a berry yet, just the bell like blossoms -- must have been a cold spring. Some nettles, but apart from that, he can wander a bit, supervised of course.

1:30 After extended adventures with potty and cleanup, it looks like nap isn't going to happen. He only falls asleep in the car or his own bed these days. I want to see how this place looks later in the day before setting up the tent, so we leave the car at the trailhead area and go for  a hike. 

Free maps at the trailhead (again, wow) show two, maybe three miles to one McBride Lake. I am actually thinking to myself that this is doable. Just show how naive I am, I actually think he might fall asleep in the EvenFlo baby backpack.

2:15 I don't know this is the ski trail or just the trail, but it is pleasant uphill walking. 30 pounds probably but a much harder load to carry than 50 pounds of backpacking gear. He is, of course, not asleep. We unload. Just like any veteran hiker, he knows to load himself up with carbohydrates. A whole bagel disappears. That's what, these days, over 300 calories? 

3:20 We're on a ridge overlooking Toutle Creek. A long way down, but not dangerous. A long series of rock outcrops and stumps make a fine natural playground. He alternates between two boulders. And gets quickly better at climbing each until he is doing it practically unassisted. On an adult scale, this would be high 4th class bouldering without a doubt. 

I check the map -- not even half the way to McBride Lake and probably more than two miles from the car. Ah well. 

I explain that it is a rather long way back, Dad has covered some ground and got us in a predicament, on a lonely ridge with only one bagel left, and  that we need to be making continuous progress if we are to make it back by nightfall.

He comes to accept the trail as a long extended playground. We probably make a half-mile. Then it's back into the backpack and back to the car. Campground is still empty. Hmm, perhaps I should have checked the volcano forecast?

4:30 The tent, a roomy Ferrino 3-season, goes up with a minimum of interference and trampling on mosquito netting. He actually helps thread the collapsible poles through a couple eyelets. Oh, the chores I could delegate, I am thinking.

5:30 First course of dinner is Idahoan instant mashed potatoes with broccoli. Idahoan blows any Lipton or Ramen out of the water. This is great stuff.

6:15 Salmon hits the pan, skin side down, as long as it takes. This wild sockeye is so red it is halfway to whale. It shouts game, unlike the pink commercial stuff whose colour is as natural as a force fed goose liver. 

7:00 Some more huckleberry picking. I am amazed how he has got the hang of it, isolating the berry and picking it with one confident motion. 

It is time to start hitting the sack, which is still a long, intricate ceremony.  I find myself switching over more to Estonian -- his mother tongue after all. Väikeste meeste jutud is the bedtime story for tonight -- about a bunch of construction machines and their rivalries. Good, egalitarian stuff. Instead of translating on the fly, which tends to be taxing even down in the gas-powered flatlands, I just read it in my best Estonian radio host voice. The sillier I am, the more I believe I can disguise my accent. 

7:30 He cries for the first time, ostensibly because he wants to keep reading, but after we flip through all the pages again, saying good night to every backhoe and tractor, he asks about Emme for the first time. It is resolved pretty quickly -- I explain to him in Estonian that we will see her tomorrow. He's bundled up underneath his LaFuma Pilot -- balaclava, PJs and sweater. It will be 52 in Portland so it should be 50 - 3*2000 ft up here -- 46 degrees. Much warmer than it was in Yellowstone. But he is close to sweating now.

8:00 He's asleep. It didn't take any longer than it does at home, maybe even faster and deeper because of the lack of nap. 

9:00 Some sort of Transam or muscle car with a muffler problem enters the campground, circles around, and parks a few hundred yards downhill. Now I have yet to have an unfriendly encounter in mountains -- the scruffy guy with the .22 rifle in Bland County, Virginia, turns out just to be a squirrel hunter, etc., though I did have a miserable snowy day above Nederland, CO, huddling in a bivvy sac, while some overly friendly people shot 9mm and higher caliber stuff at an old mine. But I sort of hold my breath, anyway -- not really consistent with camping. But they keep to themselves, whoever they are. Occasionally in the night I  hear the ghostly clip-clop of hooves, and girls' voices but no trailers or horses ever show up.

