What I Found at Forest Park: A Late Summer Bird Walk

~ dougalexander

I’ve been doing informal bird counts in Forest Park since I retired, mostly along the Wildwood Trail between the NW 53rd Avenue trailhead and the Hardesty Trail junction — about three miles of trail I know well enough to notice when something’s different.

I want to be clear that I’m not an ornithologist. I have binoculars, a worn copy of Sibley’s, and the Merlin app on my phone, which is genuinely remarkable technology and I say that as someone who spent thirty years trying to convince twelve-year-olds to care about science. I started doing bird counts because it gives me a reason to walk slowly and pay attention to what’s around me, which doesn’t come naturally.

Here’s what I recorded on a two-hour walk in mid-September:

Common sightings (seen or heard multiple times):

  • Steller’s Jay — always present, always loud
  • Chestnut-backed Chickadee — small flocks moving through the understory
  • Pacific Wren — heard far more than seen, calling from the ferns near the creek
  • Dark-eyed Junco — numbers picking up, which usually means fall is on its way
  • Red-breasted Nuthatch — working the snags along the upper section

Heard but not confirmed visually:

  • Hermit Thrush — one individual, single song phrase, not repeated
  • Wilson’s Warbler — Merlin agreed with my guess but I wouldn’t stake anything on it

Good sightings:

  • Pileated Woodpecker — one bird, briefly visible high in a dead fir near mile two. I’ve only seen them a handful of times in the park and it still feels like an event each time.
  • Sharp-shinned Hawk — cruising through the canopy, causing strong opinions among the chickadees

The park is at its best in September, before the rains start in earnest. The light comes through the Douglas firs at a different angle than in summer. I had almost no company on the trail that morning, which was unusual and which I won’t question.

If you’re getting started with birding and you’re in Portland, Forest Park is a reasonable place to spend a few hours. Download Merlin, set it to Oregon, and let it do the heavy lifting on calls. The real-time ID function — where it listens and tries to name birds by their vocalizations — has changed how I walk. I stop more often now.

I’ll do another count in late October when fall migration should be more visible. Report to follow, eventually.

Trail Notes: A March Day on the Ramona Falls Loop

~ dougalexander

I’ve been putting off the Ramona Falls trail for years. I don’t know exactly why — it’s forty-five minutes from Portland, it’s not a difficult hike, and everyone who’s done it describes the falls as worth the trip. Maybe that’s the problem. When something gets described as “worth it” enough times, you start expecting the experience to be diluted by crowds.

March turned out to be a good call. Nine cars in the lot when I arrived at eight-thirty on a Friday morning. By the time I got back, a few more had shown up, but I had most of the trail to myself on the outbound leg.

The loop runs about seven miles depending on which source you consult. There’s some elevation gain — maybe 900 feet total — spread out enough that it doesn’t feel like a climb. The first mile follows the Sandy River before the trail cuts into the forest proper. After thirty-five years of teaching units on Pacific Northwest watersheds, there’s something satisfying about walking the ground you used to show on maps.

The falls are at about mile three. They fan out over a broad basalt formation in a way that doesn’t look entirely real until you’re standing next to them. I stayed longer than I needed to. The mist was heavy enough that I was glad I’d packed a spare fleece.

Practical notes:

  • The parking area requires a Northwest Forest Pass ($5 daily, $30 annual). I watched a ranger working the lot while I was eating lunch — he was thorough.
  • The Sandy River crossing depends on water levels. In March it was manageable — stepping stones and logs — but I’d check conditions before going in a wet year.
  • Some of the rooted sections on the return are slippery when wet, which in March means they’re slippery. Trekking poles helped.

Near the base of the falls, I watched an American dipper working the water for about ten minutes. If you haven’t seen a dipper, it’s worth knowing what you’re looking at: a small, plump, slate-gray bird that hunts underwater by walking along the streambed. It bobs constantly — hence the name. It looks like a biological mistake until you realize it isn’t one.

I’ll be back in late fall to compare notes. But March, with the mist still heavy and the trail mostly empty, might be the right time for this one.

Cannon Beach in October: Why the Off-Season Is the Right Season

~ dougalexander

I’ve been to Cannon Beach maybe a dozen times over the years — with my kids when they were small, with my wife for various occasions, once on a school trip I don’t need to go into. For most of those visits, it was summer, which means parking situations and shops full of people in matching fleeces buying taffy.

We went in October this year, on a Tuesday, and I’m not sure I can go back in summer now.

The drive up 26 from Portland takes about an hour and a half. On a Tuesday morning in October there was plenty of parking on Hemlock Street. We walked down to the beach and there were maybe twenty people in a quarter mile of shoreline. Haystack Rock was doing what it always does — sitting there looking improbable — but without anyone staging photos in front of it for once.

The water was cold. The sky was doing that layered gray thing the Oregon coast does in fall, where there are four different kinds of clouds at four different altitudes and the light keeps shifting. We walked south for about forty-five minutes and turned around. A brown pelican flew past at approximately eye level at one point, which still surprises me after all these years of living here.

