THE HOLIDAY SEASON

This time of year living alone with no family nearby can be depressing.    Being alone one can lose track of what's happening during the holidays, especially living in a rural location.   Yesterday I drove into Roseburg to grocery shop and then to Lowe's to see if they had the grade of hydraulic oil needed for my new wood splitter.   I completely forgot this is the time of year people are out shopping for Christmas.   As I entered Lowe's there was Mr. and Mrs. Santa Claus to greet me, an older couple dressed up in Santa clothes sitting on a sled.   I noticed the sales people were dressed up as elves.   Its been a while since I have been in Lowe's and where I thought hydraulic oil would be located was no longer the equipment section as they had changed everything in the store.   Standing nearby was a salesman dressed as an elf who took me out to the garden section where I  found the grade of hydraulic oil I needed.   I would have never of thought of looking in the garden section for oil of any kind.   On my return trip home I stopped to pickup three days worth of mail in my box.   I noticed a envelope from a woman in Texas.  My fist thought it might be a distant cousin to Celia, who did live in Texas as I remember.    It was not her cousin, but a woman living in San Antonia who had received a financial statement addressed to my address and somehow ended up in her mail.  She took it upon herself to directly mail it to me and avoid sending it back through the mail.   As I drove up Wildflower Lane and onto my driveway a pick up I did not recognize honked and stopped.   I thought they might be lost so I stopped to meet a FedEx man using his own vehicle to make deliveries.   It was a box of beans that Pamela and Mitchell sent me as they do every Christmas.   A man can never have enough beans.   

I must admit after yesterday this old scrooge feels the Christmas spirit and sees some goodness in this crazy world.

MERRY CHRISTMAS! 

LEWIS NEWTON - A GOOD NEIGHBOR

My neighbor Lew Newton passed away November 29, 2025 at the age of 94.   Lew and his wife Christine moved here in 1997 from Illinois to be closer to their older daughter, who lived on 10 acres with her husband at the end of the upper road on the top of the ridge.   Lew and Christine purchased a two story house at the end of the lower road that is above my place.   The older daughter and her husband sold their place and moved back east some time in 1999 or 2000.  The younger daughter lived in Eugene and would visit her parents on weekends.   Christine died 9 or 10 years ago leaving Lew by himself.   Lew had been a naval corpsman in the Korean War and made frequent trips to the Roseburg VA for his medical needs.   I suspect he had some PTSD from his experience in the war.    Lew was a helpful neighbor and any conversation with him he would end it by saying, "if you need help give me a call."   He was hard of hearing and rarely answered his phone due to his hearing loss.  Lew had a Kubota tractor that he would patch pot holes on the road with and at times helped me move down trees on our property.    I did help him out with falling some windthrown trees on his property and brushed his road once.   He had some near misses with his tractor, probably more than any us know about.   I remember hearing his tractor coming downhill onto an old tractor trail along the north boundary of our place.   As he drove down onto our driveway, I was puzzled by his appearance since there is no connecting road or trail on the property above us.   He told me he had run off the road on the 10 acres above that goes out to his house.   Knowing he could not get the tractor back up to the road he drove it down through the brush to the old tractor road that he knew was there.   He was a stubborn man hardly ever asking for help.   Seven or eight years ago he was using a ladder to clean the rain gutters on his two story house and fell.   He managed to call the ambulance for help.    His youngest daughter was staying with when she notice he was not doing good a day or two before he died.   She was going to take him to the hospital and he said NO, so she called the ambulance that took him to the VA hospital where he died the next day from a stoke.   Lew would have been 95 on December 9th.  Good neighbors like Lew are hard to come bye.  

NEW BED SHEETS

A few weeks ago while wandering aimlessly through the Sutherlin Bi Mart store, I noticed fleece sheets for a king size bed on sale for $45.   I thought to myself, those would be nice on these cold winter nights, since the old flannel sheets that I have are rotated as they wear out after developing holes in them over the last few years are in need of replacement.   Now that I think about those old sheets they must be 10 years old or more.  Maybe it was divine intervention from Celia telling me, " don't leave the store without them!"

