Oh, good grief.

You know, we've taken copyright to ridiculous extremes. The things the DMCA is being used for....

Like, say, shutting down a parody site - to such a degree that an upstream provider is cutting the entire ISP off due to this and previous problems. The article's worth a read, but it's also infuriating.

I hate to think about where this country is going and has gone, on this and many other fronts.

Champoeg State Park Pictures!

So, on Saturday I went to a park (Champoeg State Park, as it happens, because I've been there before) and took pictures. And I imagine by now you were half-anticipating that none of them came out, since usually I shove my pictures up very quickly and make everyone look at them. :) Nope! This time, it was just a case of Laura being distracted by other things (like books). The photos, they are here now. This is all in a relatively small area of the park. It has a lot of amenities, features, and history that I'm sorry to say, most days I don't care about.

Today I went walking at Tryon Creek State Park, which unlike Champoeg, doesn't have a day-use fee. I've never been there before, but I'll go back. It's a nicer park, for my interests, with a lot of trails. Alas, it's also easily accessible and near downtown, so it's busier, but...it's gorgeous all the same. Anyway. This is about Champoeg, I'll say more about Tryon Creek later (after I've gone through those photos).

Here are the best shots from Saturday (as usual, click thumb for full-size). First, a bird I saw in the parking lot. He's obviously used to stupid humans, since he let me wander around and take several shots. Fortunate, since this was one of the last shots I took. Even with his tolerance, I didn't try to get in really close. I'm wondering now if he'd have let me.



Then we have the walk along the trail, which I'll mostly let speak for itself:



The last one, I will note, is worth seeing in the larger size for the water droplets gathered on it.

I didn't reverse the trail; I walked along the upper car/bike routes back to the parking lot. Which is where this final shot comes from:

Tryon Creek State Park photos

This is a collection of my 11 favorite pictures from Tryon Creek State Park. Down from 29 (I didn't want to post that many) on my first attempt to cull them out! Out of 81 I took that were recognizable images of something (in some cases, 2-3 of one item came out - ironically, most of the images that didn't work WEREN'T part of a set I took in order to try to get one that worked...no, they were all one-offs...).

I was there for a half hour or so, and I think the images give the feel of it pretty well. They can't convey the recently-damp-forest smell, or the rustle of the wind through the trees, or the burbling of a little creek tributary, though. The feel of the ground giving beneath your feet (unpaved trails, short on gravel, and it had been raining), or the thunk-thunk of a brief wooden bridge. The distant calling of a bird, and the not-so-distant reply of another. The way the wind flirts with your hair, even if most of it is caught inside your coat. The pleasant small chill the shadows bring. (Nor can any image catch the glorious glare of the sun, at least this trip. There were a couple lovely moments walking into it that I was sure the camera could not reproduce. Alas, in this I was right.)

Lest you think the new park (Tryon Creek) is perfect....

...I did have one bad part to the visit. I had the bejeebers scared out of me. (Probably good; I'm still not sure what bejeebers are for and having things in you that you can't say why is a bad thing, right?) There are three sets of trails - biking, horseback, and walking. You can walk on any of them, with or without your dogs, who must be on-leash.

There were a fair number of dog-walkers and, given that my phobia is basically down to the point where it only has to do with unrestrained, strange dogs, I was nervy (dogs!) but no more (leashes!). I would step to the edge of the trail when a jogger-and-dog passed me, and was doing pretty well.

The couple who parked next to me had a pair of dogs and they set off down the same trail I initially did, at the same meandering walking pace I was using (as opposed to the joggers, who zip past).

And after a while, I hear not too far behind me, sharp aggressive barking - which is responded to in kind by another dog. I turn back and there they are, with their two dogs...and a third, a black, dancing around them and barking and clearly unleashed, wherever he came from.

I almost lost it. See, when looking at the trails, I'd decided the one I wanted was too long to walk to the end in the time I'd given myself, so I'd intended to turn around and walk back. I therefore had not memorized the route I'd have to take if I went forward and tried to get back without retracing. Plus, this loose, aggressive dog was not very far from me at all (20 or 30 feet?).

Fortunately, the couple behind me were dog people, and saw in what was to me a strange-scary dog one that was mostly just playful, I think. Pretty soon, the guy had the dog and theirs calmed down (theirs to complacency, the stranger-black to a dull roar) and was throwing a stick down into a dip for the stranger dog.

Problem solved. I doubled back, passing them, just after another throw of the stick, while the stranger-aggressive-dog was down in the dip and busy digging a stick (wonder if it was the right stick?) out of some ivy.

Because I had just enough courage to do that while someone who was comfortable with dogs kept this one busy. No way was I going on, and having to come back through that area alone. I was going to get in my car and leave but, by the time I'd made it back up the trail (the dog was never interested in following, that I saw - after all, he had attention while I was making my escape!), I was feeling better, and took another trail. Most of my pictures, and all the ones I posted, came from that second trail.

(1) Whoever owns that dog, if anyone, is an ass. And he looked too clean and well-fed, when I got a good look at him, to have been a stray very long if at all. (2) Poor park, having a dog tear up and down its non-trailed hillsides. Oh, well. There are supposedly deer in there and they have to be rough on the plant life too, I imagine.

My poor nerves. But I did manage to calm down again - first enough to stay, then, after walking awhile with no dogs, enough to enjoy.

Meh. Dogs.