RIDING AMTRAK

For our honeymoon Celia and I took the Amtrak train from Eugene to Seattle to visit her older daughter in October of 2000.   Over the years that followed we took it three or four more times to Seattle.   It was always an adventure and usually never on time.   The trip from Eugene to Seattle involved 9 stops, including a 20 minute layover in Portland to switch trains.   Since the rail lines are own by freight trains, such as Union Pacific and Burlington Northern/Santa Fe,  Amtrak had to yield to freight traffic and sometimes that involved sitting on a siding waiting for the freight trains to go by.   It usually was a six or seven hour train ride depending on stops for freight trains, which is about the same amount of time it takes to drive it.   The big difference was no stress from driving and the biggest thrill was looking out the train window and seeing all those poor souls stuck in bumper to bumper traffic on the Tacoma/Seattle freeways.  

THE PIZZA BAKING SHEET

When I lived in Eugene from 1991 to 2000 I had a round aluminum pizza baking sheet.    I believe it was past down from the years of my first marriage.   Over the years it became dented and beat up from much use, even turning black.   Most the pizzas baked on it were home made using BOBOLI Pizza Crust.  Toppings consisted of using left over veggies or whatever else looked good from depths of the refrigerator.   Luckily I don't remember anybody ever getting sick from the toppings that may have been used a little beyond their expiration dates.  Every time the baked pizza was cut using a round pizza cutter more dents appeared in the baking sheet.    My daughter had a friend that occasionally ate dinner with us including a few pizzas.   On one occasion the friend asked, "is that a hub cap you bake those pizzas on?"  

MY DOG JACK

It was a late November afternoon in 1989 when I was about ready to leave work at the Cottage Grove Ranger District office and go home to a little house I rented on Lynx Hollow Road north of Cottage Grove.   No sooner than I started packing up my things to head out the door when a woman that worked on the road maintenance crew came up to me asking if I would take a puppy they picked up walking along a forest road where it was beginning to snow.   She knew I had just put my old family dog Corky to sleep because of health issues.   She said she could not take the dog because they already had some dogs.    So I went home with the little black puppy that looked more like a cub bear that I named Jack.

There was a storage room in the back of the house where I left Jack during the day with food, water and a partially opened window as I went off to work.   When I came home at night I let Jack out in the back yard and he had free range in the house at night.   One wall of the storage room had unpacked boxes of items from the house I sold in Gold Beach in 1988.   After a few weeks I noticed Jack was in a corner of the storage room as if something had been bothering him during the day.  One day I saw a wild cat jump in through the opened window and discovered she had a litter of kittens in one of the boxes.   Jack had become accustomed to this wild cat coming and going as she raised her kittens.   Later I discovered the after birth in the box where she had the litter.   The wild cat and her kittens left the house to live in the barn behind the house and roam the nearby fields for rats or other small varmints.   In 1991 I bought a house in south Eugene in order to allow my two children to live with me on a part-time basis while they were in high school and their mother was considering moving out of the area.   Jack was two years old and I constructed a fenced yard with a dog house where he stayed when I was working in Cottage Grove.  Over the next few years Jack went on many hikes, backpacking trips and in the Fall of 1997 went on a  cross country car trip with me to visit a sister living in Indiana.    When Celia and I bought a house in Cottage Grove and got married in 2000 Jack became part of the family.   Jack was susceptible to seizures and in 2005 we had to send him over the Rainbow Bridge due to failing health.  

      

SECOND ANNIVERSARY

Today is the second anniversary of Celia leaving this world.   It still seems like yesterday.   In many ways she is still here in this house with all her decorations, furnishings, paintings and other things she cherished.    It still feels like home to me.    Family and friends are still my greatest support, especially friends who have also experienced the loss of a loved one.   They have given me much emotional support that I will always cherish.   One thing for sure, love never dies.  

