WW: Bullfrog

(Rana [Lithobates] catesbeiana. Invasive and destructive here on the North Coast, but extremely common.)

Appearing also on My Corner of the World.

Boom Town

Where it swelled near its confluence with the Willapa River, Wilson Creek bore incongruous signs of heavy industry: breastworks of peeled cedar, crumbling now and wrenched apart by ramming drift, and a few pilings left standing midriver, where log booms once floated.

Here in the 1850s, Daniel Wilson built the area's first mill, to rip the logs that ox teams skidded off the surrounding hills. It would have had a sash saw – essentially, a giant handsaw, pumped back and forth by a steam engine that chugged so slowly the sawyer could almost fish the river between passes. The planks it wore off in this way were stacked on scows tied along the breastworks, to be taken first to Raymond and South Bend, and thence the ports of the world. Soon steamers stopped here as well, and the busy town of Willapa sprang into being, complete with shops and hotels.

It all happened in weeks, and a few years later, when the big trees were all gone, it unhappened just as fast.

What remained – a sleepy village and a small primary school – is now called Old Willapa.


(From an earlier draught of my book, 100 Days on the Mountain. Photo of the Willapa country courtesy of Tony Webster and Wikimedia Commons.)

WW: More mysterious shoes

(Here we go again. This time it's a pair of virtually new hiking boots beneath a bench on a popular bike trail. There for days before someone picked them up.)

Appearing also on My Corner of the World.

Koan: Floors and Ceilings

'Way back in 1973, Paul Simon released a song called One Man's Ceiling Is Another Man's Floor. The lyrics are classic Paul: a Dylanesque flow of images that makes sense on an intuitive level.

But as a many-time flat dweller, it's the title refrain that means most to me. For like the best of Sufic teachings, its significance changes as you turn it in the light.

At base, it seems to mean "walk mindfully, because your tromping will be amplified in other rooms."

Or it could be a social justice message about the people you – wittingly or un- – exploit for your own comfort and well-being.

Conversely, it may be telling us that those limits we allow to confine us, a more visionary person could use to launch him- or herself to the stars.

Or maybe it just refers to the fact that we all live within a vast complex of shared boundaries, where freedom, if it exists, is more a matter of accord than licence.

Whatever the case (bit of a deep-dive Zen pun, there), I like to sit with Paul's one-sentence koan from time to time; see where it lands in that moment.


(Photo courtesy of Rawpixel.com and a generous photographer.)

WW: Oyster boat

(Dredging on the high tide.)

Appearing also on My Corner of the World.

Street Level Zen: Passive Karma

“Not responding is a response - we are equally responsible for what we don’t do.”

Jonathan Safran Foer


(Photo courtesy of Greg Rosenke and Unsplash.com.)

WW: Nootka rose

(Rosa nutkana; native to the North Coast. One of my favourite flowers, and everywhere this time of year.)

Appearing also on My Corner of the World.