Tuesday, January 27, 2009

The New Header. and The Road I'm On

I thought this was going to be a blog post about the blog - the new header that is, but it's really not...

The new header is a slightly adjusted photo of Mt Hood, here in Oregon, taken from a gravel parking lot, just off of Marine drive, between the Sheriff Station boat ramp and PDX airport. It's a zoom in of the view I see through my windshield driving home some evenings,
if I get headed that way while it's still daylight.

I'm not native to this area. This kind of scenery is not what I was raised on. Growing up in Kansas you just don't see stuff like this. Ever.
There are a number of things I miss about Kansas.
First, that bunch of my family that's not out here.
Second, some of the scenery there. It's not as spectacular as much of the stuff out here, but it has it's own impact, it's own kind of power.
A Kansas sky, if you take the time to see it, can be pretty impressive.
It's really, really big, and sometimes way wide open, in a way you just don't see here.
I miss my friends-all three or five of them.
I miss the times I had there in my young adulthood.

I sometimes miss being 19 years old, sure I had it all ,
a happy, pretty girl by my side,
me driving my Dad's blue pickup down a mid-June country gravel road,
equally sun and tree shadow striped, with
Jackson Browne turned way up loud, both windows fully down,
smelling the summer grass and the
rippling creek under the flat cement slab bridge, while
a family of raccoons crossed just in front of me and the
Red Tailed Hawk passed just over, from left to right.


That road led to this road.

Robert Plant and Alyson Krauss turned way up loud,
the tallest volcano in the Cascade Range in front of me,
Columbia river on one side and the bustling airport on the other,
the Black Cormorants bobbing just out of sight in the river, where the Monster Sturgeon waits to pull some fisherman's boat around awhile, and the Great Blue Herons stand watching me, watching them, as the
Red Tailed Hawk passes just over, from left to right.

This life, It does spin 'round and 'round doesn't it.....