Wednesday Wanderings

Wally has Wednesdays off. Although we have each weekend of leisure time to enjoy, Wednesday is very special to Wally and me. He walks away from his busy job at the grocery store on Tuesday afternoon, knowing he can do anything he wants for the next 36 hours. A good time to catch up on errands, effect small repairs around the house, or work on some continuing project? You'd think.

Instead, we usually take off. This is our time to wander. Rarely do we have an actual game plan; usually it's just "get in the car and see where it takes us". Yesterday was a case in point. We knew we wanted to drive down to Duck Pond Winery in Dundee to pick up our (my!) quarterly wine club shipment, so that was our starting point. We like to drive to wine country by way of the "205" to the "5" to the Donald off-ramp, then through farm country, across the Willamette, into the woods, and, finally, meet up with the busy 99w right in Newburg. Most of the trip is through rural scenery, away from traffic - just to our liking. Yesterday, mesmerized by a north-bound, traffic jam on the "5" freeway (opposite side), we missed our offramp and had to continue to Woodburn before we could head east. No prob: when we're wandering we don't really look at the clock or worry about "wrong" turns. There are no wrong turns - just some place we haven't seen before.

The sky was low - thick, bulbous clouds hung over our heads like a false ceiling in a Disney ride; all we needed was to pass a pirate ship loading it's cannon toward our vessel! We drove on through new, but not unfamiliar rural territory. Wally remarked, "Well, here we are, on another Oregon country road. But then, most of Oregon is country roads". He's right, of course. You have to be in Portland itself to have any real sense of civilization in Oregon. Everywhere else is open fields or dense forest or wild coast. Oh, there are a few towns thrown in - just to help you keep your perspective. But none of them amounts to a city - mostly just rambling, loosely connected settlements between the wildness and intense natural beauty of this incredible state.

We found our way to the winery - purchased the wine - and consulted the map to see where we might continue our peripatetic path. Hum-m-m... We really wanted to head west, through the coast range, but we'd followed most of those roads already. Wally suggested heading down to Willamenia (site of his favorite sweet roll place!), then up the "22", through the mountains to Tillamook. That way we could follow the "6" (one of our all-time favorite roads), back to the "26", just in time to run into commuter traffic home. Of course. Why not? A little bumper-to-bumper beating is a small price to pay for an afternoon of soul-filling splendor.

Thus we discovered highway "22" - magnificent, mind-boggling, picturesque, untamed corridor through the coastal mountains. It's one of those twisty-turning drives where each turn brings new and fresh scenery - and elicts "ahhhhs" at every bend in the road. We could stop and just bathe in the lovely coolness of the dense forest, but then, just ahead, lies a similarly lovely, yet strangely unique, turn in our path - we have to stop there also! One could never get anywhere this way!!! And it's totally impossible to become jaded by the surreal, almost fantasy-like panorama. Once in a while we came upon evidence of human habitation - a house that we "almost" saw buried among the trees, a few cattle or sheep grazing in a distant, silvan meadow. That's about it. A road sign indicated a town up ahead - it turned out to be a wayside market, probably with a post office which merrited zipcode designation. The landscape was littered with unabashedly blooming foxglove and some enormous bush covered with thousands of red berries - not recognizable to us. Delicate Coastal firs, heavy disiduous trees vying for room among the hugh Douglas Firs, the forest understory choking with dozens of fern varieties; everywhere evidence of vigorous woodland life. Heaven.

Each time we venture into the wildness of this planet we are refreshed and satisfied - convinced that if such beauty exists for our enrichment, there must be a Creator who loves us, and this world, enough to care for us and keep us in harmony. I guess our part is to preserve that harmony with whatever skills and knowledge - and heart - we possess. So we arrived home, exhausted and happy. Another beautiful day spent in the clear air of our lush, green homeland.