{"id":7990,"date":"2022-08-26T07:03:37","date_gmt":"2022-08-26T14:03:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/?p=7990"},"modified":"2022-08-26T07:03:38","modified_gmt":"2022-08-26T14:03:38","slug":"wagon-wheel-park","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/meditations\/wagon-wheel-park\/","title":{"rendered":"Wagon Wheel Park"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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I stopped at Wagon Wheel Park off Highway 213 on the Mollala River to eat breakfast before meeting a farmer in Mulino engaged in a unique history project for Oregon. He contacted me and asked for my editorial assistance and I was happy to oblige.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was 8:30 on a Thursday morning in July. Sun shined as I parked and took a short path through the brush to the river’s edge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Several signs alerted visitors to the potential for drowning. The signs also reported six people had died in this well known swimming hole. As I neared the river, I noticed several white crosses nailed to some trees with names and dates written on them. Someone had drowned here last month.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The river came into a view and a tan bird dog resting on the gravel barked at me. His owner, a young bearded man fishing from the bank, told the dog to be quiet and the dog complied. I made my way around the dog and walked toward the water. I passed a dozen choice cuts of beaverwood and various fire pits and cairns. I found a flat rock to sit down upon, eat, admire the river, and watch the man fish.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thirty yards away, across the river, two men captured my attention. The one wearing a black hoodie was fishing. The other man, shirtless, was knee deep in the channel holding a large multi-branched piece of driftwood. He was trying to lodge it in the mud in a way that suggested a sculpture of some kind. Several other such \u201csculptures\u201d stood nearby.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I put both men in their 50s or 60s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was clear from the stuff around them that they were camping out and illegally, because it was no campground. They had apparently hacked a trail off Highway 213 down an embankment through blackberries. Part of their encampment was situated under the bridge across the river. So in other words, these two men were a kind of homeless trolls and one of them was fishing for salmon and the other one was making art with what I presumed was beaverwood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a deranged meth freak named Todd told me decades ago along a tributary of the Clackamas River, \u201cIt don’t get no more Oregon than that!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

No, I think not Todd. Not on this summer morning in Wagon Wheel Park.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A couple of years ago, I would considered the sight of two older homeless men living under a bridge alongside a salmon bearing river, one fishing, one making art, both probably addled, as something bizarre and inexplicable to behold. Not anymore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As I ate my breakfast, it occurred to me: this scene is unfolding daily on every comparable watercourse in Oregon. Everywhere. From Burns to Brookings. From Astoria to Ashland. From Mollala to Medford.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s also going on a half mile from where I reside in Portland, in three different directions, and I get the idea it’s not going to end in my lifetime.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I stopped at Wagon Wheel Park off Highway 213 on the Mollala River to eat breakfast before meeting a farmer in Mulino engaged in a unique history project for Oregon. He contacted me and asked for my editorial assistance and I was happy to oblige. It was 8:30 on a Thursday morning in July. Sun […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7991,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7990","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-meditations","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\/7990","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=7990"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7990\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7993,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7990\/revisions\/7993"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7991"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7990"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7990"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7990"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}