Meandering on the Way — April 6 to 15, 2024

Saturday, April 6th

Today we went on a guided walk at a property owned by the Greenbelt Land Trust. The walk was led by Kendra Callahan, a Greenbelt staffer, and Denise DeLuca, the author of Re-Aligning with Nature. We were encouraged to contemplate the oak trees and other plants on the property and try to imagine what lessons we could learn from them about how to deal with stress. Kendra, the naturalist, told us how the oak trees responded to a stressful period of heat and drought last summer by putting all of their energy into the single task of producing lots of acorns, thus ensuring the survival of their species. Denise led a discussion of how the experience of nature can provide us with new and healthier ways to approach the life challenges we face. Another gem of wisdom contributed by a participant was this guideline, “Don’t spend 20 minutes on a 10 minute problem.”

Sunday, April 7th

We went over to Albany today to get some free juice–the electrical kind. Our electric car, a leased Hyundai Ionic 5, came with two years of free fast charging at any Electrify America charging station. Of course there are no Electrify America charging stations in Corvallis. So that’s annoying. But there is an EA charging station at the Albany Walmart, which is about ten miles away. That’s good, especially since we often go over to Albany anyway for one thing or another. But two of the four EA chargers at Walmart have been out of service for the last three months and having only two chargers in working order usually means having wait in line to charge. So that’s bad.

Of course we can always use our charger at home, which is fine. But it’s not quite the same as getting free charging, which of course is not actually free–but never mind. Today we were celebrating the fact that the two bad chargers have finally been repaired. So off we went and got juiced.

On the way home we stopped for a walk at Albany’s Falling Waters Park, a series of ponds that provide wetland habitat while at the same time helping with wastewater treatment. As you might expect, there are a lot of No Swimming signs at this particular park. Crazy as it may seem, some families just don’t seem to care.

Tuesday, April 9th

E had her Better Bones class in the morning and then a THEPAJ meeting at lunch time. By 2:30 we were done with our responsibilities and headed off for an overnight trip to the coast. Once we got to Newport, we checked in to a unit at Little Creek Cove, then took a bit of a beach walk, followed by dinner at Local Ocean.

Wednesday, April 10th

We had a leisurely 2-mile walk through Mike Miller park, a forested area just south of Newport that we had never visited before. Much of the coastal land south of Yaquina Bay is former dune land. Nearest the shore are the modern dunes which are still shifting and presumably still growing. Just inland from the beach, plants appear and begin to fix the old dunes in place. Mike Miller park is about a mile inland and at first glance doesn’t look like a sand dune at all. The dominant plants on its western edge–the part nearest the sea–are shore pines and rhododendrons. This is also the flattest part of the park and one section of the trail runs north along an old railroad bed. The railroad was built during the first world war in order to transport spruce logs from Yachats to the port of Newport. In that era spruce was much in demand to make airplanes and there were no roads along this part of the coast.

The Mike Miller trail soon leaves the railroad bed and turns eastward and upward. Before you know it, the vegetation changes completely. You get to an area where the layer of soil atop the old dunes is thick enough to support a towering forest of Sitka spruce. Only in the bottoms of the little rills can you see the sand that underlies it all.

After the walk, we went straight back to Corvallis so that E could be ready for her evening activity, a soil science lecture by the Dean of the OSU College of Forestry. Don’t ever call it dirt, said he, it’s soil.

Thursday, April 11th

Tertulia today with J and R at Coffee Culture. R told us something else about Sitka Spruce, the fact that its range is restricted to a narrow band of land near the coast. It grows on the Coast Range slopes that face westward toward the sea, but is not found anywhere east of the first ridge.

Today’s trivia question: What famous World War 2 era airplane was designed by Howard Hughes and what was it really made of?

After tertulia, E kept busy, working with M to plan a trip to Joshua Tree, going to exercise class, meeting with her seamstress, and finally doing Laughter Yoga via Zoom. Good thing it was M’s night to cook.

Monday, April 15th

In the morning we went for a walk in the Finley refuge. We tried to take the Mill Hill trail but were forced to turn back when we encountered a really nasty section of trail. The track itself was all deep-looking mud and the vegetation on both sides included tons of poison oak. Well. We decided to go in a different direction and took the connector trail over to Woodpecker Loop.

Despite some areas of devastation from the ice storm, the forest was lovely at this time of year. We saw a few late trilliums and fawn lilies and also a calypso orchid or two. We also saw wild iris. And we couldn’t help but admire the lovely color of all the new poison oak leaves. They are really an amazing combination of shiny reds and greens. And we saw some camus flowers, which we don’t seem to see at all in the forests nearer home.

We had J and B over for dinner and B’s visiting brother J came along. Brother J lives in Maryland on a rural property where he is in the process of rehabbing and restoring both house and grounds. Challenges include a wooded area where the once dominant ash trees have all succumbed to ash borer. The remaining trees are the aggressively invasive tree of heaven, which in turn are the preferred home of the lantern fly, an even more obnoxious pest. There are of course lots of ash trees in the wetter areas here in Oregon. We’d better enjoy them while we can.

The dinner menu included cookie sheet vegetables and feta served with orzo. E made a salad and also did the veggie feta bake. Due to past trauma, however, she is strongly averse to cooking pasta of any kind, so M helped a little. And J contributed a lemon merengue pie for dessert. A very nice evening.