Vanitas rambling, in the Columbia River Gorge

"Tested" -- a lone power pole, yoked to emptiness, ascended through the woods.

Behind me, the land, returning to a primal state.

Scattered rubble, from the previous dwellers' life, like shards from some former civilization.

Wood fading to flora. Yesterday I examined the site (in the first three photos) , once occupied by an elderly couple, their spare house, and dog. Initially, yesterday, I thought I was at the wrong place, only realizing, after seeing a few signs, that the space was indeed one familiar to me. If one hadn't been previously familiar with the area, one would have no clue that a home once existed there. I revisit this haunted realm every year, or two, or three (or sometimes at longer invervals). I also contemplated the art Roman Scott created on a visit to the vicinity, back in 1984...

Photos by JF

       

       

Latourell, Oregon

 

This postcard appears to be a modern creation, taken from a WWI-era card. But Latourell is an evocative place, at once inhabited, but with ghost town patches. Its lanes have known my footfalls. 

Rest Stop, West of Boardman

Rest Stop, West of Boardman

By Jonathan Falk

Crickets screamed under the wind, blades of night query past. My stilts beyond the Columbia walk, corneas pulsed with newer life. Censor: Sachem Pharos, green light signaled on hermit’s island in the river’s hippogriffs, basalt eruptions, laved with painted floods. Tom Jefferson stacked his books apropos of milt sunset. Fruit could need I fruit flies time fruit powder.

I remember the transient beard, something to shift when I saw for a moment scoriac splendor, a fairyland, one of those viewpoints I shot past driving, marvelous things, lunar lava and farms. Eagle Creek trail, drought childhood sneakers melting. Time the panhandler raven. You rode with old Nils, you better not drink a cup of coffee.

On the Washington shore, one blue light knocked on the night, filter of dawn.

Written before the switch to Daylight Saving Time, November 6, 2016

Photo: Columbia River Gorge, 9-16-16.

Transient Wings

Transient Wings, Western Half of the Columbia River Gorge

I.

Loneliness, it’s such a scraped affair.

Hawk jewels flowed sightlessly westward.

The reason of the excavation was to reveal deep layers in stony time.

Vast sutures of independence whorl chakra.

At the mountains of energy, float with your mind until lunar provenance enlightenment reached.

The polished immensity of the mountains, twilight ermine fanfare of the argent musk.

Train de Chirico like whistling spiders, grave robber polka spinster yellow ancient grove sad mossy-flamed farmhouse, Edelweiss rocking horse.

II.

Hawk’s wings, rotating like spiders,

Kites drumming over slough and grove.

Train rolls austere and limber,

Caboose like a tramp, twilight of gold.

Rubbish eye incantatory,

Snowy fields, untrodden, transient and flashing on the crest of the Cascades.

JF April 2016

Photo of Crown Point by JF, July 4, 2002

Rambling about the Columbia River Gorge

 

 

 

Photos by JF

 On 22 August 2015 I hiked on the trail leading from Multnomah Falls, Oregon, up Larch Mountain. I started out, unintentionally due to parking issues, at nearby Wahkeena Falls. I climbed up to these falls, then eventually walked the trail connecting over to Multnomah Falls. Thrice, years ago I climbed all the way to Sherrard Point. I fell a little short this time.

Smoke from forest fires remote yellowed the forested sky.  The supreme quiet of old-growth forests -- something out of an Algernon Blackwood story -- ancient markers of volcanic activity, water rippling down rock channels, moss-carpeted immensities. I encountered two hikers with a dog, and saw them again, ascending as I descended. I completed the last bit by flashlight. Finally I accepted a ride back to Wahkeena Falls from someone getting off work, the first time I've "hitchhiked," again unplanned, in decades. 

The Columbia Gateway, 1938

 

Bonneville Dam and Mount Hood. The postcard was a photomontage, making the mountain to appear closer to the dam than in reality.

Indian House

666 Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here

An old Native American and his wife, and their hybrid, green-eyed wolf-dog dwelt in the above cot at one time, when I lived for a time in the area (western end of the Columbia River Gorge).  I went by the place last week.

If you see 666 ABANDON HOPE ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE on the door of a house in a remote spot surrounded by heavy woods, a word to the wise, do NOT go in!  I got close enough to take this picture.  From here, I heard what sounded like loud running water inside, as if a brook ran through the building somewhere.  No one had apparently yet breached the door when I was last there three years ago. Previous post on the matter:  Sun standing still.   At that time three years past, although the home was long empty, the porch light still glowed.

One way of getting to the squat campsite of 1983-84. 

Florisation Years

2014

2011

1984

I happened to photograph this house in the western part of the Columbia River Gorge over three decades, showing the marks of time and change as the angles slid back into trees, blackberries, grasses.

This is the second post based on this site. The previous one was Twenty-seven years.  

Oneonta Gorge, 1912

 

 

 

link:  Oneonta Gorge