I walked along a river lined with alder, oak, maple, black cottonwood, Doug fir and cedar. I was astonished by the variety of trees in this riparian area. I passed a couple people sitting in vehicles, staring at the river.<\/p>\n
If you visit a place where people can park their vehicles and stare at the river without leaving the vehicle you will see interesting glassed-in faces in need of a river. So there they are, but they don’t manage to get out the vehicle. There’s probably a novella in that not-getting out.<\/p>\n
These faces will belong to the owners of an astonishing variety of vehicles, from gleaming $50,000 trucks to duct-taped meth sedans. The river appeals to many people and I suppose there are many different needs for it. I recently discovered a new one for myself.<\/p>\n
It was early morning and the river named for a vanished Native American tribe ran a murky green. All manner of birds flitted across my path. I heard geese honking in the distance and a woodpecker pecking nearby. These sounds infiltrated me and purged other, less desirable ones of injurious human construct.<\/p>\n
I saw a man wearing an orange jacket standing in a field. What on earth was he doing there? I couldn’t imagine a reason at this hour. He stood motionless for five minutes. I then surmised he was homeless and camping out along the river. I turned my head and a saw a blue heron hunting in a flooded pasture. Orange man, blue heron, not more than a hundred yards away from each other. I kept walking and watching, waiting for either to move. It was almost a showdown between them and I put my money on the heron.<\/p>\n
(If you found this post enjoyable, thought provoking or enlightening, please consider supporting a writer at work by making a financial contribution to this blog or by purchasing an NSP book.) <\/i><\/p>\n\n I walked along a river lined with alder, oak, maple, black cottonwood, Doug fir and cedar. I was astonished by the variety of trees in this riparian area. I passed a couple people sitting in vehicles, staring at the river. If you visit a place where people can park their vehicles and stare at the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3870,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[716,717,719,207,86,718],"class_list":["post-3869","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-meditations","tag-blue-heron","tag-homeless-man","tag-morning","tag-oregon-rivers","tag-river","tag-walking","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author",""],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3869","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3869"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3869\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3872,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3869\/revisions\/3872"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3870"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3869"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3869"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3869"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}