Sunday Meanderment

I went for a drive to Sauvie Island today, which is straddled by the Columbia River about 10 miles northwest of Portland - although to me it seems much farther away. Most of it is a wilderness preserve, but there's quite a bit of agriculture too - lots of sheep, emus, some beef cattle and one of the biggest organic farms around, that offers a market in the summer and a pumpkin patch in the fall that jams up traffic halfway back to Portland. But there's also a nude beach, rows and rows of rickety floating houses and a big-time buzzard overpopulation issue. Sauvie Island, you're sort of creepy.

But I appreciate creepy. Especially when it takes on the form of twisted, decrepit-looking trees that appear as though they were conjured up by Tim Burton. I am always fascinated whenever I see them and vaguely recall there being a whole hillside of them somewhere between Baraboo and Madison, WI -next to some abandoned military barracks, which does its part to amplify the unease. I'm not sure what kind of fruit they bear, but I'm wary of ingesting it.