Volcanoes & Reservoirs & Views, Oh My

Continuing my weekly park-y exploration, on Sunday 17 December 2006, I trekked over to the 196-acre Mt. Tabor Park. Okay, so I drove. It's only 30 blocks away from my place, but Mt. Tabor happens to be a (vertically-inclined) extinct volcano (one of only two such volcanoes within city limits in the U.S., the other being in Bend, OR), so despite my overall goal to drive my car as little as possible on the weekends, I decided to hop in & head over, to enable me to walk more in the park, particularly given my late start. Five minutes later, I was parked partway up the hill & walking past one of the reservoirs, the fence of which held a sign emblazoned with a warning to the effect that if I threw something in there, I could be arrested. "This is your drinking water!!!"

Mt. Tabor Park is simply gorgeous. I'd been there before, at the age of 16, on the day Jerry Garcia died. A friend & I decided to run up to Portland for some sort of vigil in the Rose Garden (I think), not that I'd ever listened to the Grateful Dead, but I did love leaving Scio. Only of course Misty was running on Misty-time & we didn't get up there until midnight or so, long after the vigil was over. Long story short, we ended up at a drum circle on Mt. Tabor, where I sat round a fire & smoked the devil weed for the very first time & didn't get home until long after the sun rose, marking another first - the first time I'd ever stayed out all night. (Strange to have moved 3,000 miles, to a city in which I've never lived, & yet still be coming home, in so many ways...)

Anyway, yes, my drinking water is up there. In architecturally lovely reservoirs with little castle-like structures to do whatever it is they do to the water. I gather that there was recently some sort of city plan to bury the reservoirs, but given that three of the six reservoirs were placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2004, I expect that plan has itself been buried. But the reservoirs are only one of the features that make a trip here worthwhile.

The paths are wind-y & very nice. Several were paved in 1930s as part of Roosevelt's Depression-era parks project, but several more are simply gravel covered with blankets of pine needles. Walking on pine needles in Oregon is quite different from trodding on the leaf-strewn paths of deciduous forests in Virginia. I can't quite explain it, but I do love the near-silent sound of treading on pine needles. Also from the 1930s, at the top of the hill, is a bronze statue of Harvey W. Scott, who was editor of The Oregonian from 1865-1872 & 1877-1910. The statue was sculpted by Gutzon Borglum of Mt. Rushmore fame.

The real treat of Mt. Tabor Park, though, is the views it affords. Simply spectacular. At the volcano's crater, depending on where you are standing, you get stunning views of Mt. Hood to the east & the city skyline to the west. You can even see Mt. St. Helens on a clear day.

This one will most definitely be hard to top!