Sploosh. Squish. Slosh. And A Couple of Squirts.

Mud mud mud mud mud!

Mud mud mud mud mud!

Mud mud mud mud mud!

I love hiking in the mud.

US Grant Park

Portland has been park planning ever since it commissioned a survey in 1905, the results of which found that parks are essential to the quality of urban life (duh). Currently Portland has the most green acres per capita of any city in the U.S. Whatever that means, all I know is, PDX has got itself an official buttload of parks. A very long time ago I made it a mission to visit one a week until I'd seen all of them. Then...um...I stopped. And now...um...I'm starting again. Whatever! I can be as damned capricious as suits me. I am subject to the whims of none save my own.

Today I trudged over to US Grant Park, located in NE Portland. The park's 19 acres were acquired in 1922. Its namesake visited our fair burg three times in his life, no mean feat in the days before widespread train travel, but its best-known feature is its Beverly Cleary sculpture garden, established in 1995 & featuring statues of Ramona Quimby, Henry Huggins & Ribsy, fictional characters who all lived in NE Portland & frequented Grant Park. Time has swallowed nearly all of my memories of the books, but I loved me some Ramona Quimby when I was a child. However! I must admit, I find the statue sort of...disturbing. Like one of those stoic eyeless busts commemorating Roman emperors, only she's a grinning lifeless kid.


Eh. The park itself is very nice indeed, & if I lived closer, I would probably go there more. Except it has an off-leash area, so it's probably just stuffed to the gills with dogs in nice weather. My bones are cold, as it freakin' hailed throughout my two-mile walk over, but it was worth it because the sun came out for the half hour I was at the park & sun + precipitation = sparkles. I got several lovely pictures of the tennis court too.

Forest Park

Due to limitations of footwear (not MINE, of course, I wore mah hikin bouts) in tandem with typical OR spring ground (meaning muddy), we spent about five minutes on Wildwood Trail at Germantown Road in Forest Park. Its 5,100 acres make Forest Park the largest natural urban forest reserve in the U.S. And apparently its size made it possible for a man & his daughter to live within its boundaries undectected for four years (it's a pretty neat story, with an actual Happy End).

Five minutes proved to be ample time for me to fall in LOVE with the place. It's fucking gorgeous. Quintessential Oregon. Old growth & second growth trees, ferns, trilliums...& just flat-out beautiful. Naturally I'd forgotten both my digital & super-8 cameras. However, I've plans to return this week sometime, at which point I will correct that grievous error. With 70 miles of trails, there's a lot of exploring to be done.

Also, apparently the Wildwood Trail will lead you straight to the Hoyt Arboretum, a 185-acre piece of land, with 12 miles of trails, which has been planted with over 1,000 species of trees, perhaps most notably the Dawn Redwood, a species once thought to be extinct until its rediscovery in China in the early 20th century. This tree is a deciduous conifer, of all things. I'm nerdily excited to go to the Arboretum.

Thank goodness that the people of Portland were concerned about the importance of city parks as far back as 1903.

North Park Blocks

En route to Powell's Books on Burnside yesterday, I passed this charming 12-foot sculpture in the North Park Blocks. It was a gift given in 2002 to the city from a Chinese businessman, Huo Baozhu, whose company made reproductions of Chinese artifacts. This particular one is a replica of an object dating from the Shang dynasty (1200 - 1100 BC). It's embellished with figures from ancient Chinese mythology, & the baby elephant symbolizes that offspring shall be safe & prosperous. (To which I say, whatever.) Huo decided to make & give the statue to the city as he was dying of a rare blood disease, because he'd traveled to Portland on many occasions & admired the city's balance of urban & green spaces.

And apparently Portland loves elephants. So do I!

Powell Butte Nature Park

Powell Butte is a 572-acre park situated on an extinct volcano (apparently we're rich in those around here) with over nine miles in trails. The park is waaay out on 162nd Avenue, about 20 minutes from where I live. It connects to the 40-mile trail which circles the city & is the second-largest park in Portland. The City purchased the land in 1925 to use for future water reservoirs. One reservoir out of the four envisioned was completed in 1980; no others have been built. The City declared the area a park & opened it to the public in 1990.

Good thing, too. The summit of the butte yields stunning views of five mountains in the Cascade Range: Mt. Jefferson, Mt. Bachelor, Mt. Adams, Mt. Helens & Mt. Hood (pictured above). I love Mt. Hood. It is gorgeous. Climber-killing, yes, but seriously, why would you climb a mountain in December anyway? Aren't you just flipping God off at that point? Apparently Darwin's rule rewards people who sit at home watching television & eating potato chips. At any rate, sometimes, if it's a clear day, after winding around the last Terwilliger curve on my way home I'm rewarded with the sight of Mt. Hood smack dab in the middle of my vision. Gorgeous mountain, river on the right, silver floating hot dogs - not a bad commute, eh?

