The glorious Portland Japanese Garden was built after WWII to promote an understanding of Japanese humanity, traditions, and ideals, while creating an urban oasis here in the city. That bridge would be built through nature, something that needed no translation. Our spring walk was full of contemplative beauty.
Portland
Back to the Garden
You can't turn your back on nature around here. Even after a dozen visits to the same place, it's different every time. In Portland's temperate rainforest what's here today is gone the next. What wasn't here recently, unexpectedly shows up. We had the rainiest April in history and the only recorded April snowfall as well. Add in some intermittent sunshine, and Elk Rock Garden was again delightful.
Balancing Act at Tryon Creek
Tryon Creek State Natural Area is a place I go back to for the re-balancing of life's delight and anguish, the glory and the suffering. I find all that amongst the second-growth trees, native plants, birds, and a babbling creek, and most especially, among the spring trilliums.
Under the Cherry Trees
You only get about a week to see the cherry trees at their peak of full open blossoms. Portland's exquisite beauty also guides our attention to our wretched history of immigration and discrimination, still so current.
Spring at Powell Butte
Powell Butte has wide open spaces alongside forest that gives you big sky and a fat dose of trees and meadows. An oasis amidst gritty city commerce for birds, animals, and humans. And clouds. So many clouds.
Cranes’ Landing and Fog
We went for another glimpse of Sandhill Cranes, but everything was submerged in an opaque fog, and we could have been anywhere.... I listened intently for that bugling call, or the cry of the geese. Apparitions rose from the fog as I peered around, and my ears strained to hear
Sweeping Up
I've been using a mental whisk broom to collect my 2021 details into a tidy pile. I look them over, and then… what? Resolve to do better, repeat what works, lose my frantic grip on what doesn't? It was the worst of times, but it was also the best.
Snow Day
With daily temps hovering just below freezing we just walk the neighborhood as usual, round and round.
Gray
...here I am, still trying to make my peace with winter. I turn my back on the gray skies, annoyed, wondering when blue would win out, watching and hoping it would peek through, a ray of hope. I calculate outings for the best of weathers.
Oh the Water!
The power of moving water that has traveled many miles is a mighty sweep of mind that displaces all the detritus and details and picky little annoyances of life, and smashes them to bits, and brings me back to nothingness - more than than I ever get on the mat or on the cushion or by watching my breath.
Rivers and Roads PDX 