blueishness

Only about a spoonfull, but full of flavor... In a pot next to the front porch is a blueberry plant, a gift from Larissa when I bought Acorn Cottage three years ago. I have no idea what variety it is, but this year it bravely set some fruit, and I picked the first ripe ones today. I think the plant wants a friend or two, and to be planted in the ground. When it is not summer, (with the ground baked hard and the sun glaring down), I will dig up the remnants of the rosemary bush and make a home for my favorite berries in the south side yard...

What I did on my summer vacation - part 2: Oregon Country Fair

For years, Fair was the hub that my year circled around, the one weekend a year that I got to live in the world as it could be, the closest I've come to the world I want to live in... Tourists at the Fair don't see the structure that allows it to happen, but for all the just-growed-ness of the organisation, it is the safest sanest city I've ever visited. There are thousands of residents that make it a temporary home for the weekend, vendors and entertainers and staff, and then there are the additional thousands that come as visitors, (this year I heard there were 19,000 through the gate).

My first Fair was in 1985, and there have been many changes over the last twenty-four years. I remember before the fair owned their site, before the water system, before wristbands and capped attendance. I worked Security for years, at the main entrance from midnight to six. I met Bill there one year; coming through the entrance he sold me a fibula and the story of my life turned, again. There were several years where I worked both my security shift and helped with selling jewelry during the day (sleep, what sleep, I'll sleep when I'm dead), and several more years (after I gave up my Security volunteering) when I was Bill's "lovely lady assistant". Our paths diverged, I juried my own artwork in, and on two different years tried to sell my enamels, but for the last few years since I moved to Acorn Cottage have chosen to stay home in July.

Thanks to a fortuitous combination of circumstances, I had the opportunity to return to Oregon Country Fair this year (the 40 year celebration)...

carved melon at one of the fruit salad booths

I arrived on site on Thursday afternoon, and after a not very long wait to check in and get "banded" (the wristbands this year were the kind of changeable design that shifts as you tilt it) I found my friends inside the Fair. Bill and Ariadne brought Ceilidh (Karen's niece) with them this year; she is 11, and it was her first Fair. I really enjoyed having her as a tent-roommate, and that I got to spend a lot of my time that weekend hanging out with her. 11 is a little too young to just be turned loose at Fair, and so in answering her questions, I got to see the site, and the sights, as if new.

winged clockworks stilt-walker

ferrocement and mosaic mushroom sculpture outside the Ritz Sauna and Bath-house

Friday night, she and Ariadne went to the the Carmina Burana fire opera show, I was just too tired, after helping Bill put the cart and stock away, I went back to camp and fell asleep. I don't have quite the stamina and resilience I did twenty-odd years ago, they have been some odd years indeed. I think I had more time to chat with folks and friends at Fair than at most SCA events, and I even found time to take a handcraft class at the Archaeology/Native skills booth, where I learned how to weave a bark basket from stirps of willow bark. I love basketry, though it is very hard on the hands and wrists, there is something so very primal and satisfying to me about it, every time I have done any basketry, it is as though my hands know they have done this before, in some other life...

On Sunday the skies opened, with thunder and lightning and a frogstrangling downpour. All day on and off rain made moving from one part of the Fair to another quite challenging. Six inches of rain turned silty fair pathways to sticky slippy mud, and the low ground into mud-wallows.

an appropriate song for Sunday

By Monday the rain had stopped, so tents were dry-ish for tear-down. The roads were so muddy that all gear needed packed out to the truck by handcarts. We stopped on the way home for a rejuvenating soak at Onsen, before the long drive back to resume our regularly scheduled lives...

What I did on my summer vacation - part 1: sometimes Thoreau is wrong

I was groggy with sleep, grief, and the remnants of a cold and laryngitis, when a phone call from N offered me a place on their 4th of July weekend trip. I heard something about river trip, and North Umpqua, and impulsively said sure. She said to bring clothing that I didn't mind getting wet, and salad fixings for six.

When I woke up the next day slightly more clearheaded, I wondered just what I had agreed to...

Spent some time with the reference library that never sleeps and I was more than a bit nervous; my most adventurous/only previous river experience involved an afternoon canoe trip on the placid Charles River outside Boston, drifting among the willows and waterlilies. The prospect of time away from the city and out in the woods was very appealing, I made cutoffs from an old pair of fleece pants, and a trip to REI yielded Keen water sandals, which I had been wanting and saving for months to buy anyhow, (the next weekend would be OCF, with miles of walking every day).

The whitewater rafting trip was amazingly delightful. Rather than being too scared to have fun, I was having waaay too much fun to be scared. I realised that rafting is like meditation, you have to be totally in the now to be able to do it at all. The North Umpqua is beautiful, and we saw many butterflies, turkey vultures not only aloft but also hanging out on the ground near the riverbank, and a young osprey catching a fish.

There were more delights in store for that weekend: In the evening, after the whitewater rafting, we hiked in to Umpqua Hot Springs. I love hot springs, and was glad I decided to go along, the setting was spectacular and the warm/hot water felt wonderful, though I found the log bridge across the river rather challenging. Pushing the edges of my comfort zone is a good thing.

The next morning, a waterfall excursion to Clearwater Creek Falls and Watson Falls, both beautiful and quite different from each other.

. . . .

On the way home the next day, we toured the Safari Park just outside Roseburg. Very different from an urban zoo, the animals have much larger open areas to live in. They have quite a large breeding population of cheetahs there, which was interesting to learn about, and I enjoyed seeing animals on the range and in the brushy habitat.

giraffe in the woods

~ : ♥ : ~

I think that the reason it is called recreation is that it can re-create you, bringing you back to your self. Being in the woods, being in the now, being on (and in) the water, was very healing for me. Many thanks to my friends for the gift of a weekend adventure that did me a great deal of good.