Ice on the Umpqua - 9 degrees this morning

It was cold again today. Yesterday it was 14 degrees when we woke up, and this morning it was 9 degrees. There is ice on the Umpqua once again. This global warming is really getting cold.

Al Gore was a genius.....I wish I had been smart enough to invest in Mr. Gore. His quest to sell us a way to stop the menace of global warming was sheer genius...maybe he should have been president. I went outside looking for my carbon footprint so I could reduce it by paying Mr. Gore for some carbon offsets.....turns out I can't find my carbon footprint because the trees around me used it up and turned it into oxygen.....OH NO......Now there will be too much oxygen......Woah is us......

Moving to the woods has been a dream for a long time....since high school. Somehow I lost sight of it, and many years of life happened. Life is in general a series of connected events, which overlap in unimagined ways, and it is a rare occurrence when a clean break can or must happen. Sometimes it is catastrophe, and sometimes it is just the cards you are dealt....a convergence of events which allow a major move. Get laid off, sell the house, and move to another state where you know nobody, and the unemployment is one of the highest in the country. It's a fine pickle we've gotten ourselves into this time......a very fine pickle indeed. The full moon rising over the mountain ridge was knee-buckling beautiful. I still haven't mastered taking a digital photo directly into the full moon yet. The silhouette of the trees against the full moon is a 'must get' picture. I'll keep trying.

Winter is closing in. The Xmas stuff is up, and every year Pam and I remember the early years with the kids when we had to make our Christmas ornaments, because we were so broke. Pam goes through all of the ornanaments as she unwraps them, and we remember. She has a great memory for these things. As time passed we would go to an ornament store each Christmas and the kids would pick out an ornament for the tree. I really miss the kids.

No Fish Today

Went down to the river...light rain.....one small nibble, but sometimes even when the catchin's not so good, the fishin' is still worthwhile. Looking north from the fishing spot.

Rocks in the river

Fishing

I was fishing yesterday morning, and became fascinated by the rock formations on the bottom of the river. There are a lot of places where most of the bottom is exposed, and you can see the patterns the rocks make and where the river deposits them. I'm trying to get all the photos and cool rocks I can while the river is down. It is real cold in the river now. Went wading knee deep and my legs ached after only 5 minutes. It was reminiscent on childhood out at Ocean beach in San Francisco, blue from the cold water.....but i digress. The rocks are mixtures of different types of lava and sandstone, as well as other unknown types. The holes made by the rocks churning in the water are most beautiful.

It's foggy up here

Fall has started, and the fog rising from the river is a morning ritual. There was less during the summer, but now that we've had a couple days of rain there is much fog to be had on the 38 deg. mornings.

Pam took the header picture yesterday morning. We finally figured out how to set it to black and white. Unedited pic, just cropped for the size of the header...


We had a bang-up garden this year with record numbers of tomato and zuchinni. The herb garden was productive as well....parseley, sage, rosemary and thyme...is that music in the background ?????

Hi Kayla....Hope you're having a good time at school.