Perfect contest for a Willamette Naturalist!

Quoting the Presidential View of Crows

Tomorrow at the Faculty Meeting I plan to share the following quote in reflection before our meeting.

"I have no desire to crow over anybody or to see anybody eating crow, figuratively or otherwise. We should all get together and make a country in which everybody can eat turkey whenever he pleases."
Harry S. Truman

This would be a great talk to attend for all the Willamette Naturalists.

Homesick

The trees are changing color, fiery and vibrant in their blankets of gold and red. The birds are almost gone, and the only ones I see frequently now are ducks and crows. The squirrels are growing fat on nuts to prepare for winter. I saw a raccoon near the Library; it floundered through the Mill Stream as it fled me and my hall mates.

There are raccoons here, and crows, and squirrels, and robins and blue jays and bears and wolves and coyotes.

There are chickens back home.

At night, the clouds take on an eerie red tone. The first time I saw them, I felt as though the sky were about to bleed. It's worse on some nights than others, ranging from the palest of pink to deep, rusty hues. And sometimes there are no clouds, and the sky is clear and dark... but I can rarely see stars. Or perhaps I'm just used to seeing more, used to the darkness of Kauai nights, the clarity of Kauai's skies. There are no red clouds at home. The sky is lit with a thousand stars, and the clouds are white, or gray, or black, depending on the strength of the moon.

I can always hear the ocean back home. Here, I can always hear the trains.

I tried to find similarities for a time: In Oregon, it's green. It rains. It can get pretty damn hot. The people are wonderful. The weather fluctuates. It's cold in the winter. It snows from time to time. There are eagles, and vultures, and other predatory animals. There are big cities. There are mountains, and only one line of coast, and you can't swim in the ocean without a wet suit.

There are trains, and freeways.

There are skyscrapers.

I am not very good at finding similarities.

I woke up one morning to a thick blanket of fog outside my window. I ran out and wandered around in it, smiling in the chill. It was around this time that it finally hit me: Oregon's not like Kauai. But for the next four years at least, Oregon is like home.

For the next four years, Oregon is home. And I might as well get used to it.

Thoughts on Trees

Sept. 28

"Hey, I need a tree climbing buddy. You in?" Erin asks me over Facebook, and I respond with a simple "Hell yeah. You should call me." A few texts and a phone call later, we've set a time- but we change it again later with a couple of messages sent through wireless signals.

As we've decided through our electronic contact, Erin and I meet at 7:45 on Jackson Plaza, armed with our phones and Erin's digital camera. Our first tree is outside 'Smulton': I scramble up it, climbing as high as I dare until I'm more than 20 feet up and Erin looks like a toy beneath me. Up here, I can forget everything: the people, the computers, the phones. All I know are the tree and sky, and my relation to them - if I forget that, plummeting to the ground is a simple matter. I'm not wearing shoes, and I can feel the bark beneath my toes. I can smell the moss, the moist skin of the tree, the animals that dwell here. For a beautiful moment, I'm one with this solitary ecosystem... and then the click of a camera brings me back to reality.

Erin tells me to move into a better position, and I'm happy to do so, laughing as I literally go out on a limb. I climb down soon, and we move on to another tree, this time switching positions: I have the camera, she's in the tree. The sun is setting, and the flash makes her picture look like some sort of deranged zombie, or werewolf creature. She's a wild thing up in that tree, or so it seems to me, blending into the foliage and watching from above. But again, the moment is quickly lost, and she climbs down. We curse the poor quality of her camera and the bad lighting, upset that the zooming makes images blurred and that it's not so nice a machine as that of Carmelle, who has joined us and is now avidly taking pictures of mating squirrels with Erin's camera. The squirrels leave, and Carmelle does too, while Erin and I go on with our hunt for the perfect tree to climb.

We don't really find it. Sure, we climb more trees - one of the best is situated by the Law School, and I snap some pictures of Erin posing on its limbs. We make a full circuit of the campus, passing by the Mill Stream, Westside, Eastside, and multiple school buildings. But there are so many more to climb, and we've only just begun. We wonder if we could, by the end of the semester, climb every tree on campus: would Dave give us access to ladders? Would anyone else be interested?

I see saplings popping up in secluded corners. Some of the trees we've found are still too young to support our weight. In twenty years, how many more trees will there be to climb?

How many of the trees we found today will be gone?

Bring me the Broken and Unwanted

Seeing the museum exhibit a second time, I noticed some more subtle aspects of the artwork. The giant bottles picture is not one clear shot (the same bottle can be found over and over and over and... again). I looked at the materials used to create the large bird-like creatures. I noticed the stream in the mess of unwanted artist's waste (paint brushes, tubes, and other plastic trash). This impressionistic piece inspired me.

The artist's writeup intrigued me more than the other explanations. He spoke of his youth and described people wrapping everything (such as lunches) in newspaper and reusing their resources. At hearing this I felt not only appreciation but also a connection. As a college student, I have a low budget and I want to avoid being wasteful for environmental reasons, so I have taken on some more sustainable habits as of late. I wrap food in some handkerchiefs and hand clean them daily, rather than using paper or plastic. I dry my laundry on a clothes line. I go to Zena farm! I make my artwork out of things that people don't want- such as the broken mirror that someone from my hall tried to throw away. I go looking for make shift canvases. My door has a sign reading "BROKEN THINGS WANTED for artwork".

That painting embodies my lifestyle and mindset: the concern, the creativity, and the mode of expression.

The Wonders Near By

Starting Wednesday afternoon I could not imagine that Dave would actually have us go into the Mill Stream because it was cold outside. I showed up to class wearing jeans and a sweatshirt expecting to simply either stay in the classroom or walk around campus. Then, I saw Dave with all his gear; fish nets and a tank. I knew that it was time to go to the Mill Stream. When we got there, everyone in class, including Dave, hopped into the Mill Stream. Not wanting to go change, I decided to stay on the edge and see what I could find. I did not expect to find anything interesting right next to the edge of the stream, but then I found one fresh water clam, then another, then another. I just kept finding more and more. I picked them up and dropped them into the tank. After a brief amount of time, these clams started adhering to the glass of the tank. I had never seen a clam do that before! Finally, I found a crayfish. It was a small one who had an appendage that appeared to be re-growing because it was smaller than its other claw.