Foolish gibberish
When the rain and clouds descend, oh, around mid November, I will will look at this photo and remember the carefree days of summertime on the Mountain.
About a month ago Raf and I took a drive up to Bagby Hot Springs. It was awesome, in the truest definition of the word. The drive up there was absolutely beautiful. The road meanders along the Clackamas River and up, deep, into the Mount Hood Wilderness. Eventually phone service is cut off completely and you are blissfully immersed in nature. The walk up to the hot springs is short and easy, even for someone with a foot injury.
There is a really nice vibe there. As you walk the trail up to the hot springs everyone has a smile on their face. They are radiating happiness and it shows on their faces as they say “hi” passing by.
On the day we were there last we were walking back down to our car and we passed a young man with a beard and long blond hair and very tanned skin. He was wearing a loin cloth. His wild looking child was skipping fearlessly on a felled tree that crossed a deep ravine. I wanted to take his portrait but I didn’t have the guts. I totally regret that.
The hot springs itself is heaven on earth. There are community tubs but there are also private tubs, shown in the photos. You fill the tub with searing hot water that flows directly from Mt Hood. You have to add buckets of cold water otherwise it would be too hot. Then you lay back and relax, looking above you at the Douglas Fir canopy.
The photo above was taken with my Zero 2000 pinhole camera. It was my first experience with cross processed slide film. I am not super thrilled with the result. Hopefully my next try will be better.
I took the photo below with my iPhone at the same time.
I am a bit late to this week’s WordPress photo challenge. I wanted to use entirely new photos and I wanted to use film. This isn’t my best work and it isn’t the most creative thing I’ve done but hey. What can you do. I do like that that the longer photo reveals the person down below in the lobby. Click the image for bigger.
A carnival is setting up outside my window on a hot summer day. The purple, blue, orange, red flag that entice people to buy elephant ears flap gently in the wind and are beautifully back-dropped by the blue sky. The road is blocked off. they have taken over the empty lot next door and the street. People have to drive through the library’s parking lot to reach their destination. I wonder what kind of excitement I will meet in the coming days.
A man comes into the library, asks for poetry. Shel Silverstein. He says he is a poet. He has a seat at the table next to mine and recites to me a poem that he wrote to a friend in her yearbook. It’s a terrible poem and I am annoyed by it. I have things to do. He then talks about the carnival. he works at it, works one of the games. He tells me how the carnival is fleecing the people in the town in which I live. He tripled the price of a light saber simply by turning it on at night, he says. He pulled stuff out of the garbage and made a necklace with it and people bought it, he says. we are basically selling people garbage he says. He recites another poem to me and, again, it is terrible. terrible rhymes and metaphors. but I am thinking about this man’s life and how it could be a poem. He tells me, “they took my brain out of my head when I was sixteen.”
Three days later as I was driving across town I saw that they were packing up and the convoy of brightly colored trucks was on it’s way out of town. Off to fleece other people I guess.
Blatherskite 