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. ...
bethanylake
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...
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...
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....
You knew people were probably friendly the second they walked up. I wore a mask. We’d chat as long as they wanted. I could point at the big copse of trees across the field that are doomed. They’d take info about how to formally object. Some said they’d seen our...
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...