The girls walking along the trail at the bottom of Smith Rocks. 
Racheal standing on top of the cliff. We promised never to show her mom this picture.
Peacock Seduction
Shake those tailfeathers! Wednesday, June 16, 2010
Central Oregon Photos
The girls walking along the trail at the bottom of Smith Rocks. Racheal standing on top of the cliff. Shake those tailfeathers! 
Friday, June 11, 2010
Days Two and Three: Powerful Moments and Peacocks!
The first few nights of our trip, only four camping chairs sat around the fire. Jurgen, Rachael, Zach, and I filled the forest with laughter, poured it out the windows while dance-partying down the highway, and spilled it into every space in our beings. Some people have a special, un-nameable quality that makes you feel good when they are near. It has something to do with spunk, attitude, humor, and sincerity. My three friends definitely have that quality and it felt wonderful to simply sit around the fire with them.
Rain woke us the next morning, or maybe it was that early train on the tracks we foolishly chose to camp next to. We packed up and headed to Multnomah Falls, which is the tallest falls in Oregon at 620 feet. All I have to say about this place is: Multnomah-Shmult-foam-ah! It wasn't nearly as beautiful as Eagle Creek Trail and there were five times as many people swarming everywhere (including at least two buses of asian tourists and three dozen young parents with babies strapped to their backs and others toddling along beside). I will admit the falls there were beautiful but I prefer unpaved trails where you can walk completely immersed in nature. Multnomah Falls has too many distractions that slap me back to the reality of our overpopulated globe.
After the hike, we loaded our damp selves into the “burban” (my father's navy blue, diesel suburban which faithfully hauled us all over the state) and headed out along the Columbia River Gorge. We drove through the town of Hood River and took Highway 35 over Mount Hood to Central Oregon. I love the transition from lush, jungle-like forests, densely populated with trees and undergrowth, to the high desert with sagebrush and sparse growing Juniper trees. Breaking through the clouds into the sun feels good too.
That night we slept at my parent's house in Redmond. My red-headed little sister, Faith, monopolized the dinner conversation by monologing about cat warriors named Mousefur, Rainwhisker, Brokentail, and One Eye. Despite her bossy-ness and love for farting in my friends faces, I adore her.
The next morning, we met up with my cousin Hollie during a peacock mating ritual at Peterson's Rock Garden. That poor male peacock had his feathers fanned out for twenty minutes at least and the she-bird didn't even look up once. He kept strutting forward slowly and then, turning around to flap his tail feathers at her. I don't think I've seen anything more spectacularly hilarious in my life.
Next we picked up my 17 year-old sister, Kendra, and hauled the whole crew to a rock climber's paradise: Smith Rocks. Instead of taking Misery Ridge Trail, we followed the river trail along the base for awhile, and then cut off towards the top, zig-zagging our own way to the seemingly untouched peaks. I love trying to run up the 45 degree angle, half sliding every other step on loose gravel and sandy soil. Arriving at the top, thoroughly dusted and dripping sweat, feels so good. You can see for fifty miles in any direction and also 300 feet down the cliff you just conquered.
I feel overwhelming gratitude for these moments with these people. Sitting on top of a cliff while dangling our feet over the edge in reverent silence wraps us all thickly in the now moment. Some moments aren't punctured by distractions and those are the kind I treasure.
Rain woke us the next morning, or maybe it was that early train on the tracks we foolishly chose to camp next to. We packed up and headed to Multnomah Falls, which is the tallest falls in Oregon at 620 feet. All I have to say about this place is: Multnomah-Shmult-foam-ah! It wasn't nearly as beautiful as Eagle Creek Trail and there were five times as many people swarming everywhere (including at least two buses of asian tourists and three dozen young parents with babies strapped to their backs and others toddling along beside). I will admit the falls there were beautiful but I prefer unpaved trails where you can walk completely immersed in nature. Multnomah Falls has too many distractions that slap me back to the reality of our overpopulated globe.
After the hike, we loaded our damp selves into the “burban” (my father's navy blue, diesel suburban which faithfully hauled us all over the state) and headed out along the Columbia River Gorge. We drove through the town of Hood River and took Highway 35 over Mount Hood to Central Oregon. I love the transition from lush, jungle-like forests, densely populated with trees and undergrowth, to the high desert with sagebrush and sparse growing Juniper trees. Breaking through the clouds into the sun feels good too.
That night we slept at my parent's house in Redmond. My red-headed little sister, Faith, monopolized the dinner conversation by monologing about cat warriors named Mousefur, Rainwhisker, Brokentail, and One Eye. Despite her bossy-ness and love for farting in my friends faces, I adore her.
The next morning, we met up with my cousin Hollie during a peacock mating ritual at Peterson's Rock Garden. That poor male peacock had his feathers fanned out for twenty minutes at least and the she-bird didn't even look up once. He kept strutting forward slowly and then, turning around to flap his tail feathers at her. I don't think I've seen anything more spectacularly hilarious in my life.
