Category: Travel

I’ve been thinking about Madrid. Here I am there, in the Prado. Mr. Pencil took this photo.

My Twitter friend @peat almost always starts the morning by tweeting: “How are you changing the world today?” I don’t usually have a good answer. I thought about why this was and reflected on my path. My path is not as a world-changer, at least not consistently and directly. Mine is not fully defined yet, [...]

Two more photos from the Steens trip, these taken with a borrowed Bronica medium format camera. You might say: “Oh, look at that cool tilt-shift effect on the hotel photo, where intriguing bits are displaying remarkably shallow depth of field.” Sadly, that’s a scanning issue. My film isn’t mounted, so when I put it in [...]

A few more photo highlights of the Steens Trip: I urge you to go look at all of them on Flickr. Or, go play with them on a map at loc.alize.us.

It was my idea, after the kitten rescue and the leaving again, to show David Foster Flat Road, a gravel road leading west from the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, almost chiefly because of its monotony. Get over the ridge, see, I urged, and you can see forever and forever of the same. I had driven [...]

We were leaving Frenchglen, leaving the Blitzen Valley, leaving Malheur, leaving Harney county, returning home to Portland. We’d gone about five miles. David hit the brakes and started backing up and said: “I think you’re going to like it…it’s wildlife. But. I’m worried, it’s by the side of the road.” Reversing. He stopped and I [...]

A need for a hike spurred us up the north Steens Loop road, which, in mid-June, was not yet open to the summit. Instead, at Fish Lake, a grader blocked the road entirely and we had to go from there on foot. We hiked about eight miles into and up a place where spring has [...]

Dinner was PB&J David smeared together using the hood of the ‘bru as a table at deepest dusk in Long Hollow. Long Hollow, an east-west passway through to the Alvord–the eastern, desert side of the Steens–in the narrow notch between Steens and Pueblo Mountains, takes all of the loneliness of the Alvord, all the vastness [...]

Post-sunset Alvord Desert Full Sail Amber Ale 75 degrees (air) View more beautiful than many people have ever seen Emptiness, Solitude Alvord Hot Springs 104 degrees (water) Mineral smell Playa, mountains Mr. Pencil Bleached boards around tub A rolled up towel for a pillow Laying back and staring at sky

I have long ignored the dirt road leading off up and west from Alvord Hot Springs, heading up the steep, steep eastern ascent of Steens Mountain. I assumed it went nowhere; most of the little spurs don’t around there. On crowded days in the Alvord, this is where people camp (by “crowded” I mean: when [...]