SHOPPING WITH ARTHRITIS

My old friend Arthritis showed up last weekend and took advantage of my right knee.   By Sunday afternoon I was confined to my chair in pain.    Celia's old walker came in handy in helping me get around the house.   I was able to relieve some of the discomfort with a knee brace, some liquid turmeric and a Tylenol pill from a bottle that had expired sometime in 2024.   Hopefully that does not give me autism according to latest from the Secretary of Health and Human Services.   Luckily, I made a pot of beans and rice a few days before Arthritis arrived.   By Monday night the beans and rice were gone and the need to go grocery shopping was high on my list of things to do, along with a few other things that should have been done long ago.   This morning I managed to drive into Roseburg to shop at Sherm's Thunderbird Market, the most popular grocery store in the county, especially for us older folks.   I was able to use a shopping cart in the parking lot as a walker to make into the store and proceed to wander aimlessly, since I forgot to make a list, again.    Being a work day most of the people in the store were old retired people like myself and I suspect some of the older men had the same problem as they were staying close to their shopping carts and moving slowly.   After checking out and paying $62 for two bags of food I made it back home feeling good about this great accomplishment.  

LIVESTOCK IN THE NATIONAL FORESTS

John Muir described  large herds of sheep grazing in the Sierra Nevada Mountains in the late 1800's.  Open range land was common back in those days.    Even today some western states permit open range land and if a land owner wants to keep livestock off their lands they must construct fences.  

My first encounter with livestock in a national forest was when I worked as a timber sale contract administrator on the Greenville Ranger District of the Plumas National Forest from 1977 to 1979.  Cattle from a designated grazing allotment had wandered onto an active timber sale I was administrating, causing delays in the operations as cattle were in danger of getting harmed.   These cattle had colored tags on their ears with numbers.   The color of the tags indicated what grazing allotment the cattle were assigned to.  I contacted the District Resource Assistant (RA), who was responsible for grazing allotments.   He told the permittee/cattle owner to move the cattle back to their designated allotment area    At the ranger station there was a district map on the wall of the office of the RA showing the different allotments.  These areas were deemed ideal for grazing based on available range land, including meadows, sage brush grass lands, etc.   My best guess was about  20% of the district was feasible for grazing.  Permittees paid an annual fee based on the number of animals.   By Fall all these cattle were removed from the National Forest  due to snow to private lands at lower elevations.   I do not remember many fences, except at some cattle guards on some forest roads.  Cattle had access to streams, wet areas and lakes with no restrictions that I was aware of, or remember.   

Some wilderness areas allow grazing.   This is based on some of these areas classified as primitive areas before the wilderness act of 1964 when grazing allotments were permitted and allowed to continue after these areas were put into wilderness areas.   I saw this on two wilderness areas I backpacked into, including the Trinity Alps Wilderness in northern California and the South Warner Wilderness in the Warner Mountains east of Alturas, California.  I'm sure there are many other wilderness areas in the west where grazing is permitted.  

 

COFFEE

Recently I joined my daughter and her family at a vacation rental house near Waldport on the Oregon coast for a few days.  In my hurry to pack, I forgot to bring any coffee.  When I arrived at the rental house and started unpacking I realized I forgot the coffee.   We proceeded to search the kitchen cupboards for coffee.  We found a coffee maker and a coffee bean grinder, but no coffee.   Panic started to set in thinking of no morning coffee.  How would I ever make it through the day?   The only alternative was to drive into Waldport or stop at a nearby small convenience store thinking they might have canned coffee.   Inside the store were aisles of beer, soda pop and the usual stuff you find in a mom and pop's store.    Finally, I located some Folgers coffee containers, but next to them was small bags of whole bean coffee sold under the label, Elk City Coffee Company for $10.  With no hesitation I took one making sure it was not decaf.    The next morning while it was brewing in the coffee maker, the aroma brought a sense of hope to this old man and it tasted just as good as it smelled.  It maybe the best coffee I have ever had and worth the $10.  Not sure where Elk City, Oregon is, but it might be my next vacation destination.  

THE ENCOUNTER - NOVEMBER 1, 1997

His figure slightly bent against the incline of the brushy hillside, a man with a large black dog at his side made his way up trail #3 on Mt Pisgah.   To his right, off the trail, a group of five or six people cutting scotch broom, some seven or more feet high along with black berries.   The early fall day was pleasantly warm, the sunshine felt good on my back as I worked with this group, known as the Friends of Mt. Pisgah.  