We ate lunch at a place on Hemlock. We were the only customers. It was good.

A few practical notes:

  • Some shops close or reduce hours after Labor Day. If there’s a specific place you want to eat or shop, call ahead before making the drive.
  • The beach is windy in fall and winter in a way that’s different from summer wind. Fifty degrees with a twenty-mile-per-hour onshore breeze is not the same as fifty degrees in Portland. Dress for it.
  • Ecola State Park, just north of town, is worth the extra few miles if you have time. There’s a viewpoint about a mile in that looks south down the coast. In October it was muddy in a couple of spots but nothing difficult.

We drove back in the late afternoon when the light was going flat and pink over the Coast Range. I’ve seen it probably a hundred times. I didn’t take a picture, which I sort of regret and sort of don’t.

The Garden Bench Project: What I Learned Building My First Real Piece of Furniture

~ dougalexander

I’ve had a chop saw and a router in my garage for about eight years. In that time I’ve built two raised garden beds, a set of shelves for the laundry room, and approximately forty linear feet of rough-cut baseboards for a bathroom remodel that got a little out of hand. I’ve always thought of myself as someone who does woodworking, despite having mostly avoided building anything with actual joints.

This spring I decided to build a garden bench. No back, just a seat and two solid end supports, something to put at the edge of the beds. Simple construction, allegedly. I looked at plans online and settled on a mortise-and-tenon design that looked achievable.

Here’s what happened.

The lumber sat in my garage for about six weeks before I touched it. This is normal for me; the planning phase is apparently where I put most of my effort. When I finally started cutting, I discovered that my workbench isn’t level, which meant the mortise layout was slightly off on the first end support before I realized what was happening. By then I’d already cut the tenons to match the mortises, so I had to decide: recut everything, or accept a bench with a slight lean.

The bench has a slight lean. You’d only notice if you put a torpedo level on it. I have put a torpedo level on it several times.

The seat is two pieces of Douglas fir edge-glued together. I’m in Portland, which means the wood is going to move whether I want it to or not. I should have accounted more carefully for expansion across the grain. The boards have cupped a bit — not enough to be uncomfortable, but enough that I know it’s there. I’ll run a hand plane over it next spring.

What I’d do differently: take more time on the layout. I was impatient in a way that ended up costing twice as much time on corrections. Measure twice, cut once is something I understand intellectually and apparently cannot execute emotionally.

What worked: the mortise-and-tenon joints themselves are solid. I cut them with a router and a chisel, neither of which I’d used much for joinery before. The fit is tight enough that I didn’t need the glue, though I used it anyway.

The finish is two coats of boiled linseed oil followed by exterior spar urethane. It rained on it two days after I put it outside. It’s been through three seasons now and looks fine. My wife has planted lavender around the legs, which has the effect of making the whole thing look intentional.

Total cost in materials: about $80. Time: one full Saturday plus most of a Sunday. I’m already thinking about building a matching side table, which suggests the whole process is going to start over.

Year One of Retirement: What They Don’t Tell You

~ dougalexander

I retired from teaching in June of 2022, after thirty-five years in middle school science classrooms. A lot of people have asked me what it’s like, usually with an envious look that suggests they’re expecting me to describe a continuous vacation. I’m going to try to give an honest answer.

The first thing they don’t tell you is that you’ll miss structure more than you expected. I know this sounds like the complaint of someone who can’t relax — my wife has said as much — but there’s a difference between choosing not to have structure and having it removed. For thirty-five years, September through June, my life had a shape. Bell schedules, lesson plans, the particular rhythm of a school building that you stop noticing until it’s gone. I spent a lot of last July not knowing what to do with Tuesdays.

The second thing is that you’ll develop more opinions about coffee than you did before. This is a Portland problem specifically. When you’re working, you make coffee in the morning and drink it. When you retire, you start thinking about the coffee. I’m not proud of this.

The third thing — and this one is genuinely good — is that your relationship to weather changes completely. When I was working, a rainy November was just a rainy November. Now a rainy November is a reason to stay in the shop and work on something. A clear day in March is a reason to go somewhere. Weather has become information rather than an obstacle, which is a significant quality-of-life improvement in the Pacific Northwest.

I’ve been hiking more. I’ve been finishing woodworking projects that sat as lumber in my garage for years. I drove down to the coast twice last fall just because I felt like it. None of this is exotic, but all of it feels like mine in a way that’s still a little new.

The harder parts are real too. The loss of professional identity takes some adjustment. I was a teacher for a long time, and “teacher” was a significant part of how I understood myself. I’m still working out what comes next in that department. “Retired teacher” is accurate but backward-looking in a way that doesn’t sit quite right yet.

A friend who retired two years before me told me it takes about eighteen months before you stop feeling like you’re on an extended summer break and start feeling like this is simply your life now. I’m at seven months. I’ll check back in.