THE END OF A LONG WINTER

Yesterday I made the drive to Eugene to close Celia's credit union account and distribute the remaining funds to her two daughters.   On my return trip I left the freeway at Creswell and drove east on Cloverdale Road, then turned south onto to Sears Road which goes along the eastside of the Coast Fork of the Willamette River all the way to the Row River Road east of Cottage Grove.    There was only one other car on the road during my drive.   It was the first real spring-like day this year with green fields, cattle grazing in lush pastures, old logging equipment in a field now overgrown with blackberries, the old Hemmenway Dairy now with vacant barns and the other scattered farms along this 12 mile route.  Driving this route was like going back 30 years when I worked for the Forest Service on the Cottage Grove Ranger District with all the log truck traffic delivering their loads to all the mills in the vicinity that are gone now, the smell of the manure from the dairy, and the many Sunday drives that Celia and I made on this road when we lived in Cottage Grove, especially to the Cloverdale Chapel on October 7, 2000 to get married.  Yesterday was a good day and I do believe this long winter is over. 

CABIN FEVER

It is now the first of March of 2023 and we all have had our fair share of winter weather and confinement to the house due to snow and icy roads, better known as cabin fever.   This got me thinking back on my younger days when I worked for the Forest Service in Orleans, California living in a small house that was half trailer comprising of the bedroom and kitchen all attached to a wooden structure that made up the bathroom and a small living room.  I guess you could call it a shack, all for $70 a month.   I was a full-time employee and I think the only single employee working on the Orleans Ranger District, except for most the seasonal employees that had 180 day appointments or about six months of work before being laid off.   The winter months of 1971 to 1974 could be lonely with no seasonal employees to hang out with after work, no woman in my life while most the other permanent employees were married and had families.   The days of winter were short, the weather could be dismal and Orleans did not offer much entertainment or social events, except sitting in one of the three taverns drinking beer with the local Indian population that were not too friendly when they had a belly full of beer.   This led me to drinking at home in the evenings and usually consuming poor quality cheap wine, the kind that had no cork in the bottle.  Having consumed a good portion of this stuff sleep was not a problem.  My reading material consisted of monthly subscriptions to Mother Earth News, The Alaska magazine and a few others.   On weekends outdoor activities such as fishing or hiking were limited due to the rain and snow at the higher elevations.  I did have a dog for company by the name of Herman, a black mutt male that I found as a puppy wandering lost along the highway one weekend.   Sometimes after heavy rain storms the highway out of town would be closed due to landslides up to a week or more.  This would prevent the delivery of the basic essentials to the local market, including beer and wine.  Sometimes panic would set in after going to the market and seeing very little available on the shelves, especially beer and that cheap wine.  

By spring time it was a relief to see some of the seasonal employees return, people to go to the tavern with or into Eureka or Arcata on the weekends.  In  January of 1975 a new receptionist was hired by the name of Christine, we were married in August of 1975 bringing an end to those lonely winters.

 

LIVING ALONE

 Living alone has its challenges and benefits.  Trying to keep order with the day to day chores can be more than one person can handle at times when living in a remote setting where there is a yard and house to maintain, a water collection system to operate during the wet season and keeping the place warm using firewood during the winter.   In addition,  there are 20 acres of forest land to take care of which provides an escape from some of the other not so enjoyable tasks.    A routine is important to keep loneness at bay, but there is always time to reflect back on what life was like when there was the two us here to share in the daily rituals of life.  In many ways there is still the two of us here.  

 Living alone is nothing new to me.   Except for times when my children lived with me in Eugene, I spent a good part of 14 years living alone before Celia and I took up with each other in 2000.   Over the 20 years we were married many habits and routines were developed and they are hard to break.   For now I do not see myself moving to some strange place as long as I'm in fairly good health and have the support of family and friends.   Who knows what tomorrow will bring?  One thing for sure, the price for love is grief.  

 

THE RESTAURANTS OF EUGENE

When I lived in Eugene from 1991 to 2000 on East 26th Avenue, just a block off south Willamette Street, I could smell the different foods being cooked in a variety of restaurants up and down Willamette Street.   Depending on which way the wind was blowing  I could smell the grease from McDonalds a few blocks to the south or the smell of pastries from the bakery to the north.   It was very tempting in the evenings to just let my nose lead me down the street to whatever appealed the most.   There was everything from fast foods, pizzas, Italian, Mexican, Thai and the Glenwood restaurant serving American dishes, especially a good place for breakfast.   The Italian place was within a block and every Tuesday night it was all you could eat spaghetti night for the price of the first plate.    One of my favorites was a Korean place in the corner of the Payless Drug Store, which is gone now and replaced with a Market of Choice.   It was operated by a Korean family serving very authentic dishes and spicy.   Sometime after meeting Celia in November of 1997 we went to the Korean restaurant along with my son.   Celia decided to put some hot sauce on her dish and started violently coughing.   We had to pour water down her to quench the cough.   In the years that followed I think we ate at almost every restaurant in Eugene.  One of our favorites was the 19th Street Grill, which was close to where she worked at the Olum Child Development Center on the U of O campus.  It is now a McMenamins restaurant and on a few of our trips back to Eugene over the 20 years of our marriage we would stop at what we still called the 19th Street Grill and reminisce about our early days.  .   