10:00 Too deep sleep, too soon, apparently.  Morgan wakes with a start, looking like an old Indian, babbling lennuk, lennuk. A full-on nightmare. For some reason I think of Grant Lee Buffalo's apocalyptic "Last Days of Tecumseh": in the ground below the airplanes Tecumseh lay...  But it seems he was only thirsty, it passes and the young brave  is asleep again -- he pulls seven more hours straight and is dry in the morning. But I am up every thirty minutes, afraid he has somehow rolled over and is smothering -- or out of his sleeping bag and freezing. After almost two years of three-hour maximum sleep shifts, seven hours is suspicious. It isn't a great night, and it certainly is not enough sleep for him total in the last 24 hours, but in some ways it is better than I expected.

5:00 This is an ungodly hour, but we're up. It will be a long time until the sun starts warming the air. That is what the NW is like. Even a 100 degree day means it is no more than 70 until 11am, then it just hits the peak around 5pm, and it's chilly again by dark. 

It is cold right now. My Nokia phone says it is 11 or 12 C -- 52, 54 degrees. And he is ready for action, though he is not a morning person. He gets his feet stuck on a tiny lip of fabric at the mouth of the sleeping bag and is stuck -- near tears, in tears. It is tough. It will be a hard task to convince him the best place is in the tent curled up with a book.

5:15 We do breakfast -- oats, mercifully it turns out I have packed quick oats, not an infernal multigrain that we have, with powdered goat's milk and goji berries (this is just what I happen to have in my larder -- mountain foods for the mountains -- never cow's if it can be goat's.  And huckleberries, which are sour but tasty. We walk around, and it is still cold. The muscle car people are in the car running their engine. There is no tent there. They take off really quickly when we approach and are gone.

7:00 We've been reading a classic car magazine -- edifying for Dad as well. This should be part of any general editor's education. The sun is warming the air in the tent up to a more comfortable 60, and there are some direct rays on the stump outside. 

8:00 I decide to call it and start breaking camp -- I am not up for more hiking, Morgan wants to spend most of his time in the Subaru. It is still 55 at best in the open air, and there are plenty of things to do on the way back down the hill and on the way home.

  

9:00 He is asleep in the Subaru... "Afternoon" nap.

(America's) Vancouver

Summer is in full swing, but apart from a day when it hit 102, no dog days. The jet stream has borne down on our area, bringing humidity and clouds. With the mountains socked in and the coast back to a crisp 65, we have stayed closer to home.

Vancouver, Washington, is the oldest town around these parts, but it gets short shrift compared to Portland. Today it suggests lines like "Vancouver, the town time forgot" and not so much the original blurb,  "Vancouver, the only desired situation for settlement west of the Rocky Mountains" (Merriwether Lewis).

It would be hard to revive Vancouver's downtown via such trends as an influx of artists (rents will never be low enough) or dining scene. A few decades ago, the interstate (!-5) was built through the historical downtown, which changed the feel of it forever, much as if Ridge Street in Charlottesville, Virginia, became freeway all the way down McIntire to 250. 

No, purists would grudgingly have to concede that downtown is no longer downtown. An enormous suburb -- 100,000 strong -- has grown to the east of the centre and permanently shifted the centre of gravity. 

I have never, in any town, seen so many different combinations of the main  shopping franchises. Want to shop at Target and pop into Barnes and Noble? Then you can go to Vancouver Plaza.  Or if  you would rather have Borders with your Target -- go to Mill Plain.

Of course this sort of profusion is too much, but the fact is, unlike Charlottesville's northern corridor stretching toward DC, it halfway works. Traffic is not that bad in Vancouver, indicating that if you have infinite consumer choices on an infinite grid of streets, with left turn lights at every intersection, sprawl will not lead to automatic gridlock. 

Though it will still erode your soul. My soul. I could only stay sane in a place like E. Vancouver by thinking of it as a transient camp for young adults with children -- until the move to a wooded property in the hills west of Portland or something.

