About 15 years ago, my son and I dug out two back yard fish ponds with a back hoe, to my wife’s surprise. A backhoe. (not in my backyard.) This pond was about 12 X eight feet. We stocked it with dime-a-dance aquarium goldfish. The goldfish grew rapidly. I operate...
The local internet buzzed. The local goose had tangled itself in a loose strand of fishing line, with a barbed lure tearing at her throat. The local goose was an odd duck. My best effort called her a Greylag or an Anser Anser. She was mean and would chase children. ...
The January rains struck parts of NW Oregon with near-biblical storms. Bethany Lake flooded to new heights. Two inches fell overnight and never let up. The Wood Duck Island vanished. The shallow turbid muddy stream turned into a 100-foot-wide version of a real river. While I’ve often joked this weather...
By January Bethany Lake in NW Oregon, just west of Portland, gathers storm waters from hundreds of acres of avoided wetlands. Effluent also drains from the thousands of manicured yards and miles of streets in the surrounding suburban areas. The Lake and its tributaries discharges to Rock Creek, which slithers down...
Edward Abbey memorialized environmental resistance to mindless development in his tome The Monkey Wrench Gang. It essentially endorsed sabotage to thwart degrading of the natural world, for instance, putting sugar in the gas tanks of bulldozers that are about to plow under a nice area. However, advances in surveillance make...
For starters, this “No Trespassing” sign isn’t on private property. It’s on Tualatin Hills Park and Recreation Lands that are open to the public as the Rock Creek Greenway, west of Portland Oregon. Fortunately there are many anglers who are simply crazed about catching fish and who would wade through Hell fire for...
Hard rains just swept across NW Oregon and vicinity. The creeks climbed their banks. I watch Rock Creek, and its tributaries that flow through Bethany Lake, ten miles west of Portland Oregon. Upstream of Bethany Lake, a half mile wide grassy meadow has transformed into a nicely braided creek with...
For 20 years, I’ve tracked the movements of herons and egrets where I’ve worked and walked. I’d been working at a golf course in Banks Oregon, 20 miles west of Portland. We had a year-round heron, and every autumn, an egret visited and fished for a few days, angering the...
An Oregon developer of a proposed gas station next to a creek and wetlands has withdrawn his application. In short: Victory! Withdrawn App, how sweet the sound, Saving trees … thirty feet around. They were doomed on this place, but now are saved, thanks to Grace. The nearby neighborhoods’ coveys...
The skies have not yield a moment of rain for months. But I knew how to make it rain. I hung clothes outdoors on our new fancy clothesline. It’s passive solar at its best. Except the Rain Gods, laughing, then made it rain twice. But not much, just enough to...
It’s especially hard to organize folks these days. You can’t call a meeting. It’s tough to talk and listen with masks on. Yet suburban folks west of Portland Oregon are organizing against a developer’s plans to build a Chevron gas station/mini-mart adjacent to wetlands, big trees, and a Park Greenway....
I’m just an old race horse out to pasture, pawing the ground when the race track bugle sounds. I still read the local public notices about developments, reflecting back on 40 years of environmental challenges, wishing someone was doing some more challenging. And then something happened. I am terrible at this...
“We have to be aware that climate change and biodiversity loss are stress factors for ecosystems, for humans, for animals, and for the microbiome. Our research shows that if the different axes of the disease pyramid are destabilized, new infectious diseases can be expected, including for humans.” Dirk Schmeller, Université de...
The inch-an-hour storms have driven the anglers away from my Neighborhood’s Bethany Lake. It’s full of hungry trout but the anglers flee the storms, heading home with a full creel and soaking wet clothes. Bethany Lake’s stocked rainbow trout are fattening up, hopefully on bullfrogs. And when the anglers flee,...
And I thought Ivanka Trump’s faux camping trip with her kids in her posh living room was the most tone-deaf thing I’d see during the coronavirus crisis. x Under the new coronavirus relief act, Geffen qualifies for a bailout for his cruise ship. https://t.co/kUVIa0iaDo— Robert Reich (@RBReich) March 28, 2020...
The Tualatin Valley of Northwest Oregon forms a shallow bowl, about 50 miles in diameter, with 1000-2000 foot tall eroded volcanoes walling in the lowlands, separating the region from the Coast and the Columbia River. I used to work near Banks, Oregon, and the vast acreages of of flooded croplands...
I walk from my house to Bethany Lake, west of Portland Oregon, on many days. The Lake is adjacent to a wide utility easement, a golf course, a park, and farmland, so there is considerable open water, undeveloped area, and large trees. All that space, and open water, and lots...
I often walk around Bethany Lake, 10 miles west of Portland Oregon. Swollen creeks pour into it from two directions, after the rains start. The Park Dept. stocks the lake with rainbow trout. Ducks are always there, and at least one goose. I am heartbroken because I haven’t seen a heron for...
x Wow, @HeidiNBC reporting that Trump called Pelosi today and asked “if they could work something out on this whole whistleblower thing.†— Jamie O'Grady 🤔 (@JamieOGrady) September 24, 2019 x Bless his heart — “Celia†(@_celia_bedelia_) September 24, 2019 x Did she pretend she only spoke Klingon on the...
This week of dire weather forecasts for the Pacific Northwest saw a year’s worth of snow fall on Seattle in a few remarkable days. Yet the lower elevations of Washington County, west of Portland, Oregon remained chilly, but stubbornly snow-free. Gaia took notice, and dumped hours of hard rain on NW...
Philadelphia Flyers’ Mascot Gritty is a different kinda guy so he takes representing his diverse city of some 1.5 million residents seriously and has no f**ks to give for racists. Or, it may be that his unfortunate resemblance to a well known shaggy haired orange Dicktator compels him to draw bright...
