Gene Mross, the contractor, cutting the X-bracing that will reinforce the open-beam ceiling on the first floor of the tower.

Cutting up the old maple tree is a long-term project that will pay warm benefits in some future winter.

  And at last work has started in earnest on the tower! That’s Gene’s crew doing foundation forms in the freezing fog today in the photo above; below is Joe’s sketch of what the completed tower will look like next to the existing house.

Shot, of course, by Noah.

We followed this guy for a while along the Center Patrol Road at Malheur Refuge this morning while he hunted. He knew we were there, of course, but was too busy finding prey to care very much as I photographed his hunt. It’s been a beautiful three days here — this morning the temperature was [...]

Near Roaring Springs Ranch today.

  Photographing robins and cedar waxwings at Page Springs Campground.

A quick, refreshing trip this weekend to the Oregon Coast, where we hiked the long loop trail at Cape Perpetua, watched the waves break in the cloudy gloom and had halibut at Mo’s.  

  I just got a call on my Google Voice phone number from a woman who claimed to be from Google and who started to make what sounded an awful lot like a sales pitch. I told her I wasn’t interested and hung up. That’s bad enough, but she immediately called back and left a [...]

Just because. photo: Ground squirrel in the Wallowas, 2007

After a long, cold, wet spring — and a sudden hot late summer — our tomato plants finally started producing salad yesterday.

Noah’s about half way through the four months he figures it will take him to hike the entire Pacific Crest Trail from Mexico to Canada. And he’s on his third pair of trail running shoes. The pair shown above is No. 2, which just got him through hundreds of miles of snow and ice in [...]

While sweeping the floor the other day after taking down the rest of the structure of the old — 1880s-vintage — house, I looked down and saw a penny in the pile of dirt, insulation scraps and rusty nails I’d swept up. A penny: I almost ignored it. But I reached down and got it [...]

Hannah Bontrager from Eugene’s Ballet Fantastique dances at the Green Show during the outdoor theater season’s opening weekend last week at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.

Now at about mile 420, Noah’s hungrier than he planned on. So I added 16 Slim Jims, 8 salami and cheese snacks, 4 packs of gorp and one really bland looking (but fairly palatable) pack of dense protein bar to his already stuffed box of trail food I’ll mail tomorrrow to him at Kennedy Meadows, [...]

Taking down the 1880s-vintage part of our house, board by board, in the hopes of re-using the lumber when we build a new addition.

Lisa got to Wrightwood last night, tearing up I-5 to make the whole trip in two days. Noah is closing in on her from the east, and they plan to meet up sometime today at a spot where the trail crosses Angeles Crest Highway. Once he is resupplied and has had some lunch, he’ll continue [...]

A hand-written sign decorated the locked front door of Oregon Arts Alliance during Eugene’s First Friday Art Walk last night. Art galleries that have gone under or severely cut back operations downtown in the last year or two include OAA, DIVA, La Follette, Fenario and Karin Clarke.

It’s been two weeks this morning since Noah headed off from the PCT monument at Campo. The last few days when he’s called, he sounded spectacularly happy and relaxed. And he’s walking a lot. Night before last, he called about 10 p.m. to say he had just finished walking 28 miles and was holed up, [...]

I got back to Creswell yesterday, after another 1,000-mile drive on (mostly) I-5, with the added pleasure of a stop for a nice dinner at Ashland Springs Hotel Thursday night. Noah called as I was leaving Ashland Friday morning. He was beginning the climb up toward Mount San Jacinto, at 10,834 feet the first major [...]

The greatest single discovery of Noah’s trip so far may be the Warner Springs Ranch. Naturally, every two-bit hotel in the rural West calls itself a “resort.” Warner Springs Ranch really is one, and it’s marvelous. The resort, a fenced community that reminds me in some ways of the old TV show “

The discussion started before 6 a.m., each of us still in our beds: Should Noah go ahead and hike the next, very dry, stretch of trail with full overnight gear, along with at least six liters (~12 pounds) of water, figuring on making it about 17 miles today, before camping, into the 24 miles he [...]

At a concrete water cistern next to Barrel Springs this morning, I found a young man named Joshua stretched out on a ground cloth. He’d had a terrible day and night, having left the last water hole 24 miles back with just four liters of water in his pack, counting, a little inexplicably, on finding [...]

Noah got off to a leisurely start this morning from Mount Laguna Lodge, headed out for a four-day stretch of walking solo before I meet up with him again at Warner Creek. That means I’ve got a few days to myself. First I headed for Julian, a historic desert town I’ve heard about from time [...]

Noah made it to Mount Laguna, a pretty pine forested mountain area at 6,000 feet. Forty miles down, 2,610 to go. Tomorrow he heads off for four days, and 68 miles, before I catch up with him again at Warner Springs. Meanwhile I plan on parking myself at Julian for a couple days of exploring [...]

I dropped Noah at the border monument at Campo at about 9 this morning. He started walking north, and I started driving, to Lake Morena, 20 miles distant along the trail. I set up camp, hung out for a while, and then walked south an hour to meet him. He made the 20 miles in [...]

Cold rain was falling by the bucketful when we got up this morning. Noah looked out gloomily, checked over the forecast and made an executive decision: He’ll start the hike tomorrow. After talking it over, I agreed completely. The weather really sucked here today, with huge winds and blasting rain, and a delay will gi

I woke up this morning to Noah reading aloud from a PCT listserv message that a woman thru hiker had slipped on snow and plunged off a cliff on Mount Baden-Powell, and was still missing. This, fortunately, turned out not to be true. What is true, though, is rain — and lots of it. Interstate [...]

We woke up in Williams, Calif., this morning to a flat tire on the Subaru. It turned out to be a metal shard, which we probably picked up driving through the wreckage of the rather complicated rain accident on I-5 yesterday. Ah well. It gave us a chance to repack the car (what a thrill) [...]

                        After a couple days of packing more stuff than it seems possible to need in an entire lifetime, Noah and I headed out this morning to drive south to Campo, Calif., the starting point of the Pacific Crest Trail, so he can start [...]