Endemic Diary — April 8 to 22, 2022

Friday, April 8, 2022

Today we went to a place called the Luckiamute Landing State Natural Area and walked through the gallery forest along the west bank of the Willamette River. In olden times, so we are told, gallery forests grew on both sides of the Willamette as it meandered its way through the lowland prairies of the valley floor. Most of this gallery forest has disappeared because modern farmers saw no reason not to extend their fields all the way to the river’s edge.

Besides some riverside forest, the natural area also includes a former agricultural field that is in the process of being restored. At the edge of the field native plants are still thriving. The plants above are yellow mahonia and red flowering currant. This mahonia, by the way, is Mahonia aquifolium, which grows to a height of eight feet. It is not to be confused with Mahonia nervosa, or Mahonia repens, both of which only grow about a foot tall. How do we know that these are not to be confused? Because, alas, we have spent a lot of time being confused and we still aren’t quite sure which ones we planted where in our back yard. 

And of course no walk would be complete without finding an overturned school bus rusting in the woods.

Wednesday, April 13, 2022 

Yikes! We woke up to see snow falling; huge wet flakes that melted on contact, at least in our neighborhood. We had planned to walk in the forest today–rain or shine–so off we went.  As we walked up into the Oak Creek area, we gradually gained 500 feet of altitude. Here’s what it looked like up there.

Saturday, April 16, 2022

Now, today, it’s mostly sunny. We extricated the Porsche from the garage and drove up to Independence for dinner at the Pink House Cafe. The Pink House offers fine food and the possibility of having dinner in an upstairs bedroom. We tried that once, but we were unnerved by the number of eyes staring at us from the doll collection in the corner. Since then we’ve stuck to the main floor.

Sunday, April 17, 2022

And then it was Easter. The Andees came down for dinner accompanied by their canine pal Frankie. E made soufflé and salad and stuff–including marinated radishes served with pre-dinner sherry. After dinner we had Easter candy, some of which is shown below. 

These have a core of fudge surrounded by a chewy marshmallow shell covered with coconut. To serve, remove and eat the faces; then slice the bodies crosswise. What a culinary wonder! But maybe once a year is enough.

Tuesday, April 19, 2022

It’s been rainy and cold. And more rain is forecast. This gets tiresome after a while. Out in the forest the rain was steady and the temperature was about forty degrees. But boy was it green out there. 

And a bumper year for fawn lilies. 

Friday, April 22, 2022

The one sure thing about death is that when a person dies, somebody has to deal with the body. Ideally, the surviving family could just do it themselves: dig a hole and bury it or maybe throw it in the ocean somewhere. But most people would rather hire someone else to deal with it. And who are we to go against the stream? So off we went down to the mortuary and talked to a woman about pre-paid end of life plans. It took about and hour and a half, but we got a lot of information, including two estimates, one for cremation and one for green burial. 

For a long time it had seemed to both of us that cremation was the obvious way to go. But cremation is not exactly earth friendly. First of all, cremation ovens are powered by fossil fuels and each cremation releases about 540 pounds of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. That’s equivalent to burning about 24 gallons of gasoline. Plus, a human body is almost 25% carbon. Presumably, a lot of that also goes up in smoke, so to speak. 

Most of our conversation was about money. Basically, we listened to her explain, in some detail, just how it was that they could justify the total costs, which were, as you might expect, almost beyond comprehension. But in the end we knew that actually it all makes sense, especially to anyone with a degree in marketing. One thing we noticed was that there were two fees related to the actual burning of the body, which she said would take place in their own in-house crematory. The larger of the two fees covers the cost of taking the body to the crematory location, burning it up, and collecting the ashes into a container. (Container sold separately.) The smaller fee ($295) was called a “Crematory Service Fee” and covers the cost of everything else that the crematory does. Except that the crematory doesn’t actually do anything else. Death is such a mystery. 

But hey, not everything is mysterious. One fee involved in a green burial, for example, is the extra $550 that you have to pay to address soil subsidence. In a “traditional” burial the newly buried body lies in a sturdy casket inside a concrete vault, with everything built to last. In a green burial you’re in a flimsy wooden box or an even flimsier shroud. The whole idea is that none of it is meant to last. But what happens as the body molders away? The soil on top of it starts to sink. That leaves a body-shaped depression in your plot. Oh-oh. In a well-run cemetery this is unacceptable and the maintenance people will need to remediate the problem by adding more dirt. This adds cost. Plus, if you don’t buy an expensive casket and a vault, the funeral home loses out on the profits to be made from those items and how can that be fair? The $1,500 cost of the shroud is also easy to justify. We’re not talking about a used bedsheet from Goodwill. These are top quality items, purpose-built, with handles. If someone else offers to sell you a shroud for $299, ask ’em if it has handles.

Well, we’re still thinking about it. But meanwhile, moving from death to death’s opposite, let’s go into the back yard and look at some spring flowers. It’s tulip time these days, with phlox and mountain daisies in supporting roles. One of our photographers took advantage of a brief moment of sunshine.