17 October 2008
Deepwood Mansion, Salem, OR
1:00
Today our class took a nature walk to Deepwood Mansion. The house is beautiful and although it is stationed right next to a busy intersection, it maintains a natural setting. As you walk up the driveway immediately you are immersed in completely different surroundings. Everywhere you look the ground is covered with trees and bushes, flowers and grasses. The first thing I see as I walk up the driveway is the roof of a small gazebo sticking out from behind the tops of long fence like bushes. The top is arched and quickly cascades into an umbrella like shape. We walk down stone steps to the lawn the steps have moss growing at an outward angle from the inner corner of each step. The moss slowly fades from thick rich dark green to a soft lighter green that begins to spread out more and more as it grows. When we reach the lawn we walk pass an old oak, I look up to the branches but my eyes rest upon a little hollow break. Inside this hole there is a spider web that looks like a tangle of string. Usually it seems as though spider webs have some sort of structure or pattern, but this web is just one string after another stretched from one side to the other, just enough to cover the hole. The sun glints through the leaves and makes the web glow, sparkle like tiny little gems. The string looks just like silk and illuminates the little hole in the tree.
19 October 2008
Capitol Grounds, Salem, OR
2:15
Whenever I’ve gone to the capitol ground it has been for some random mission, feeding squirrels, climbing statues, or just for a late night walk. Today for the first time I had an opportunity to really look at all of the trees there are around these grounds. The main reason for visiting the capitol grounds was to show my mom the statue of animals on parade. After a while I began to look at all of the different types of trees, each and every on of them is so diverse. Some of the trees had odd umbrella shaped quaffs on top of a straight trunk, these we learned are a mix between two trees, other trees had long sweeping branches that seem to look around like rollercoasters. The only other place I have ever seen trees like that is in Maine. The longer I am here the more I realize how similar the two coasts are. Being from the Midwest, it is interesting to see the dynamics of each coast and how they vary compared to each other and to the Midwest. When you walk around my hometown the vast majority of trees are maples or some type of standard evergreen, you would never see trees as diverse as those at the capitol grounds. In my front yard we have a weeping willow that almost covers the entirety of our yard, this tree is probably one of the most unique trees that you will see in Middleton, WI.
18 October 2008
Saturday Market, Portland, OR
10:30
As you walk amongst the many diverse booths at Saturday Market you see people just as diverse as the booths themselves. Each booth seems to tell a story about the person, whether it be their Somalian made socks, or their hand made spoon clocks, everyone has a different background and these booths help to explain their lives. In a small way it is a little community of its own. I love walking from the busy road above down to the sheltered little market. As soon as you enter the market you are submerged in a completely different world. Every time I come to this market it is a new experience, there are new musicians, new booths, and new people. This particular Saturday it was especially fun because I got the chance to introduce my parents to the market. My favorite part of Saturday market is not only seeing the diversity of the booths, but the diversity of the people behind the booths, each person is talented beyond belief in one way or another. Today we walked past a booth where a woman was selling handmade whistles. Each whistle was carefully constructed into all sorts of shapes. A passerby asked about the whistles and immediately the woman enthusiastically explained how she made them, then she began to play a tune, first she played on a small whistle then transferred to another whistle which plays in a much lower tone. The sound is beautiful, but we continue on to another booth to hear another story.
16 October 2008
The Quad, Willamette University, Salem, OR
8:55
Today as I was walking to class the campus was empty because I had to set off especially early today to make observations on for my bio class on our unknown embryos. I set out and as I reached the quad there was a mass of fog lingering just inches above the ground. The mist transitioned slowly from a solid white mass to a less dense mass as it faded upward. I walked through the mass and found my shoes slowly soaking through with water.
19 October 2008
1:00
Riverfront Park, Salem, OR
As I sat on a bench in Riverfront Park I could see a sliver of the Willamette River between two clusters of trees. As I watched the water the waves would ripple in continuously different patters. At some points the water was shrouded in small slivers of ripples and at other times circular paths would generate as birds would land. The wind would also play a factor in creating these waves, for at times the surface of little ripples would ungulate with greater ripples on top of these creating a symbiosis of waves. Unnatural waves would come by cutting through all of these waves as boats drifted past. As I sat there watching the waves the sun slowly covered my bench and I moved on.