June 29, 2016: Pseudotsuga menziesii of Washington County

June 29, 2016.  6:48 PM Everyone who was walked among the giant trees knows the almost supernatural light that radiates around the trunks of a grove of them. It's impossible to capture on camera, but I tried anyway, just for the fun of it, I stood in one spot and swiveled the iPhone up and down until I found the knife-edge of the balance of light and shadow

My spontaneous road-trip through the Tualatin River valley after visiting the Giant Chip Manufacturer in Hillsboro on Wednesday had me following the back roads in the golden afternoon sunlight, winding south through the twisting hills and tree-topped ridges of Washington County. It was a glorious day to see this part of Oregon. Each turn along the road was a stunning summer vista of soft green landscape of farms, orchards, and vineyards, sometimes with Mt. Hood in the background.

The miles that passed brought pleasant snippets of memories of similar glorious road trips in Oregon from years ago. They would mingle with the present, somehow validating the intensity of the current moment as being part of a long narrative.

The state highway going south eventually takes one up over a massive ridge. Coming down off it feels like being on the Blue Ridge Rail in Virginia. Once down in the valley again, one comes in the little town Newberg along Highway 99, where there is a small liberal arts college run by the Quakers (a rival to my Alma Mater in Salem). Now that I was relaxed, my old road trip habits started to in.  It's hard to pass up exploring a little college town this, especially one I hadn't visited in a while. So  I parked the car and took a stroll around downtown, ducking into a quaint used book and coffee shop where I hunted around for the foreign language section, as I always do, looking for treasures. To me this is the essence of being in the moment, and feels so utterly civilized.

June 29, 2016. 6:17 PM. Along Highway 99W east of Newberg. In the early days of this blog, I would have made a very high priority about going to see a movie here. I've learned from experience that drive-in movie theater experiences, although romantic as an idea, can be uneven in practice and sometimes downright rustic.  Nevertheless, who can't be happy that such venues still exist, if for the kitsch value of their old signs, if nothing else.

By the time I finished looking around, it was late enough that traffic in Portland would have died down, so I started heading back to the city on Highway 99.  I stopped for a few moments to take pictures of the drive-in movie theater sign, which I'd driven by multiple times without ever stopping.

Outside of Newberg the road goes down into a creek valley and passes through a pleasant "tunnel of trees" near the county line as  one crosses back into Washington County.

There the highway skirts the northern outskirts of the little town of Sherwood, which I hadn't visited in many years, and which had escaped the slow tour of Portland exurbs that I had made since coming back here. It seemed like the time to check it out again. When I got to the parking lot in the tiny downtown it seemed very familiar but so modern and "grown up.". I parked there by the railroad tracks and started walking down towards the creek on a path I knew from years ago.  I knew from my previous that there was a park along the creek with several bridges across it. Years ago a local amateur theater company used to put on summer musicals in the lawn beside the creek.

It was an interesting little town back then, with lots of potential, but frustrating for someone trying to be involved in the arts, as I recall. The local theater company was very modest in budget and struggled to find venues to put on their shows. Now I was very much surprised at the changes there.

It looked like the town had prospered and taken off.  Among other things there was a splendid new public library, as well as new multi-story construction downtown.  It felt a much more bustling a place than I remember.

But most drastically, the park along the creek that I knew from my previous had been entirely redeveloped. In its place were redeveloped wetlands. The trail alongside the creek wove among intricate ponds on an elevated wooden walkway, the kind one sees a lot around Washington County and this area in general.

The signs along the walkway told me about the animals and trees, including a little grove of Douglas-firs near the high school. The trees there reminded me of a similar cluster on the campus on my alma mater in Salem (but those are actually Sequoiadendron giganteum). Such plantings tend to have an almost ceremonial aspect to them in the Northwest.

Amidst all the new wetlands, the expansive grassy lawn where the musicals had been performed along the creek was gone.  But that did not mean that theater wasn't going on there, as I would soon discover.

As it happened, while following the trail, in rather confused fashion, I arrived at the back of the theater just moments before the start of the opening night of the summer musical. The friendly folks wearing yellow staff vests informed me that it was the seventh year they had put on a show at this venue.

My curiosity piqued, I followed the trail around to the front, where one could see, down amidst the redeveloped wetlands trees down beside the creek, a permanent stage, covered with fixtures for lights, etc. The stage was set for the show one could the orchestra and part of the audience. From where I was sitting up on the hill, on a bench beside the street, the stage looked like a magical forest diorama amidst the dark greenery around it.

Down at the bottom of the hill, a woman in staff vest was taking tickets on the bridge crossing the creek. The streets all around were lined with parked cars. It looked like the entire community had turned out to put on the show. What years ago must have seemed like a dream to the local would-be artists had now apparently taken over the entire community. It is amazing how time brings such impossible revolutions into being.

As I sat on the bench, the show started and the orchestra began playing the overture, which ran through many of the musical numbers.  While they were playing, a woman wearing a staff vest, a blonde mom type in her 50's, walked down the hill in front of me and noticed me watching. "Don't you want to get closer?" she asked me, cheerfully. I laughed without replying. It was tempting, but the magic-box tableau down among the trees, and the bridge there, seemed too perfect a world into which to insert myself. The vibe of the moment was just too good.