The man and his canine companion passed quickly by.   I remember a glance our way and a reserved "hello" from him, addressed to no one in particular, before he disappeared around the bend in the path.   Soon my thoughts returned to the task at hand, for I was in my element.  Only for a brief moment had my mind registered some impressions of the encounter.   If translated into words, my tumbling thoughts probably ran something like this:

"Hmm, cute man.  Looks somewhat reserved, or maybe a little lonely?  Oh, probably married like all the good ones, or maybe in love with a woman who's a cross between Demi Moore and Cleopatra.  Oh well, I'm going to be a mumbling old woman anyway...back to work!"  I attacked more scotch broom with a missionary zeal.  

Soon the black dog, plume tail waving gaily and amber brown eyes dancing with joy, returned along the trail.   His master followed a few steps behind.   Both man and dog stopped, the dog to sniff our outstretch hands and the man to ask what we were doing.   I replied that we were trying to eliminate as much of the "exotic" (non-native) vegetation from the hillside as possible, to give the native plants a chance to flourish.   One thing led to another, and before long he asked if he could help sometime.    Never one to turn down a volunteer, I tumbled down the hill to where he was standing and took the card he offered.    I smiled at the prospect of someone's actually wanting to join us--usually hikers wanted to know what was going on when they saw us working, but when informed that we needed more helpers, would look embarrassed and mumble that they must be on their way.   While I was taking the man's card, he said he was available.  (Hmm!)   I observed that his eyes were a keen blue, with a kindly expression.   He was somewhat on the shy side, I thought, but friendly enough.   I wanted to talk to him further, but all I got to say was that we had another work party coming up soon, and that I'd call to tell him exactly when, for at this point our president, Stewart, collared him.   Stewart is in his eighties but very active  (and, I might say never at a loss of words), and Mike (for this was the man's name) got the full rundown on the Friends of  Mt. Pisgah--all he wanted to know, and more.  Gamely, he stuck with it and even managed to look fascinated with Stewart's monologue.  Meanwhile, I petted Jack the black dog, until finally I thought it would be overkill to hang around any longer.   Back to work I went with Mike's card in my pocket.    It would take about a week for me to get up the nerve to actually call him.  I did, though, and he joined us for a work party.   That was the beginning of the end.   Little did I know then, however, that in the weeks and months to come, Mike and I would become very close.   The encounter on a brushy Mt. Pisgah hillside was to have fateful consequences, indeed.

Celia Scott

PS:  I found this filed under documents in the computer and was unable to download or copy it, so I transcribed it into the blog.

Mike 

FOUR YEAR ANNIVERSARY

It is four years today when Celia left this word, something I think about every day.    It is not all sorrow as I think back on her humor, wit and that smile.    She had her own way of doing things, such as working in the yard in her bathrobe before eating her breakfast, playing on her violin, cutting scotch broom in the afternoons or off to town for groceries or check out the thrift stores.   At times she would call me before coming home to tell me not to worry about dinner as she was bringing home pizza and beer.   We were very compatible house mates.   We both had our own space for clutter, be it books, magazines, junk mail, etc.   When it started falling on the floor we both worked together attempting to put order to the clutter.  After an hour or more Celia would say lets go out and get something to eat and we can do this later.   It was common for us to go out to eat two or three times a week.   She would say that she only wanted a lite meal, but after looking at the menu she would order a big plate of food, be it Mexican, Chinese or her favorite salad at the Lighthouse Cafe, one of her favorites eating establishments.   Her love of the environment, animals and plants were very important to her.   There were times while looking at plants at Bi Mart she would buy the  poor looking ones with the intent of nursing them back to health.   This was true of the many cats she took care of.    It was common while we would work on our property, for all our cats to follow us into the woods and hang out with us as we planted trees, removed invasive species or just sat down to admire our surroundings and a share a kiss or two.    She is immensely missed!

