Lions and Fires and Fairs, Oh My

(five postcards from summer to you)

- Oh My
The people who run the 36-hole disc golf/picnic area/swimming hole/fishing pond/campground/music venue in the countryside, northwest of Portland, have more than a dozen guard peacocks roaming their grounds. I collected this one—for you—at the beginning of the Summer during a disc golf outing.

This (almost-extinct) type of Mom-n-Pop business leaves a handful of money in a bucket on their porch under a hand-scrawled list of prices, instructing you to: make your own change. Of the many signs in both English and Spanish, one was in Spanish only. I asked my paramour to translate it and she replied, "It warns about the penalties for catching fish and not paying for them."

Oh my Mom-n-Pop...there's a reason you're goin extinct.

- LionsI will not beat them in a dimly lit cave, I will not beat them crowded on a rock, I will not beat them if depraved, I will not beat them even to shock.

The chiaroscuro quality from my camera phone, rendered what would have been a mundane snapshot of sea lions in a cave worthy of presentation.

- The Fair
I captured a rare public display of the popular-in-a-previous-century, African-American headdress, being worn by a bald member of the Caucasoid race. In other words: a bald red neck cracker wearing a blue doo-rag. Because he also wore a white t-shirt with torn-off sleeves exposing racist tattoos, and four of his friends and family members were wearing at least one item of camouflaged clothing, I feel confident about my classification.

Please note: This is not an accidentally blurry photograph. I took this after four hours at the state fair err... really it was the Oregon Brewers Festival...and successfully captured what my eyes were seeing at that time.

- Fires
We went to Crater Lake and it was as snapshot-pretty as you'd expect (*oohh aahhh so bluuue*). As we were leaving the National Park surrounding the lake, a rather vaguely written portable electronic sign along the side of the highway flashed: FOST FIRE BX MM 39/44 H138. No mention of a closed road. So, about fifty miles later (with the smell of smoke gradually increasing) we were slowed by traffic cones when the two-lanes narrowed to one in several spots because of an adjacent fire.

Taking a picture of a forest fire—as one drives passed it, in a car—is something most people, in the US, don't get to do (I know in some countries, like Australia, it's more commonplace).

- Non-conformity rocks!
On a beach with a half-mile of smooth gray, varying from torso- to Lima-bean-sized, (stacked over twenty feet deep) I fell in love with a white palm-sized skipping stone.

Towering genius disdains a beaten path. It seeks regions hitherto unexplored. — Abraham Lincoln