Next we picked up my 17 year-old sister, Kendra, and hauled the whole crew to a rock climber's paradise: Smith Rocks. Instead of taking Misery Ridge Trail, we followed the river trail along the base for awhile, and then cut off towards the top, zig-zagging our own way to the seemingly untouched peaks. I love trying to run up the 45 degree angle, half sliding every other step on loose gravel and sandy soil. Arriving at the top, thoroughly dusted and dripping sweat, feels so good. You can see for fifty miles in any direction and also 300 feet down the cliff you just conquered.
I feel overwhelming gratitude for these moments with these people. Sitting on top of a cliff while dangling our feet over the edge in reverent silence wraps us all thickly in the now moment. Some moments aren't punctured by distractions and those are the kind I treasure.
A Few Day One Photos
Here we stand, dangling 100 feet over the river, after we rocked all 3.3 miles to High Bridge.
Zach, Jurgen, and Rachy standing in the middle of the river.
Officially the smallest flowers I've ever seen.Tuesday, June 1, 2010
Day One: Eagle Creek Trail
My mind has never been blown to pieces so many times in one day. After we set up camp at Viento State Park, we drove a few miles down the gorge to Eagle Creek Trail. Honestly, I felt like I was on Pandora from the movie Avatar. Every ten feet Jurgen stopped to photograph something while the rest of us kept hiking with our mouths hanging open. I have been to a lot of gorgeous places but this topped them all.
Picture yourself walking through a forest with ferns spilling over into the path, moss in shades of lime and sea foam green cover the rocks and hang from the trees, on your right water splashes downstream towards the Columbia River. Slowly the grade gets stepper and through a break in the trees you see a meadow filled with tie dyed flowers with pink fading to blue, vibrant orange, glowing yellow, and white all painting the side of the mountain. The river is now at the bottom of the cliff you are walking along the edge of as you carefully make your way around a waterfall. Across the canyon you can see tree covered walls growing straight from the creek to the sky, the tops are almost beyond your view.
At any distance this trail held enough to captivate me for hours, just standing in one spot. Once when I stopped to take tally, I found four different types of ferns, tiny daisy-like flowers (small enough to fit 15 on my thumbnail), eleven varieties of leafy plants, vines, moss-covered rocks and tree trunks, two different types of white flowers, yellow and orange flowers, a few beetles with red ruby-like bodies, and clover. If I shifted my gaze a bit farther, I saw rays of sunshine breaking through small gaps in the trees and the expanse of a canyon, stretching out as far as I could see to the left and the right. At times, the soil on the trail was black, other times it had orange tints, and still other it glowed brilliantly red.
We passed countless waterfalls but we found the largest one when the trail opened up to a rocky shore next to the river about 2.5 miles in. Moss-draped cliffs towered above us as Jurgen (our friend who came to camp with us all the way from Germany) made his way out onto some rocks in the middle of the water above the falls. From that vantage point, you can see around a cliff to an even larger waterfall called Punchbowl Falls. He couldn't get over the beauty and declared, "We've reached the end of the earth. This is it! I could die now a happy man because we've seen the most beautiful place on earth."
This hike was day one of our ten-day camping trip. What a long list of adventures we've had! Obviously I wasn't able to blog from the depths of the wilderness but I'm back now and I'll spin you all my stories over the next few days.
Picture yourself walking through a forest with ferns spilling over into the path, moss in shades of lime and sea foam green cover the rocks and hang from the trees, on your right water splashes downstream towards the Columbia River. Slowly the grade gets stepper and through a break in the trees you see a meadow filled with tie dyed flowers with pink fading to blue, vibrant orange, glowing yellow, and white all painting the side of the mountain. The river is now at the bottom of the cliff you are walking along the edge of as you carefully make your way around a waterfall. Across the canyon you can see tree covered walls growing straight from the creek to the sky, the tops are almost beyond your view.
At any distance this trail held enough to captivate me for hours, just standing in one spot. Once when I stopped to take tally, I found four different types of ferns, tiny daisy-like flowers (small enough to fit 15 on my thumbnail), eleven varieties of leafy plants, vines, moss-covered rocks and tree trunks, two different types of white flowers, yellow and orange flowers, a few beetles with red ruby-like bodies, and clover. If I shifted my gaze a bit farther, I saw rays of sunshine breaking through small gaps in the trees and the expanse of a canyon, stretching out as far as I could see to the left and the right. At times, the soil on the trail was black, other times it had orange tints, and still other it glowed brilliantly red.
We passed countless waterfalls but we found the largest one when the trail opened up to a rocky shore next to the river about 2.5 miles in. Moss-draped cliffs towered above us as Jurgen (our friend who came to camp with us all the way from Germany) made his way out onto some rocks in the middle of the water above the falls. From that vantage point, you can see around a cliff to an even larger waterfall called Punchbowl Falls. He couldn't get over the beauty and declared, "We've reached the end of the earth. This is it! I could die now a happy man because we've seen the most beautiful place on earth."
This hike was day one of our ten-day camping trip. What a long list of adventures we've had! Obviously I wasn't able to blog from the depths of the wilderness but I'm back now and I'll spin you all my stories over the next few days.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