There is plenty of parkland, the result being that downtown is more rustic than the "suburbs". Today I took Morgan to Fort Vancouver, which was not a military installation but a group of farms that supplied the Hudson's Bay Company in the early to mid 19th century. Next door is Pearson Field, a mecca for Cessna-lovers.  The lawns of the historical site are a great place to sit and watch  planes land -- the variety of speeds and plane profiles is amazing. Larger jets approach Portland Airport, a few miles off, along what appears to be the same trajectory but probably isn't.  By coincidence, firemen were having a special event at the airfield's museum. Morgan wasn't interested in the vintage fire engines, some of which were so old and intricate they were vaguely gypsy-wagon-like. I guess the modern ones in Charlottesville were more impressive. 

There isn't much going on in historical downtown Vancouver on a late Sunday morning. We tried a Korean-owned sub shop where I worked one day and seemed to have a nice family vibe, much like C-Ville Coffee. It was closed, so we went to a diner, Gene's, one of those places where the waitresses are in their forties and say honey and  really take pride in how slow they are. The place was packed, which was a good sign. We waited close to 45 minutes for them to get their act together and nuke some clam chowder for Morgan. But Morgan was, in waitress parlance, a doll. The piggies in the blanket, when they finally arrived, were the best piggies in the blanket I have had. A trashy-in-a-good-way scrapply breakfast link rolled up in a fluffy pancake with just the right mix of shortening and baking soda flavors, served with not-too-sweet cinnamon applesauce.

Of mountains and men (apologies to Justice Douglas)

Mount Adams summit, looking north, 6:10am, July 14

Spend time in any wilderness and natural features start taking on human qualities. For example, way up in the Finnish panhandle, at a beautiful confluence of rivers 20 miles from the nearest road, there is a tunturi or butte called Saivaara, which has a memorial plaque to the late great President Urho Kekkonen on top of it; after it had occupied my visual frame for 10 miles and I was no closer, I started thinking of Saivaara as Kekkonen's head (hiking in treeless Lappland in July can be a little like a fever dream). In the long conversation that ensued, Kekkonen, speaking through the butte, waxed nostalgic about fishing in the area as a young man and expressed remorse for being a Soviet tool. 

Kidding, of course. John Denver lyrics notwithstanding, being in high and wild places is usually more subtle sort of enhanced experience.

On a more obvious level, the Cascade volcanoes here in the NW suggest a pantheon of characters, each with a distinct personality. The Native Americans have specific legends about them. Perhaps Neil Gaiman will do them justice in a sequel.

Rainier is obviously a Zeus sort of mountain that no one questions the motives of, even when things get deadly; this emperor wears clothes all right -- deeply crevassed white robes. 

Mount St. Helens (Loowit) is a young maiden, holding  a looking-glass (Spirit Lake), known for a devastating outburst of suicidal violence. 

Mount Hood, who in Indian legend competed successfully for the love of then intact (but smokin') St. Helens --  a petty trickster rogue who tries to come on all Fuji-like but is really a nasty jagged mountain with a reputation for rockfall and luring climbers to long fatal slides. Even the Klickitat name, Wy'East, sounds like a playa -- as in, "yo, Wy'East, why you schemin' on Loowit?"

Then there is Mount Adams or Pahto....shown here casting a mournful 30-mile shadow to the west -- a peaceful, slumbering giant quite a distance to the west of all of these peaks, up against the juniper and pine country of the east slopes and perhaps not coincidentally straddling the border of a major Indian reservation ("the land is dry and not productive, let's give it to the Yakama")

Adams'  head is bowed toward St. Helens, object of his unrequited love. When I look at its rounded bulk across a field, I don't think of gods, I think of pied cattle -- its glaciers look like the white patches on a Holstein. 

You can hike up this mountain (even without donning crampons on hot days like today when the glaciers turn slushy) and if you slip you will probably come to a stop before any exposed rocks.  No one has died in recent years Adams to my knowledge.

But I don't know the figures on how many people have been frightened out of their wits....

