The spring season of 2020

Spring 2020 Its all about me

It has been a spring I've never encountered before. Neither have you. Neither have any of the other 7 or so billion of people. The entire earth is in a quarantine. So I have been posting a sporadic blog of how this virus affects me. I won't repeat those ideas here.

I have been doing some day trips which are less entertaining than before the quarantine because one of the enjoyments of these trips is eating at little restaurants in out of the way towns. However I have been going to where there are waterfalls. I did make it out birding but not as much as normal. It has been a cool and rainy spring for about half of the days. Not today though. It is about 80 degrees and sunny so I went down to the Columbia River for about an hour reading and basking. However, I wrote about the seasons birding in another post.

The first trip was to Silver Creek Falls in Oregon a bit east of Salem and about an hour and a half from home. To get there I went about 30 miles on the tedious #205 which wends through suburban and industrial Portland and on to #214, an Oregon state road and from there it was a pleasant rural drive through the Willamette Valley wine district. Since it was a valley mountains could be seen in most directions but the land in the valley is very flat. I got to Silverton, a small town about 15 miles from my destination. It would have been the place to get that repast described above were it any other time.

Actually it was early into a relaxation of the quarantine imposed on us all and so bistros and diners were open to small numbers and the local used book store open to one customer at a time. This is not a pleasant experience for me so I simply ambled about town for 15 or so minutes and then headed for the falls.

The short few miles from Silverton on #213 took us up into the foot hills of part of the Cascade range and so was filled with sharp turns and winding roads which were beautiful. Then it was to the falls and a walk of nearly 2 hours.

Canyon

The State park is Oregon's largest so my walk only attended to a small part of it. While I was near the top of the upper falls, I saw the enormous chasm that you see above.

The only falls that I reached were cascading into the gorge from around 100 feet above.

One of Silverton Creek Falls

A few days prior to my venture south to Silver Creek Falls I went to Lucia Falls where I have been to on several occasions. I actually went there by accident. I was looking for a new way to get to Salmon Creek and apparently got my directions disoriented and headed the wrong direction about 15 miles north of here. So I went to Plan B instead.

Plan B-Lucia Falls

This week I went to Siouxon Falls in the Gifford Pinchot National Forest. It was an incredible trip to take on a reasonably beautiful day. It is a little less than 50 miles away and into the mountainous region that includes Mt. St. Helens. Once I got out of the suburban area I drove past these small county towns that I never had a reason to go to. Once past Clark County it was pretty much farmland for a few miles until I reached the foothills. The road narrowed which was not an issue since there was no traffic. When I was about 5 miles from the park, the road narrowed to one lane and drivers who met oncoming traffic would have a very tiny margin of error to let each car pass. A mistake of about 6 inches would be enough to send one or both cars off the road and into the deep gully on each side of the street.

Anyway the park is beautiful with the Douglas Fir trees looming a hundred and a half feet high, creating a canopy that rendered the trails dark, wet and lovely. I did not get to any of the falls up there as the driving to get there and to get back home was far more than I had allotted for this trip.

One branch of the Lewis River (I think)

Some of the view a few miles outside of the park.

In between Chelalis and the park is a large area of land that has been de-forested with unwanted lumber and scrap wood scattered about for acres. It would seem that part of any arrangement that the lumber industry had for cutting these areas would include a clean up but apparently it doesn't. All of that scrap wood could easily be re-cycled in many ways but rather, it just lays there.

That is pretty much the extent of my travels.

I have become “zoomed out” by the new way of communicating on line. I have watched discussion panels (mostly concerning the Black Lives Matter movement). The next one on deck right now is one on Conspiracies and Cranks put on by the Center for Inquiry. These have taken the place of any courses at the community college which of course is currently closed.

Hopefully the summer will be a season that reasonably allows for groups dining together but maybe it won't.

Otherwise I have spent much of this season reading books and catching up on the vast number of articles amassed in order to read later. Without the quarantine they would amass even more. I have cut them all down.

I wonder how much life will be permanently changed as a result of this quarantine. The entire earth has already made Jeff Bezos a far richer man than he already was. Will technology like Zoom further erode our being face to face with people? At the rate we are going it seems that even more will be available to those with a laptop and a bed. As more people have begun to tel-work will we see office complexes closing for the lack of rentals?

I never take my musings about the future very seriously but I still like to do that. I also hope I can travel again during this next season.

As usual I am cooking quite a bit. Actually in unusual amounts. I had last eaten restaurant food on March 6^th. I had my last beer at a pub on March 10^th. So I am cooking at home. I bought a smoker and have used that either to slow smoke meats or vegetables. It functions like a stove in that I can set it 350 degrees for an hour. That will take care of a whole chicken and with a residual flavoring of oak chips. I mad a shepherds pie on one occasion.

On another I made a pomegranate and tahini sauce and topped over acorn squash and roasted with pistachios.

Today I broke my dining out streak and bought a shrimp salad and fish stew from a local seafood place.

Lastly I read an interesting interview in Prospect magazine where Emma Smith talks about the influence of 16^th centuries plagues had on Shakespeare's plays. She suggests that one to read is Venusand Aphrodite which explores lewd behavior during those times. I have not read that play but intend to and you can too.

Tomorrow marks the third anniversary of the last time I saw Baltimore as I headed west that day.