I watched until halfway through the first scene, and walked away, back up the hill towards the car, with "I'm on the Street Where You Live" running through my head.

It made me understand why folks like living in a place like this, and if I never get back to Sherwood again, I think I will have seen it at its finest.

Previous events

2001 (Feb. 28) Nisqually Earthquake in Puget Sound area causes up to $4 billion of damage in the Pacific Northwest. Movie theater in downtown Sherwood is damaged and eventually demolished in 2003.

1964 (Nov. 9) My Fair Lady, released by Warner Bros. Pictures. Screenplay by Alan Jay Lerner and directed by George Cukor.  The film won eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Actor, and Best Director.

1956 (Mar. 15) My Fair Lady premieres on Broadway at the Mark Hellinger Theatre. Book and lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner and music by Frederick Loewe. Starring Rex Harrison and Julie Andrews. "The musical's 1956 Broadway production was a momentous hit setting a record for the longest run of any major musical theatre production in history (it closed on September 29, 1962 after 2,717 performances). It was followed in 1958 by a hit London production, a popular film version, and numerous revivals. It has been called "the perfect musical."

1939 Douglas-fir declared State Tree of Oregon.

1913 (Oct. 16) Pygmalion, by George Bernard Shaw, premieres at the Hofburg Theatre in Vienna, Austria. "Professor of phonetics Henry Higgins makes a bet that he can train a bedraggled Cockney flower girl, Eliza Doolittle, to pass for a duchess at an ambassador's garden party by teaching her to assume a veneer of gentility, the most important element of which, he believes, is impeccable speech. The play is a sharp lampoon of the rigid British class system of the day and a commentary on women's independence. In ancient Greek mythology, Pygmalion fell in love with one of his sculptures, which then came to life. The general idea of that myth was a popular subject for Victorian era English playwrights, including one of Shaw's influences, W. S. Gilbert, who wrote a successful play based on the story called Pygmalion and Galatea first presented in 1871"

1891 (Jul.5) U.S. Postal Service starts delivery to Sherwood, Oregon. Postmaster James Christopher Smock, who founded the town platted the town along the right-of-way of the Portland and Willamette Valley Railway.

1885 Portland and Willamette Valley Railway is incorporated "to continue construction of a 3 ft  narrow gauge railroad line between Portland and Dundee, Oregon, which had been started a few years earlier by the Oregonian Railway."

1859 Oregon statehood.

1856 Building of the plank road from Portland to the Tualatin Valley. "According to Oregon historian Stewart Holbrook, the building of the plank road was the decisive event that allowed Portland to surpass its rival Oregon City for supremacy as the economic hub of the territory. The railroad was extended into the valley in 1868."

1842 Founding of present-day Willamette University in Salem. "the oldest institution of higher learning the West."

1834 David Douglas dies in Hawaii.

1827 David Douglas introduces Pseudotsuga menziesii into cultivation. "The common name is misleading since it is not a true fir, i.e., not a member of the genus Abies. For this reason the name is often written as Douglas-fir (a name also used for the genus Pseudotsuga as a whole)"

1826 David Douglas climbs Mount Brown (of the mythical pair Hooker and Brown) near Athabasca Pass to take in the view. "In so doing, he became the first mountaineer in North America."

1824 (July) David Douglas makes a second trip to North America, visiting the Pacific Northwest, where he spends three years, returning to Britain in 1827. "The second expedition starting in 1824 was his most successful. The Royal Horticultural Society sent him back on a plant-hunting expedition in the Pacific Northwest that ranks among the great botanical explorations."

1824 Founding of Ft. Vancouver on the Columbia River [present-day Vancouver, Washington]

1823 (Jun) David Douglas makes first trip to North America, staying four months on the East Coast.

1818 U.S. and Britain agree to joint occupation and settlement of the Oregon Country.

1799 David Douglas is born in Scone, Perthshire, Scotland. "He attended Kinnoull School and upon leaving found work as an apprentice to William Beattie, head gardener at Scone Palace, the seat of the Earl of Mansfield. He spent seven years in this position, completing his apprenticeship, and then spent a winter at a college in Perth to learn more of the scientific and mathematical aspects of plant culture. After a further spell of working in Fife (during which time he had access to a library of botanical and zoological books) he moved to the Botanical Gardens of Glasgow University and attended botany lectures. William Jackson Hooker, who was Garden Director and Professor of Botany, was greatly impressed with him and took him on an expedition to the Highlands before recommending him to the Royal Horticultural Society of London."

1792 (Oct. 29) Mount Hood is given its present name by Lt. William Broughton, a member of Captain George Vancouver's discovery expedition. Lt. Broughton observed its peak while at Belle Vue Point of what is now called Sauvie Island during his travels up the Columbia River, writing, "A very high, snowy mountain now appeared rising beautifully conspicuous in the midst of an extensive tract of low or moderately elevated land [today's Vancouver, Washington] lying S 67 E., and seemed to announce a termination to the river." Lt. Broughton named the mountain after Lord (Samuel) Hood, a British Admiral at the 1781 Battle of the Chesapeake."

1791 The expedition of the HMS Discovery and Chatham, commanded by George Vancouver, leaves England to circumnavigate the globe.