I say that because what happened on my way up on Friday -- probably the most freaky weather I have encountered anywhere.

Hoping to summit in a single day, I drove to Mount Adams at midnight, arrived at two am Friday morning. Slept three hours in the back of the Subaru at the trailhead at 5400 ft and set out, the sun already rising. It was a warm, hazy morning and it looked like it would be a clear, hot day. You could smell the faint sour smell of a distant forest fire to the east, which is for all I know what it always smelled like in the Mt. Adams area. There was a smudge in the sky dozens of miles to the souttheast, which seemed consistent with a fire. 

I hiked west along an easy grade on a forested trail on the south side of the mountain. There was a stiff headwind from the west -- cooler air from the coast.  I heard a distant rumbling behind me. Well, well. It appeared there was thunderstorm activity -- at 5:30 am.  Anyway,  it seemed inconceivable that some heat lightning somewhere in the desert behind me would make a beeline toward me or  anywhere near the huge mountain, especially against the wind. 

But the sun got higher, and the smudge, which was of course not a fire at all, seemed to grow with the warmth, into a classic thunderhead high in the sky, with crazy swirls that looked quite ominous though still unsure of themselves.  The system looked pretty diffuse and seemed it would at most skirt the south side of the mountain. Meanwhile, the wind continued from the opposite direction. I lingered under solitary clumps of trees, taking some not very good pictures of Mount Hood to the south obscured by the storm clouds ...

 figuring I had about 10 minutes to maybe fish out the raingear if I did get a few drops.

Then I noticed a second layer of clouds -- wispy tendrils, maybe 1000 ft below me, of the sort you see in the morning, hanging over hollows in Virginia, or like the clouds on the west side of the Cascades that are blocked and remain in place for days. Except these were moving very fast. 

I had just enough time to make this observation when the leading edge hit the slopes below me with a whoosh, and I was beset. If Adams had erupted just then, a pyroclastic flow racing down the slopes could hardly be much more dramatic than these clouds racing up the slope. 

It turned as dark as night (it was 5:30 am, so not that much change, but still dramatic). I entertained end of the world thoughts. I couldn't see much more than the trees I was under. I could just as well been on some summit -- one poking into the stratosphere. There was horizontal rain. 

When finally I saw blue sky through the wisps,  the upper level of clouds had coalesced and had started dumping rain vertically.

Later I caught up to two hikers who had experienced the same thing -- above treeline, not in a snug stand of spruce -- and they confessed that they nearly peed their pants. They also claimed that on top of everything else, the westerly breeze seemed to continue even as the low clouds and lightning beset them. 

Pending an explanation from a meteorologist, there are two possibilities. One is that the mountain itself summoned (or was directed to summon) the storm to bear down on hikers, like Caradhras. But I am reluctant to implicate Mount Adams in this. It is benevolent and docile -- as mountains go. And the rest of my (two-day) climb and summit was idyllic. 

No. To me all evidence points to the mountain doing all in its power to defend its denizens against a evil wind, but that it was surprise-attacked from below -- by an elemental earth djinn from the desert disguised as morning mist.

I am only being half-silly with this sort of  magical thinking. 

The heat-djinns may be exceptionally active this year. Up at the Lunch Counter, a flat area which serves as informal base camp at 9,200 ft, snow levels were the lowest one veteran climber had ever seen. He said usually there is no exposed rock and the windwalls for the tentsites are the only thing to have melted out by mid-July. And this was a heavy snow year. And it has not been that hot for long.

The climb was exclusively over snowfields, but only the last 700 vertical feet were really "wintry" as a mountain this far north should be.  And a 60 degree night at 9000 ft in the Cascades is really bringing the heat. 

The edge of the Lunch Counter, with Wy'East in the distance obscured by djinns.

Bagby Hot Springs

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.

When that fig tree starts putting out leaves

For a while there, we were in a comforting web of illusion and we could pretend global warming had gone away. Personally, this included hikes on snowy mountains, snow in June, a summer that just wouldn't come, a day on a wide beach with no sign of erosion or rising seas...not even a rogue wave. Or tsunami*.

