A Stormy Day

Too cold to bicycle

too wet to hike

I’m down to the car

The blackberries are nearly gone since logging ceased in these hills, huckleberries too.  That’s what the old men were saying over coffee this morning, spreading homemade marionberry jam on toast from homemade bread.  Deer are fewer and harder to reach since they gated off most of the forest roads to keep us out, even took a dozer and scarified the logging roads so nobody can use them.  They spent tax dollars to get rid of roads that could be used to build this crippled economy—costing us money to keep us from earning money.  Rainy day talk in Mannings Café.

 

The subject changes: A limb fell on her riser that brings power into her house,  It broke the weatherhead, easy to fix.  So she paid me fifty dollars and I went to work.  But the county man came by and asked if I had a permit.  So I told her she needs one, and she went and paid seventy-five dollars for it.  The county man came back and said that whenever you get a permit it means everything has to be brought up to code.  He said the ground needs to tie to a water pipe, not just that rod driven into the ground eight feet.  That cost her another two hundred.  A fifty dollar repair cost four hundred when it was all done.  Permits needed for any little thing.  They want to stop all rural development—that’s the real reason for all the d__  permits.

The ratio of churches to bars says a lot about the nature of a small town; I am not the first to say it.  In Oakridge there are six churches and two bars by my count, ratio 3.0.  In many towns I’ve visited on bicycle, the ratio is about 0.3.  But the strangest thing is that the churches of Oakridge do not take credit a huge white cross on a hill that can be seen from all over town.  An old preacher built it in his yard, they say, and nobody knows much about him.  In the first picture, my camera is pointed to where they said the cross is, but it hides up there in the clouds.  The second picture shows it in a rare afternoon clearing.  The third picture is at night with lights on it like they are every night.

 x

oppressed and neglected

take to the street

in protest  

North fork

of Middle Fork

of Willamette River 

too many rivers

too few names

poet wanted 

nameless creek

too small to mention

poet wanted 

 


The Office Covered Bridge in Westfir is the longest covered bridge in Oregon—180 feet.

strong enough for log trucks

if any came here

anymore 

Hot water seeps from a rock beside Salt Creek