My father and I departed for the hills in his car. But before I describe what little I remember of that day I reflect on my profound ignorance of the ways of men in those days. My residence was in Montana on an Air Force base. My room mate periodically disappeared with friends who picked him up to “go to coffee”. Puzzling, because I had a coffee pot right there in the room. I offered to save them the expense and make up a new pot for them. Their faces showed that they were baffled that I didn’t understand that coffee was just the excuse they made for sitting around enjoying each other in a neutral place. They invited me. Coffee was ten cents for the first cup and unlimited refills. We drove to Denney’s and grabbed a table. It was where I got the inspiration for this:

For the money, we killed time talking and laughing for a couple of hours in the restaurant. That was what the outing was about.

Well as it turns out, my father understood this concept. We had a creek on his beautiful property but he’d discovered photography and we set out to take photos of a creek. When we reached the water falls, it was so anti-climatic that I wondered how it was worth all that driving and hiking. At that point, I still didn’t get it. We spent the day together getting there and back, but being a mere man and naturally dense, I thought that our objective was to take photos of that highly desirable destination. Ha! I didn’t actually figure out until just today what I just wrote.

I loved every part of my father’s property. It had it’s regions: the skunk cabbage kingdom where the spring spilled out into a field of mossy rocks in which could be found petrified wood and red agate. That was under a soft Alder canopy.

Throughout the forest were vine maple. Most of the land was furnished with mature Douglas Fir trees, but near the creek grew the big Cedars. Along it’s banks there were Marion berries and that seedy yellow berry whose name escapes me just now. More of the same sort of stones were there and sometimes little fingerling fish could be seen in the stream.

The photos are found in this ragged book. Ragged indeed. It was an ’empty book’ from Fred Meyer and of marginal quality. It’s pretty much fallen apart with shreds of the fiber tape that has long since fallen apart hanging off it. On the outside are drippings that look like a mess, but which are historic bits of pitch from Ramona Falls.

Here is the first page. My scrap book skills were not archival. Naturally I quoted Gibran, who was big among the thespian group that my friend Randy hung with. I’d been given a copy of “The Prophet” and loved the type face, page color, and odd illustrations. Some of it made sense, but it was full of flavor more than substance and it’s a reminder of the times.

Top left: the garden area where I learned not to plant all the radish seeds at once and then not to eat all of them just because they’re all ripe at the same time.

Top right: the skunk cabbage kingdom or near by. Dad sighted his rifle there.

Bottom left: our bit of creek. Bottom right, that upper plain where we grew the gardens later, and Suzie.

I really did enjoy these parts of the woods. We camped near the one right above because it had a fir covered smooth area for sleeping bags. We never had a campfire but it was always fun. Like it says above, that illuminated clearing was where I went to chip arrowheads. I’m sure there are still bits of obsidian in there.

More creek above. And my sisters picking berries. We had a sheltie and she’s on the right bottom above this text in the faded photo.

We had a perfectly beautiful place, but dad wanted to show me a place he’d discovered. At the time I think he was enjoying Pentax SLR cameras.

I remember that we drove across a bridge that covered a deep chasm lined by firs. At the bottom was a creek that most likely fed the Yale reservoir that my grand father had worked in before they filled it. His job was to grease logs that the logs they drug the ones across that they extracted before filling the area with water.

For the clear cut, they’d leave behind a few trees to seed the area and they’d tower above for a decade or two. That’s my dad in the center right photo with his camera stuff. A veritable whippersnapper.

I see I still like the same things I liked back then. Below is a sedate part of the creek with pure water. We walked along great sized logs to traverse the brush below. Dad stopped by one of the leviathan old growth trees. Maybe it was a second growth. I don’t know. The virgin forest had gigantic firs and I think this had been logged twice. I loved the softness of mossy boulders.

So there it is. When I was back at work in Montana, we “went for coffee” and it was actually about socialization, not the brew. At home we went on a hike, dad with his Pentax and me with my Topcon Uni. It wasn’t about the photographs. Those were the momentos.

There is an interleave in life. I’ve probably written of these experiences in older posts but it’s not forgetfulness that brings them back again. It’s the realization that I hadn’t put the most basic pieces of some of these events together before. Is it really the places, the things, and the objectives that we’re treasuring? Probably not. They are the matrix into which the beautiful flecks of our historical experience shines out from.

Somewhere the creek we hiked is still pouring down through the hills. Somewhere the creek that bordered my father’s six or seven acres of heaven on earth still trickles to the river, but this rememberance is as close as I’m likely to ever come to them again. Dad and I will never hike them together again. There was much to like about those days. Fond memories. I hopped in my car not long after and drove it to Montana.

Here I posed with it next to an X/19.

All glorious things on the earth pass on. Even the car, which for me was magic personified, was to go. I sold it to a fellow named Mark who had the same problem with the exhaust system that fell off from time to time. He took it to what he called Taxecheussets where I think he has what’s left of it to this day. I think those wheels would fit my Lotus. The off set is different, but they’d work.