We live in a unique place, and we who live here are a unique bunch of people; hell, even our homeless, so previlent in today’s news, are well-groomed avid bicyclists. Ain’t no mall walkers around here, and not because we don’t have “malls”. We used to, now they’re parking lots, but nobody walked in them anyway (which is why they’re now parking lots!).

Round here, we’re Park Walkers. Makes sense, when you figure that pretty much everyone [of any value] in this town is an athelete of some form or another, if not an Old Logger a World Class Shredder. And with eight miles of park to walk, and more to come…

As is our wont, Dawn and I strolled several miles this morning, culminating in what is without a doubt the jewel of our park system, Drake Park, where I learned to walk a half century and several years ago, and where we today found that one of the old pondos had been cut down. As I pointed out to Dawn, I had as an Old Logger pointed out numoruous times over our five years of honeymoon that that pondo was dangerous, and needed to come down. Regardless that it had been there perhaps four hundred years, and was to my recollection the first to harbor an Oregon “State WildLife Preserve” license plate, it was a “Danger Tree”, and needed to come down. [and I really wanted to be the Old Logger that brought her down]

I have laid my hands upon that tree…  all of my life.

Good Bye, Old Friend.