         

MY DOG HERMAN

 This was my dog Herman when I lived in Orleans from 1971-77.    He was part Chow and not sure what else, mostly All-American mutt.   I found him as a puppy walking along Highway 96 near Somes Bar.   Later I was told he my have come from a litter of dogs belonging to an Indian family living in that area.   Herman would go to work with me up until the Forest Service put an end to dogs going to work with employees, maybe in 1973-74.  When Christine and I married in 1975, Herman join the family, along with Christine's two dogs.   Herman went with me on many backpacking trips and always in my pickup on road trips.  He became a bad influence on Christine's dogs at times leading them in to trouble now and then.  

On one of our monthly shopping trips to Eureka we left the dogs in the back of the pickup, which had a camper shell on it with open screen windows.   The store we were shopping at was called Bazar's, a large department store with groceries, clothing, hardware and sporting equipment.   While we were in the center of the store we could hear people laughing and gasping as all three of our dogs were coming toward us in the aisle we were in.   The dogs had ripped open one of the screen windows, got scent of our trail, somehow entered through automatic sliding door into the store and followed our scent to the aisle we were in.   It was Herman leading the way as all three dogs were happy to have found us.    

Wandering Aimlessly

 You ever have the desire to take off with no final destination in mind?    Sometime in the late 1980's when my marriage was on the rocks and feeling depressed with a sense of loss I took off with my backpacking gear and some trail food in the car.    My general destination was the eastside of the Mt. Jefferson Wilderness thinking it was a good place to get away from civilization.   I left Eugene on a Friday evening after work and drove over Santiam Pass then turned north on a forest road leading to the Cabot Lake Trial head on the eastern edge of the Mt. Jefferson Wilderness Area.    It was about a 3 hour drive from Eugene.  It was the early Fall and no rain was in the forecast, so it was a good time to get away from it all before the wet weather set in.    There were only 3 or 4 cars parked at the trail head parking lot.   I loaded up my back and took off with no destination in mind.   It got dark on me about an hour into the hike, so I just got out my sleeping bag and slept on the trail.   Early the next morning I made my way to Cabot Lake and noticed some people on the other side of the lake.    After the lake I made my way toward Mt. Jefferson and ended up on a rim overlooking the Warm Springs Indian Reservation above the tree line.   It was a desolate area where a man could wander and never be found again.   That night I don't remember where I camped, could have been back by the lake on my return hike back to the parking lot, just don't remember.  Don't even remember my drive back to Eugene or wherever I was living at the time, maybe Cottage Grove.   Emotionally I may have never left the wilderness.  

Sure wish I could wander off these days, but the best I can do is wander aimlessly around the grocery store once a week.  

Twenty Years ago...

Today Celia and I celebrate 20 years of marriage. It all started November 1, 1997 when my dog Jack and I were hiking Buford Park outside of Eugene. I noticed a trail party work crew sign pointing to a side trail that I usually never took. Out of curiosity I turned onto that trail not knowing it would change my life. There I met Celia where she and some others were cutting invasive species, such as blackberries and scotch broom. They were members of the Friends of Buford Park & Mt. Pisgah. I made the fatal mistake of handing her my business card and telling her I was available, to work with the group that is. A couple of weeks later she called me about a work party that next weekend. I ended up joining the group where we worked as volunteers until moving to Douglas County in 2006. Celia was working for the University of Oregon Olum Child Development Center and at times I would work for University Housing doing landscape work as a contractor. Our favorite place to meet up and have lunch was the 19th Street Grill. On one of these lunch dates, I told her she was like an old shoe, meaning she was comfortable to be with. She accepted it as a compliment. Thinking back some women might have just got up and left. We were married October 7, 2000.