But this week saw the beginning of desert SW style temperatures in the inland Pacific NW -- places like Pendleton -- with temperatures in the high 100s. By coincidence this week also saw a rock festival dedicated to Earth issues, and  a convenient opportunity to Al Gore to tell us so in his preachy voice. You had to take notice, even though Portland was cooled by a nice breeze from the sea.

Whether or not you like Gore or not, or whether you think global warming is a hiccup or a chain reaction, or whether you are a born again Christian who believes it's all good and we're fucked anyway, what is indisputable is that everywhere strange things are going on, though we try our best to avert our eyes and not click on the links. 

A sampler, starting from the local and narrow issues to more global ones:

1. This summer is expected to be a bad fire year again in Oregon and Washington. The rain and cool weather into late June is all for naught after a week or two of what we have seen in the interior.  Looking at the Oregon Forest Service website, in terms of acreage, there seems to be no pattern. Nothing comes close to 1992 in terms of land burned. There were bad years in the 1970s too. But in terms of number of fires, it is increasing every year. And there is a difference between a desert brushland fire and a coastal rainforest fire.

2. Plankton is disappearing offshore, with numerous effects. This is an old article, but it is again in the news. Between you and me, it is not a good sign when you see the line ", mystifying scientists" in a science article.

3. Glaciers on Mt. Hood are melting, just like everywhere else, in case anyone was in doubt. No summer skiing in the not too distant future? No whitewater rafting east of the Cascades? Say it ain't so.

4. Lake Superior is down two feet and up five degrees. Lake Powell is drying up. (Though regarding the latter I can only say, about time. ) 

5. The Oregon fisheries continue their step forward, two steps back pattern of decline. The state of salmonid populations  is hard to diagnose as it is a complex system with  many different species and different seasonal runs. And you have issues like sea lions out in droves at the Bonneville dam 80 miles inland feasting on the spring run, which leaves the impression that things are plentiful but actually signals that things may be out of whack in deeper water. The basic numbers are bad  -- you name it, fleets, catch, number of independents are all down severalfold from the 1980s. And prices keep rising (unless you want to eat "Atlantic salmon" with dyes and sea lice). But everyone knew that, right?

6. Most disturbingly Nestle just issued an announcement that food prices could rise significantly in the years ahead. And we're not talking breakfast cereal and chocolate here. Nor almonds (almond prices having more than doubled due to demand and poor harvests due to heat waves in California). We're talking corn and wheat. This is even going to affect the supersize demographic -- the inner-city and poor white folks who eat nothing but white bread and high-fructose corn syrup. From here on out, it's Soylent Green for them. Just kidding. After all, it can't be Soylent Green for them, because they can't make the claim that Soylent is actually plankton, remember? See #2 -- the plankton has disappeared!!

OK. Seriously, what is going on here? Population has been increasing steadily since time began, and now the price of a basket of food rises 50%? Not to put too fine a point on it -- it seems that 1) oil is running out, and we need the grain fields to produce biofuel (at least this is preferable to feeding cattle with our premium grain, but we do that anyway, because we need meat); 2) India and China need more food to support their populations and they are environmental basket cases -- even the Chinese don't want to eat their cadmium-laced production anymore, just as it is harder to find people there who are willing to work for $3 a day.

7. Meanwhile, the honeybees worldwide are having their own version of the 1960s -- their kids are leaving the hive and dropping out. Fruits and vegetables will go unpollinated. To my knowledge Colony Collapse Disorder has not yet been solved, and who knows how much worse it is getting. 

* A major issue right now in Oregon is the fact that police couldn't find a car that crashed off a major highway even though all but the GPS coordinates were phoned in by a caller, but I have to say the tsunami defenses are ramped up. We are due for a big one, they tell us. The Entering/Leaving Tsunami Danger Zone road signs are very prominent at Seaside. 

