Winter Storms, Waterfalls, & Holiday Lights

I can't believe that just last week Mark and I were running around on the Oregon Coast in an early celebration of my birthday. Normally, when we go to the coast, we visit the stretch between Florence and Newport. This time around, we went south to the North Bend area.

We visited Silver Falls and Golden Falls, located at the end of a windy, sometimes narrow, road following the Coos River to its tributaries. The atmospheric river fed the falls, and the falls were trying to return the favor with a fierce spray of mist. Even though it wasn't raining at the time of our visit, we both got soaked. The geology was interesting; we weren't quite sure where all of the house-sized boulders came from. The falls looked great, and I imagine that I would enjoy them on a hot, dry day.

Afterward, we found our way back at the Pacific and Shore Acres State Park. It's been about twenty years since I was at the Shore Acres Gardens, and all I recalled was a fountain with lion's head spouts (I remember them looking more like lions and less like lumps of corrosion). We took a path to the beach where the surf surged dramatically against the rocks. The day became increasingly grey. When we went to an overview, the wind picked up foam frothed up by the pounding surf about thirty feet below, swirled it around like a murmuration of birds, and dropped it around us like dirty clumps of New York snow. As I looked south, I saw armies of clouds slowly creeping north and dropping curtains of rain.

Mark arranged for us to view the holiday light show at Shore Acres, but as it wasn't quite time for the show to start, we killed some time finding a local fish market where we picked up some "cold" clam chowder (the clerk had just turned off the burner, and the chowder was still hot) and some smoked salmon. Then it was back to the garden's light show. And the rain.

We both enjoyed the lights (even if I did have to keep my camera under my coat to keep it from getting too wet), and thought the local groups who created the displays did a good job. I think our favorite displays involved fish or whales.

Art Trying To Imitate Life

When I went to the MET last, I got a book on pop-up paper construction.








It goes through various types of folds and cuts one can make to create three-dimensional sculptures (for lack of a better word) out of paper.








I've been experimenting by cutting and folding blank 3X5 inch cards.








Last weekend when we went to Silver Falls, I thought, "I know, I'll try to make some pop-up designs of the falls."





So I tried.









I think I got some fairly Art-Deco water, which tends to look more like hair or snakes than water.

 And I also think I got something that looks not so much like water cascading over basalt layers but rather a stage set for an absurdist 60's play.

Oh well.

Elowah Falls

Sore and tired today.

We went on a hike to the Bonneville Dam area.

Elowah falls.

 Wild columbine.

Rusted out pipe with something slimy falling through a spider's web.

Fortune Cookies and Dreams

Today is my first day back at the UO English Department as a technology consultant.  I'm looking forward to re-joining the team because they appear to still have a friendly esprit de corps.  Coincidentally, I got a fortune from a cookie last night which seems apropos: "You will be soon be part of a team.  Work cooperatively for success."  (Yes, there's an extra be in there.)

Last night's Chinese food probably is the source of the non-stop dreams I had...


I was working on a play.  All I can remember at the time was that I had written it, it involved a mailbox, and I'm guessing that it was supposed to teach astronomy.  I was working under a deadline, throwing all sorts of things together, and I needed an iMac with which to print the script for the rest of the small cast and also 3D print the mailbox.

The iMac I wanted to use belonged to another IT department (this was an amalgam department, which, now that I think about it, was housed in the rocky foundation of the Very Large Gazebo (which was possibly also a library or bookstore).  There was a kind of hand-shake agreement that I could borrow iMacs, but someone in the other department made a sudden decision that I wouldn't be able to.  I was furious.

So, I had to improv my one-man play (OK, there was an assistant).  Without a 3D printed mailbox.  I gave a lecture about the rotation and orbit of the Earth and how it produced the seasons, spinning a large multi-colored umbrella for the earth while I walked around my lovely youngish female assistant who held a beach-ball sun.  The lecture was delivered in Mock-Swedish, ala The Swedish Chef.

---

There was a break. I was climbing a mountain with Mark (or at least it started out Mark, but over the course of dream events we changed into other characters).  We got to the top, and it was snowy.  I don't recall why we were there: if it had started out as a regular hike, or if we were exploring a jungle, or if we had crashed on an island or what.  We decided to rest, and spent a lot of time trying to find a comfortable position to sleep (I wonder if I was tossing in my sleep, as the rocks and snowdrifts weren't all that cold, and seemed too easily moved; sort of like pillows).

Presently, there was someone singing "Where Are the Simple Joys of Maidenhood." and the upshot was that I was alternately a disembodied third-person observer or a twenty-something beardless man with longish curly hair.  There were two women climbing the mountain, an older matronly woman and a younger maiden.

I don't recall, but somehow we ended up in the roaring river which was suddenly there.  I guess I must have recalled that we were supposed to be on a mountain, because after flowing through some mountainy-mesa-y valleys, the river plunged over a cataract (one of three) and into a pool.  The matron was swept over the cataract, screaming, and into a clear blue pool in a very deep caldera.  Oddly, she wasn't drowned or smashed to pieces.  The waterfall, it turned out, was pouring over a lava vent, so there was hot lava at the bottom of the pool, and ash collecting on its rim.  Oddly, she didn't boil to death; so the water temperature must have been just right (snow run-off plus hot lava equals ashy hot-tub?)

---

Another break.  The maiden and I (as twenty-something) were in a wooden kind of house built into the side of the cliff next to the waterfall.  We were looking for someone.  I am not sure if the matron was with us, or stuck in the pool, or if we were trying to work our way down the house so we could get to the pool, or if we were trying to find a Dr. Livingston character.

In any case, the twenty-something went downstairs, where jungle natives blew air-darts into him.  (I must have dreamed about blow-darts earlier, because they seemed familiar somehow.)  He passed out and woke up with everyone in an overgrown, bushy, scrub-oak jungle.  There was a voice-over about gentle natives meeting brutal Europeans, the resulting conflict, and now how the gentle natives were angry vindictive natives who shot people.  Cue the parting bushes.  Cue a rifle barrel point out...

And I woke up.