East Oregon

January 7, 2014. I suddenly find myself on the other coast, driving from Portland to the Pacific on a wet, windy Rt. 6 through temperate cloud forests. I spied this juvenile bald eagle perched, drenching, just a few meters from the road, a river burbling below. Bobby guaranteed that I would see an American dipper on this drive, and just like he promised, at the first turnout we picked overlooking the river, several dippers were plunging into the icy stream, its waters sliding off their waterproof feathers like mercury. We made it to the coast, but it was spitting rain and I didn't want to ruin my new camera. We walked out on a jetty speckled with sooty grey, rich umber, and seaglass green rocks, between surging emerald waves pocked by curious sea lions and oppressed by a heavy grey sky. Gulls glided silently past our heads. We looked out into the seemingly empty surf, and if we looked long and hard enough, birds would suddenly materialize in the chop: horned grebes, surf scoters, and two kinds of cormorants: snake-necked pelagic and pale-chinned brandt's. On our way back up the jetty to land, we spied peeps shivering among the rocks near the water: surfbirds, rock sandpipers, black turnstones, and a gull calmly choking on a giant sea star. At Meares Point Park, we barely made out the ghostly shapes of common murre, pigeon gillemot, and white-winged scoter dashing through the mist hundreds of meters below our sheer cliff lookout. An unusually friendly hermit thrush greet us on the path back to the lot.

We traveled down to southern Oregon to see a little homestead Bobby used to work at building cob cottages. The landscape was beautiful and striking, with pinyon pines, cacti, and madrone. The madrone has red bark that peels in mesmerizing patterns, revealing silky smooth green sapwood. The air was filled with robins, hundreds of them, gorging on berries alongside cedar waxwings and beautiful stellar's jays.