Gearhart

A chilly day at Gearheart Beach on July 5. It might have been 65 by late afternoon. The water was probably 56. This made us pine for warm beaches again. Will we ever see them again? It is tempting to contemplate a return to Mazatlan in September, thoughly highly impractical..

 

Independence Day

What did I do on Independence Day? The quintessentially American pastime -- I worked. For my overseas employer.

A backyard BBQ, of course. Then we watched the neighbourhood going up in smoke. Oh yes. There will be a light dusting of ash tomorrow. One of the neighbours had made a run to Olympia -- which I am told is a byword for fireworks of questionable legality from an Indian reservation. Some of the mortars may have been actual mortars. 

 There was a whole mess of potluck food. Meat, corn pie, salmon, Key lime pie, meat.

Along with the neighbors, Amer's clan poured in -- and Caribbean accents were heard on the breeze. 

My superficial and racially confused mind finds this very novel and charming -- people without dreadlocks speaking like Rasta men. The story here is that Amer, our gracious host, is from an extended Syrian family that settled in Trinidad last century. This was the third family gathering and I was still not clear on what Syrian and Lebanese are doing on an island off the coast of South America. One of the uncles, Elias, said: they were heading to America to escape the Ottoman persecution of Christians way back when and like Columbus, they landed not on the mainland but an island.

Everybody seems to wax very fond of the islands, and most seem to go back every year to visit. Some, like Elias, are sorry they moved to Portland. Sorry to be in Portland? Clearly Trinidad is a place one should check out. 

I Googled it. Interesting connection -- Trinidad and Tobago not only has a population almost exactly the same as Estonia's, but get this -- it  is a former Baltic colony. The only one in the New World. I am not making this up. It was the personal possession of a duke who ran Latvia in the 1600s and whose hobbies included discovery and mercantile trade. Now Amer is married to an Estonian girl. Sort of full circle.

Division Street

One of my favorite streets in  Portland.  I'm in Stumptown Coffee Roasters, proofreading a pdf of an Estonian museum's upcoming coffeetable book. This has to be the noisiest place I have ever worked productively -- my cell phone's sound meter averages 75-80 dB with a peak of 86 dB when someone spilled the beans. Alas, not proverbially to me. 

With the industrial chic setting and 1970s wall map of South America, I feel like I am in Colombia and that Juan Valdez will at any moment come with his wide-brimmed hat and humility and refill my cup. Not five feet behind my laptop are three "natives", though no doubt they earn a living wage, with their hands deep in a bin of fragrant beans, distributing, sifting...

The smell is the deep brown aroma of slightly burnt pancakes and it is what brought me here as I was driving down Division toward the river to look for a good deal on wild salmon for the 4th of July barbie. 

Seems like outlets and WiFi is a given at this sort of cafe (the US has finally caught up to Estonia in universailty of free WiFi, yay!) and I no longer have to lurk creepily before buying my coffee, looking for outlets.

Well, I'm going to have to get a cheap point-and-shoot to convey more.  

Later it's down the street for more of the third world -- Pok Pok, a takeout stand that brings all the flair and authenticity of a Thai marketplace (without the live birds in cages I hope). The newly opened sit-down area is the best restaurant 2007. We'll have to go there for dinner at some point with the whole family.

Things are going better at the house, not that they were ever going poorly. Morgan is getting along better with Sammy. It is not unusual for them to play for an extended period without fighting.  I'm eager to escape the house though -- and it is of course essential for things like proofreading and final readings. TTT and I have both noticed that on days when we don't go anywhere, everyone is exhausted by day's end. But it is hard to pack five kids into the cars and head out, if even to the Zoo or the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry. We were  supposed to go to the beach on Monday, but since the weather was so-so and there will be a  big barbecue with 30 people coming to the house on Wed, the plan was scratched. One option is to take one of two of their kids off their hands for a day, but for some reason they have not been keen on it. But I guess if someone outside the family offered to take Morgan somewhere for a whole day, I would be reluctant too.