The trails at Powell Butte are very pleasant; I took the Orchard Summit Loop to the Meadowland Trail, & it led me up to the top, past fruit orchards, through meadows, & looped through some forested area to boot. Some of the paths were paved, some were wood-chipped (to sop up mud, methinks), some were just muddy (but not too muddy; bikes & horses are mercifully banned during the winter months). Although the scenery was really nice (particularly the silver grass rippling in the wind), I suspect spring & summer are prime times to journey to Powell Butte.

I plan on finding out for sure.

That's "Couch" As In "Cooch"

Whilst mapping my journey from SE to NW for the Inland Empire showing, I noticed a small park on the map. Perfect, thinks I, those NW parks are gonna be pesky to get to anyway. I'll just drop on by & cross this one off the list. As you can see, I did.

Couch Park is named after Captain John Heard Couch, a famous Portland resident. According to the park plaque, he was so popular that when he died in 1870, the city basically shut down to attend his funeral. Apparently he was excellent at navigating the mouth of the Columbia River; but perhaps his most memorable contribution was to NW Portland, where he named the east-west streets in alphabetical order ("A Street", "B Street", etc.), a boon to those unfamiliar with the area. Though the streets now have more "official" sounding names (i.e., Flanders St., Lovejoy St. - yes, "The Simpsons" characters are named after Portland streets (my personal favorite is "Sideshow Bob" Terwilliger)), they do still run in alphabetical order; hence this area of town is imaginatively called the Alphabet District (which I think is also a nod to San Francisco). Including Couch Street. Which, indeed, is not pronounced in the traditional piece-of-furniture sense, but rather in the more uncouth slang term used to refer to ladyparts.

The park itself is fairly mundane. Probably most notable for its off-leash area, which is of little use to me. More interesting is the fact that where the park is once stood a rather grand estate belonging Cicero Hunt Lewis, a 19th century merchant "prince" who wed Couch's daughter Clementine. I guess they kind of kept the land in the family.

Side note: I almost lived in this neighborhood. Not on "Trendy-Third" Avenue, as the locals call it, but close - I nearly took an apartment on 21st. While it's actually an extremely pleasant area, full of the colorful Victorian houses that inhabit the city, & living there would have put me within spitting distance of Cinema 21, Powell's Books (the big guy; there's a smaller branch on Hawthorne that I can walk to) & the Magic Gardens (a locally famous strip club), I'm still happier with where I ended up. NW is more "city" vibe than I needed in my daily life. SE is definitely still city, but, I guess, just not as many stories high. Besides, Trimet is a godsend when it comes to getting around, & at least I can always find parking in front of my house.

A Cemetery Is A Park, Only With Dead People & Carved Rocks

This weekend I indulged in a bit of cheating - instead of trying to find some fabulous new park to explore, I opted to go instead to the Lone Fir Pioneer Cemetery which is about two blocks from my apartment. In my defense, it was a rare day in which it rained steadily-heavily from morn til about 2 pm (usually, in the event of an all-day rain, it's more of a moist constant drizzle). For a cemetery, it was quite pleasant, full of big old fir trees & decomposing headstones - though, frankly, after having lived on the east coast for so long (&, well, particularly having been to Italy a lifetime ago), I do find it a bit difficult to be much impressed by things that date ALL THE WAY BACK TO 1855! (Oregon's geology, on the other hand, I find more fascinating & extensive than its white-people-population history).

In addition to the requisite fading headstones, one thing Lone Fir possessed which I have not before seen (to be sure, I've not spent loads of time surveying cemeteries) was a large number of modern black headstones which were all either decorated with pictures of Oregon scenery &/or pictures of the deceased. The writing was in a strange language; I'm gonna go with Greek on this one, since I do know that Portland has a large Greek population. These graves were well tended - indeed, many were plots-cum-flower gardens. One such gravesite was even liberally festooned with silver garlands & "Happy New Year!" balloons.

Oh, & did you know that Julius Caesar is buried here? & that, by request, his gravestone is inscribed with the epitaph "PLAY BALL"? I kid you not! Only, it's not quite the Et tu, Brutus Caesar. Nope, this guy was an emancipated slave born in 1830 who loved baseball.

Though I took lots of nice pictures of headstones, fir trees, funny little buildings & the like, I must confess that like the child I am, I was struck most by this wonderful tree. Mr. Tree, I don't know what you're actually called, but henceforth I dub thee "Elephant Tree".