THE BROKEN TRACTOR BRAKE

About five or six months ago I received a recall notice from John Deere (JD) that a piece in the brake linkage, called the brake bell crank on my JD tractor was suspectable to braking and advising me to no longer operate it.   The recall involved three tractor models going back to 2018.   After inquiring with the local JD dealership where I purchased the tractor, they informed me there are an estimated 500 tractors they had sold since 2018 that needed to come into their shop for replacement of the defective part starting with those models sold in 2018.   I purchased my tractor in 2019.  Being mindful of the potential brake problem I continued to operate my tractor as needed.  I shared this information with my neighbor as he has borrowed the tractor at times and lives just down the road from my place.   A month ago I went to the JD dealership for an oil filter and oil, and asked what the status was with replacement of the defective part.  They told me they were taking in 4 or 5 tractors a week and the hang up was not receiving enough of the replacement parts from the manufacturer.  This last week my neighbor was using the tractor and the brake bell crank broke while he was operating it.   Luckily he was able to reverse the tractor using the hydrostatic transmission reverse pedal avoiding a disaster.   I called the JD dealership and informed them of the breakage.   They told me they would call other JD dealerships in hopes of finding a new part and get back to me on scheduling the repair.    I did receive a message from the dealer and called back without connecting to that individual, who I believe was the manager.   The person that did answer the phone said he would put a note on the callers desk to call me back and informed me they were short of people to do all the work in the shop.   I never received a call back. The next day I decided to look under the tractor and saw the broken piece and proceeded to remove it myself with little difficulty.   The broken part was made out of a cheap alloy, called pot metal by us common folks.  Then I drove into the dealership and approached the parts counter where four employees were busy talking.   I put the broken part on the counter saying, "have you see this before?"   Immediately I got everybody's attention, including the manger, who was among the four.    Without any introductions they knew I was the guy who called the day before.  The manger told me he had a new replacement part that they received from the JD dealer in Tangent and handed it to me.  He offered to send somebody out to my place to help put it on the tractor, but I told him I could do it.   He then told me I was the first customer to report a breakage out of all the tractors under the recall in their dealership.   The new part was made out of real steel and much heavier.   

THE STELLAR JAYS

These birds are a nuisance and in many ways they know my routine.   Whenever I put sun flower seeds in the bird feeders they start screaming to each other from the nearby trees as if to say, "he finally put feed out, lets go!"  Whenever I go outside they start screaming.   I try to keep food outside for my black cat, but the Jays seem to find it no matter how I try to hide it from them.    Now I find myself talking and screaming back at them and the real problem is I think they understand me.  

 

THE MYSTERIES OF LIFE

The older I get the less I understand or wonder if I ever did understand about the human species and life in general.   We humans are complicated creatures compared to other animal species.  Take my cats for instance, they just want to eat, sleep, prowl around and to some degree think they can control the humans in their life.  Us humans want to take control of our environment in order to accommodate our needs.   In that process we usually destroy, alter and infringe some form of harm on our fellow humans and other animal species in the name of greed as we destroy the environment around us.   

Where I live in the country it becomes very dark when there is no moon and the universe of stars becomes so visible that it boggles my mind to look at the heavens above.   Lately I learned if I could travel at the speed of light I would never make it through our Milky Way galaxy in my life time.   Just to ponder that puts me in my place realizing how little I know or maybe want to know.   Maybe my cats have a better life.       

THE LONE FROG

 Over the last couple of weeks there has been one frog that spends most of the night and part of the day crocking near the front of the house.  I assume it is a frog in search of a mate.  Since I do not know a female crock from a male crock, I'll assume it is a male.   Whenever I operate any power equipment, such has the hedge trimmer it makes the frog crock more and loader.   You would think it would scare or silence the frog.   Off in the distance I can hear other frogs that seem to be communicating with each other on maybe who is available for courting or just looking for a fling.   Why doesn't the lone frog by the house not venture out to mingle with the other frogs in the wild?   Maybe he is hoping a female frog out in the wild will hear his call and come look him up to see if there is any chemistry.   I guess it is one of the many great mysteries of life to ponder.   