"Estonia needs a Nokia," part 200

Oregon is one  of the craft beer capitals of the world but has only a few locally brewed lagers. With a barbecue for the 4th of July coming up, it would be nice to wave the Estonian flag as well by stocking the ice chest with bottles of Saku, which doesn't have a lot of character, but drinks a little more smooth on hot days and isn't as hopped to death as the local ales.

The guy at Belmont Station (SE Stark St. Portland, "800 beers!") said he had heard of Saku, Estonia's leading brewery. Typically, though, the store didn't carry it, though they had empty spaces on the shelves for Utenos Porter (a slightly better dark beer from Lithuania) and for a couple varieties of Baltija (which has nothing wrong with it other than being Russian). 

Estonians here are always talking about how Saku is on sale some other place -- a shop in Seattle, across the street from the Embassy in Washington  -- but I have yet to see it. I think the bar of the Estonian House on E. 32nd in NYC does actually have it, but that is hardly a place you pop into. 

As I  intimated, Saku is not that great a beer, with a  Coke-and-Pepsi analogy between Saku and A.Le Coq, a Tartu brewery with traditions and a similar lager. But it occurs to me that Estonia could have one product that is a household name in the West. It is kind of silly that if we want to throw a party on an Estonian theme in the States, we are relegated to, I don't know,  breaking out the canned fish tins that we brought over on the plane. Or shifting the topic of conversation to Skype, which probably strikes everyone as being a presumably white bread  American product, and then adding, did you know that Estonians came up with it? Oh reeally. 

A friend in Charlottesville who drives rally cars and is a fan of Marko Märtin as the perpetual underdog asked me about the oil transit business. "So," he said eagerly, "I suppose that you guys have a bunch of E.O.S. filling stations in Estonia, that is where everyone goes to get their gas just like Exxon or Texaco." Ah, no, I had to respond lamely, we get our gas at many of the same chains.

It shouldn't be this way. Estonia needs a Häagen Dazs.

It seems that we are good at slapping our country's name -- Estonia -- our most priceless trademark, on our pride -- a ferry that went down (though that could not have been our fault), or a fleet of five ageing Boeings under the name Estonian Air -- but we are not good at marketing our own products. Or maybe that our voice gets drowned out in joint ventures or plain old M&As. Like how the name Swedbank crept into the very local and cool Hansabank logo last year, and most likely will in the future replace it.

Funny and other good blogs - a roundup

This is the most hilarious, most generous blog I have come across and which makes everyone else in the biz look like dried husks. One of the two pages about a winter trip to Estonia.  One will note that for all its juvenility, it doesn't get a single fact or spelling wrong. The domain name is a good score. 

Of course, I didn't count to a very large number before posting this, nor did I read the rest of Brian's blog.

*

On the other hand, I can vouch for this one largely because I know the guy. Hopefully he will add much more to Kahar's Tangents.  Then again, he is about to become a father, so fat chance of that. He has also set up a second blog, called Kahar's Issues. To be followed, no doubt by Kahar's Ideas. Seems like a franchise in the making. Anyway, look for popcrit and polsci sprinkled with Canadian humour.

*

Finally, there's this, which is written by, I think it is safe to say, an Estonian by marriage. Unusual for someone to get at the crux of what it means to be Estonian as fully as this. Plus, good writing. It has become a sort of home for expats on the Web. I like how he has a whole separate blog on his child  -- something to aspire to.

Ah, Lower Horseshoe Falls. It's right off the old Columbia Gorge Highway, an impossibly narrow two-lane scenic drive which parallels I-84. This was taken on the way back from my Father's Day trip in the Badger Creek Wilderness. I am currently using film (click on the waterfall picture and tell me that grainy texture isn't a bit pleasing) and just had these developed at Blue Moon Camera and Machine in North Portland. Most of the shots of Mount Hood from 6,500 ft Lookout Mountain were pretty plain Jane, but I thought the ones from the rainforest in the Gorge turned out pretty well, though of course it is hard to come up with an original angle for waterfalls which are in every coffeetable book published about Oregon.

And just for perpective, a shot of some ponds on the river plain a few hundred feet below, from the Oneonta Trail under the edge of the canopy of the lush forest.