It turned out not to be a good day to paddle, but it was a great day to sightsee and scout out possible future paddle sights along the Middle Fork of the Willamette east of Eugene where there are numerous dams  and resultant reservoirs.

Definitely not any possibilities this time of year.  Low water. Fast water. White water. Windy water.

And some classic Willamette Valley sights:

And a reminder that big-leaf maples have really big leaves:

I love them.

St. Patrick’s Day Parades.  Cinco de Mayo pinatas. St. Francis of Assisi Day blessing of the animals.

Some people like to celebrate the 2nd Monday in October as Columbus Day. Especially Americans of Italian heritage.

At 1880, it’s the day I usually hang out my Choctaw flag.

And I usually leave it out through Thanksgiving. They were here before Columbus or the Pilgrims.

The penultimate day it was across town with Barb to see Kay’s quilt show.  My personal favorite was the one in which she used a number of my family’s old handkerchiefs.

Then, on the very last day, Dave and I went for a beautiful drive through the country to Silverton Reservoir for a lazy paddle.

This is the put-in:

And this is as far up the creek we could paddle this late in the year. The sound of a babbling brook is my favorite sound in all the world.

You can listen to it here.  Try not to notice that I lost my train of thought and rotated my phone mid-clip. I thought I could edit it round right.  Not so much.

Last spring on the vernal equinox, a delightful ten-year-old boy was visiting 1880.  I learned several things from him that I never learned while raising girls.

First, apparently, boys don’t think it’s fun to sleep on the floor in a sleeping bag or even on a camp cot.  And, second, they can be very literal thinkers, unlike little girls.

I told him that on every equinox, the sun rises directly outside my east window, right behind my neighbor’s giant fir tree.  He thought my point was that the tree blocked my view. I guess I didn’t explain my point very well, but I think my little girls would have grasped it at once.

Perhaps at ten, male right brains are lagging behind just a bit.  We know that their left brains are already amazingly developed.

Here’s the point I wanted to make:

The universe is vast and constantly in motion.  Heavenly bodies orbit and spin and whirl and rotate and revolve; and yet, everything comes round right and in its proper place at the proper time and we should stand in awe of that.

I hope he comes to visit again next spring.  I think I’ll have everyone sleep on the floor in the living room in sleeping bags by the fire and tell stories all night.

I wonder if, at age eleven, he will get it when I drag him upstairs to look out the window at the sunrise.

In the meantime, I leave that part of his development to his un-step-mother, my daughter, who loves being a part of his life.  Like her sisters, she remembers to look at the sky and see magical things.

(photo credit ESU Roger’s Mesa 9/16/16)

Well, to begin, it’s not very big and we didn’t really paddle.  A more accurate word would be “dawdle.” And even at that speed, it only took two hours to circumnavigate.

Perfect end-of-summer day below the north face of Mount Washington.

Looking the other direction, was the back of HooDoo, the Butte, and Three Finger Jack.

Not ultraoligotrophic like Clear Lake.  Just oligotrophic.  But it was enough for me to get a picture of my own shadow on the bottom of the lake.

We stopped off on the way home to eat on the deck behind Marion Forks Cafe.  Great spot right next to the North Santiam.

Our table had its own humming bird feeder.

Then we headed on home, taking the scenic route, as usual.