WILDFIRE SEASON TO STORM SEASON?

Wildfire season? Storm season? Someone has an itchy panic button finger.

There’s nothing wrong with summer, fall, winter, and spring, but those names don’t carry the same impact anymore.

When asphalt gets tacky? Summer.

Leaves drop off trees? Fall.

Chilly? Winter.

Warming up? Spring.

Follow me for more weather updates and observations on today’s tricky world.

Tricky? How tricky.

Things turn tricky when conspiracy-minded folks open up with, “I had no idea until now that ____ (fill in the blank) is actually true, and it was right in front of our faces.”

They seem normal, but maybe you notice a tic, a twitch, a turn of phrase.

Call it an invitation to engage.

So, by all means, engage.

We hear so much about the ill effects of loneliness in the aged that it seems important to engage.

Instead of the isolation of online relationships where the keyboard gets the all important human touch, not you, we are encouraged to engage.

Just don’t leave common sense at the door.

For example, this is not the fire ravaged results of a lightning strike, or fireworks gone wrong, in an Oregon forest.

Those are not the burned trunks of once towering evergreens gone brown.

 

 

It’s also not the afterglow of a nuclear accident, chem trails, or the exhaust from the freeways of Lennox, although I could be wrong on the last one.

It is a part of the country used to showing natural beauty every day until it becomes commonplace.

And it’s more than enough.

 

Changes In Latitude

In two hours, give or take, you can go from sun-baked horizons to this.

What it’s not: This is not an uplifted green tsunami ready to roll over the towers of downtown Portland in the distance.

What it is: A shot from the backseat heading up the I-5 ramp to southbound Marquam Bridge from the eastside of the Willamette River.

The city is a distant reminder of Man vs Nature and who is winning.

A freeway with grass? Point for nature.

All the rest? Point for man.

 

 

That’s a lot of man-points in Portland, and it doesn’t take a Portland baby boomer to tell you.

Somehow the river got tamed enough not to flood downtown.

The Hawthorne Bridge to the right, the oldest in town by some accounts, is my most used.

I crossed it when I lived on the west side and worked on the east, then crossed it more when I moved to the eastside and worked on the west.

The shot makes the city look good, like any city with a good side, but it doesn’t show the whole picture.

It may sound like the musings of an old man too far gone to remember anything past breakfast, if that, but the city I showed up in in 1980 didn’t have stoplights going up the hill on West Burnside, didn’t have a Pearl District, and Pioneer Square was a parking lot.

But things were changing.

The Sambo’s restaurant on Burnside and NW 23rd turned into a real estate office with a seal on top.

Now it’s a bank with a seal.

I changed from a dedicated urban single guy who didn’t want to leave the NW 21st neighborhood unless necessary, who saw Multnomah Village as the wilderness, where Sherwood might as well of been the one in England, to a suburban dad with wife and kids.

Since then I’ve lived through the seasons of life, none of which was storm season.

 

Leaf Season? Now That’s Real

Talk to anyone evacuated from a wildfire and don’t be surprised if your skin gets crawly.

Our buddies were out on a group campout when park rangers rousted them in the middle of the night.

They all got out but lost track of each other until it got light out.

It was terrifying in the telling. (Hey Jamie)

Smoke in the air is one thing, a wall of flame is another, but that’s not why I haven’t been camping this year. Or last.

My place is like a campground with never ending tasks and jobs and I’m the ranger.

Task: I’ll do it.

Job: Too dangerous, hire it out.

I’ve got major league trees in the four corners of my lot.

The previous owner wanted a lived-in look and planted big trees from the start.

Now they’re bigger, maybe too big, and they drop their load all year round.

If it didn’t get my constant attention the leaves would pile up in a thick carpet.

No one wants that.

 

 

If you want to change things, or just keep up, dive in.

Whatever season it is, figure it out.

This is not the theme song:

 

We had joy, we had fun
We had seasons in the sun
But the wine and the song
Like the seasons, have all gone

 

The comments from Seasons In The Sun are more than touching.

 

My dad died 12 hours ago, my last memory is a FaceTime call. He was 91, spent the last few weeks in bed. My dad and I actually climbed the hills and trees, he was a great hiker and climber.

Thank you for being my dad , you were a witness of my life. Yesterday he started his last hike and reached the stars after midnight. He reached the end of the rainbow.

 

I am 77 years old and this song has been in my head since hearing it way back 1974. Makes me think of the good times my wife of 52 years had in Wichita Falls, Texas. She passed away, sadly, in January 2022. I miss her dearly.

 

I remember my sisters playing this in the late 70’s , I’m 54 and have lost all of them in the last ten years, but it kinda brings comfort to the soul knowing they all sang along with it.

 

i am old. I am at the end of my life now..Wow, what a ride. This song just reminds me of how much time has passed and how quickly it goes. If you are young, Im not preaching and your life is yours to live as you choose, but trust me–The days are long but the years are short.

 

PS: Every season is a downer when they turn from one to the next. You just start getting used to things and they change. One day you’re walking in the sunshine, the next you’re riding an atmospheric river down the road in a kayak.

 

PS: Try to keep up by doing this when your kid calls about taking a nice long walk: Do it.

When your pals call about going to a music and dance event? Go.

What’s the season? It’s your season, it’s always been your season and you didn’t know.

Now you know.