THE MYSTERY MAN

Recently one of my neighbors sent out an email to all of us living on this hillside, which is 11 residents, about a tall man wearing a hood walking along Wildflower Lane and not waving or showing any sign of recognition.   On the subject line of the email it was titled, 'Mystery Man'.  Soon afterward there was an exchange of emails speculating on where this person was going, including myself thinking he might be camped out on a 10 acre home site that has not been developed yet.  Another neighbor thought he might be squatting in the old cabin on my lower 10 acres.   The next day I checked out the cabin and found no evidence of anybody squatting there.   One afternoon last week, as I was driving back home, there was a tall man walking up Wildflower Lane just above my driveway.   He never looked back to see me and I assumed he had some kind of listening devise plugged into his ears.  I can't remember if he was wearing a hood.   One neighbor to my east is a tall man and occasionally walks the road, but does not wear a hood and usually waves as I have driven by him.   It could have been him.  My neighbor below me said he should check in their unused horse barn to see if that is where he might be,  Other neighbors report seeing no such person.   This mountain side covers much area, including large acreages to the west with old roads no longer used for vehicle traffic since they have become grown over with vegetation and could be inviting to a vagrant to set up a camp.   With the increasing homeless situation some of these people might be seeking refuge in the rural areas of the county.   On some of my drives into town I have noticed some people with backs on them walking along highway 138 going toward Sutherlin and some were wearing a hood.   Now the common question when neighbors pass each other or meet up at the mail boxes is:  "have you seen The Mystery Man?"

FRED & ORVILLE

In the spring of 1972 the Orleans Ranger District (RD) hired two seasonal employees, Fred and Orville, to work on the timber sale preparation crew.  They had previously worked on the Stonyford RD of the Mendocino National Forest together doing timber work.  Orville had a four year degree in forestry, but was hired on as a forestry technician as most of us working on that crew were.   Fred was a refined hippie, who had family in Napa, preferred good food, fine wine and marijuana,   Orville was an old Kanas farm boy, who would eat anything, chewed tobacco and drank cheap beer and wine.   Orville had a small dog, named Charlie and a horse.   Fred and Orville rented a single wide trailer in one of the nearby trailer parks.   They were not gay, but it was better to split the rent in order to save money, plus there was a shortage of places to rent around the community of Orleans with a scattered population of about 600 people.   They were definitely the odd couple as Orville was more laid back and Fred tried to keep some sort of order in their housekeeping.   There were mornings when Fred came to work in a grumpy mood, probably from smoking too much Humboldt tobacco and complaining how Orville was a Neanderthal man.    If I remember correctly Orville kept his horse tied to a tree near the trailer and used his horse trailer as a barn.   After a couple of years at Orleans they went their separate ways.   Fred went back to school at Lassen College in Susanville to get a two year forestry degree and Orville got a foresters position on the Gasquet RD, north of the Orleans RD, planning and writing environmental analysis for proposed timber sales.   While at Gasquet, Orville met a woman by the name of  Toni at the Rusty Nail Tavern, they eventually married and lived in a trailer on her parent's property along the Smith River.   After a year or two of doing paper work Orville quit his forester job and did odd jobs around Gasquet cutting firewood, garden work, etc.   Orville and Toni did visit me and my family when I was working on the Gold Beach RD from 1979 to 1988.  Orville was hired again on the Mad River RD as a technician doing field work which he preferred more than office work.   Fred met a woman also studying forestry at Lassen College, they eventually married and he got a job on the Rogue River National Forest doing timber sale contract administration.   While I was working on the Gold Beach Ranger District in the 1980's, I met Fred at a training session near Medford and he invited me to his house in Central Point for dinner with his wife and two young daughters.  

After I left the Forest Service in 1995 I lost track of these two characters.   Sometime in the late 1990's, I found out that Orville had been working as a wilderness ranger on the Toiyabe National Forest out of Carson City, Nevada.   He had suffered a heart attacked on a tour of duty in a wilderness area and was brought out for triple bypass surgery.  After that he was put on limited duty until he was forced to retire.   I met up with  him and his wife, while visiting my sister Ann living in Yerington, Nevada.  Orville and Toni were living on high desert acreage near Silver Springs, Nevada where they had horses.   Orville no longer had his dog Charlie and told me he ran off one day when they lived near Ruth Lake on the Mad River RD and never returned.  

A couple years later I received a call from Toni that Orville died at home from a heart attack at the age of 72 or 73.   I found a phone number for Fred and called to tell him of Orville passing away.   Fred had not been in contact with Orville for years.   He had left the Forest Service and took a job delivering mail for the post office out of Medford until he retired.