That Was Then, This is Now in Everyday Ramblings

One of the trees out back at sunrise this morning.

The plan yesterday was to go over and do a reconnaissance hike in an area in North Portland that both of us had been to occasionally but never explored called Saint Johns. Afterwards I was going to go over and have lunch with both the Sherlock’s and maybe their friend who is still living in his car as he completes his first round of chemo.

Mrs. Sherlock has all this stuff she wants to sell as they contemplate their move and we were going to talk about how best to do that. This is an area I have extremely limited experience in but am willing to learn by doing.

When she picked me up she said we needed to cancel the lunch part. She has a 92 year old friend who lives alone she helps out with various support tasks who has a UTI and Mrs. Sherlock was going to pick up her drugs and makes sure she is set up to take them regularly.

It was fine with me, much as I wanted to see Mr. Sherlock I was tired and had stuff to do.

When we do these reconnaissance hikes for The Trails Club we don’t talk much other than pointing out stuff and making suggestions for modifications and now noticing notable trees; all in the moment stuff.

That used to frustrate me because I wanted to talk about my week or whatever but I am learning how to get the support I need in various ways and it had been a quiet week anyway.

We say something like…You Good? I’m Good and then we are off.

Of all of these walks we have done over the years the residents in this area, at least those with actual formal places to live, win the award for being the most welcoming and friendly.

We had the best on the curb conversations with a wide variety of people. At one point I exclaimed about how cool it was that we were a couple of old white women with an appealing standard poodle because we were not threatening to these people in anyway.

We even found a house for sale with what appears to be a nice garden on a quiet street that Mrs. Sherlock was very interested in.

One of the features of the hike was a detour through a former industrial area right on the Willamette River (the biggest North flowing river in the U.S.) The Metro area bought the land about 20 years ago and started to clean it up and then the money ran out. It has some paths and they went through and cleared out all the blackberries and it is infilling with local vegetation and the remnants of the landscaping done for the creosote factory and the like.

There is a gate to keep everything but foot traffic out and just after we passed it a woman appeared with a handsome golden retriever poodle mix named Jackson. We took both dogs off leash, which is an unusual treat for Frida and stuck together chatting about the Pacific madronas and the female downy woodpecker we saw.

There is a cove and as we were heading down towards it we heard this wild chilling animal cry. It was a guy in a tent plopped down square in the path to the cove that Jackson had encountered first.

We cautiously, all five of us, got the hell out of Dodge and looked at the cove from further up the trail.

Imagine living in a tent smack dab in the middle of a Superfund Clean Up Site. Wow.

There were more campers up closer to the other entrance and closer to civilization. Garbage strewn everywhere. Keeping the dogs safe was our main priority. Jackson really wanted to go in the water. There was a family of Ospreys circling above.

Then we came out and said goodbye to our new friends and went into this well maintained gorgeous park under the massive and beautiful Saint Johns Bridge that anybody here knows as a landmark. Frida was tired and hot. (It was hot yesterday, high summer) and after we passed the Moonstruck Chocolate factory we headed back to the commercial area and had cold drinks (my iced lemon grass tea was so good) and a rest, headed back to the car and home. I took a nap!

The history, the houses, the gardens, the sun drenched river views and all these lovely people (bulldogs are popular out there) will stay with me all week. Such a fun day out.

Last updated August 04, 2019