A quiet day on Mount Hood at Lost Lake
Most trips to my favorite lake on Mount Hood — Lost Lake — are full of the same kinds of experiences: stunning views of the mountain, refreshing swims, quiet paddles out into the middle, and plenty of newts.
For good reason, Lost Lake is almost always kind of full of other people, too. But there’s something about the crowds at Lost Lake that actually adds to the experience somehow. All the people swimming and playing, fishing and boating — having fun and enjoying life out there on the water — combined with the lake’s rustic cabins and painted rowboats, gives it a classic summertime feel; like summer camp as a kid.
All that said, however, it’s also nice to have Lost Lake on a beautiful day almost all to yourself. That’s exactly what happened a couple weeks ago, when my family was out from Ohio, school was still in, and the weather was perfect for a day on Lost Lake.
My dad, enjoying the peace and quiet of Lost Lake.
Atkinson Memorial Author Fair
Enjoyed being part of this event so much last year that I’ll be back there with dozens of other authors again this year from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday, June 22.
This year’s fair also ties in with the 100-year anniversary celebration of the Oregon City Public Library. On hand for that will be some big guns in the Oregon writing world, including author Matt Love and Oregon Poet Laureate Paulann Petersen.
The views from Hood River Mountain
There’s no doubt about the views from atop Hood River Mountain.
The hike up this little hill just outside of downtown Hood River covers just under 2-miles roundtrip and goes up 600 feet or so pretty steadily. So it’s not going to blow you away in terms of exertion or exhaustion.
The view from up top, however, is another story.
Yet sometimes, despite the grand views like this, there are other, more subtle sights that can have just as big of an impact.
We hiked up to the top with the kids a few weeks ago, and even though the day was gorgeous, the flowers in bloom, the mountain and all of the Hood River Valley in big, full view, it just wasn’t enough to keep the little girl happy.
But then she started looking around a little more and found something much more enchanting than a jaw-dropping mountain view. And all of a sudden, Hood River Mountain became a much better place.
(Thinking this is a Western Fence Lizard; knowing that it is inside an empty Stack Wines glass — great for the trail!)
On Mount Hood — in good Oregon company
It’s always flattering and honoring to come across On Mount Hood in local bookshops. This one came from Graham’s Book & Stationery in Lake Oswego, where the book has found a home amidst a great selection of Oregon books.
One of the things I really like about this picture isn’t just On Mount Hood though, but some of the other books that are there as well.
One row up and to the right is Crossings: McCullough’s Coastal Bridges by Judy Fleagle and Richard Knox Smith. What I love about that is that 12 years ago, Judy Fleagle was the editor of a magazine called Oregon Outside, and I was a furniture truck driver and an aspiring writer looking for a break. Judy gave me that break by publishing one of my very first pieces ever, a story about canoeing some of Oregon’s alpine lakes. The layout and design and editing were so nicely done that I still use that clip whenever I’m pitching other outdoor stories.
Right above Judy’s book is Timberline Lodge: A Love Story, which was edited by Jon Tullis, spokesman at Timberline Lodge. Jon not only provided a blurb for the paperback of On Mount Hood, but he also helped launch the book two weeks ago at Powell’s.
And just to the left is Hood River Valley: Land of Plenty, and below that, Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area, both by Janet Cook — now the editor of The Gorge Magazine — and photographer Peter Marbach. I’ve had the pleasure of meeting both of them at past book events and have long admired their work spotlighting some of the beauty of Oregon, the Gorge and, of course, Mount Hood.
Great company to be in . . .
Writers Night at the Springwater Grange — this Saturday!
A little press release about a great writing event happening this weekend:
The Estacada Area Arts Commission is sponsoring its eleventh annual Writers Night at the Springwater Grange on April 20th at 7 pm. The Springwater Grange is located at 24591 S. Springwater Rd, near the town of Estacada.
This year’s event will feature Jon Bell, author of On Mount Hood: A Biography of Oregon’s Perilous Peak.Bell will read from his book, and show slides of the mountain from his extensive collection of images.
Jon Bell will be joined onstage by hosts Stevan Allred and Joanna Rose, and by Portland based writer and publisher Laura Stanfill. Stanfill’s Forest Avenue Press has recently published its first book, Brave on the Page: Oregon Writers on Craft and the Creative Life. All four writers are included in this anthology.
To celebrate the publication of Brave on the Page Allred, Rose, and Bell will read work that explores and defines this evocative phrase. Stanfill will speak about her own creative life, and the pleasures and pitfalls of being a writer, an editor, a publisher, a wife, and the mother of two small children, all while bootstrapping Forest Avenue Press from nothing to a going enterprise in less than a year.
In September Forest Avenue Press will release Allred’s short story collection, A Simplified Map of the Real World. “It’s a suite of linked short stories set in a small town I call Renata,” says Allred. “For me, being brave on the page has meant writing about the place where I live, fictionalizing it of course, but always running the risk that my fellow Estacadans will feel like I’ve gotten it wrong.”
Rose will read from her novel-in-progress, Everybody’s Rules for Scrabble. Her novel takes on the controversial issue of abortion. “There are lots of things we’re scared to talk to each other about, like sex, and death, and religion,” says Rose. “Writing about them takes some courage. It helps if your parents have already passed on, which mine have.”
As always, host Stevan Allred will invite the entire audience to his home for a reception after the reading.
Forest Avenue Press will release Stevan Allred’s A Simplified Map of the Real World in September of 2013. Allred has twice been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. He has survived circumcision, a tonsillectomy, a religious upbringing, the 60’s, the break-up of The Beatles, any number of bad haircuts, the Reagan Revolution, plantar fasciitus, the Lewinsky Affair, the the Florida recount of 2000, the Bush oughts, the War on Terror, a divorce, hay fever, the real estate bubble, male pattern baldness, and heartburn. He is the editor of the zines Dixon Ticonderoga and The Intentional Ducati, and together with Joanna Rose, is the leader of the writing workshop known as The Pinewood Table.
Joanna Rose writes poems, short stories, long stories, and really long stories, true to life and also imagined. Some of them have been published (Bellingham Review, Windfall Journal, ZYZZYVA, High Desert Journal, Story Magazine, and the Oregonian newspaper.) One of them was so long it became a novel, Little Miss Strange. She teaches writing in classrooms all over the state, and with Stevan Allred at the Pinewood Table, which is in her living room in a small blue house in southeast Portland.
Laura Stanfill believes in community. She’s the founder and publisher of Forest Avenue Press and the editor of the anthology Brave on the Page: Oregon Writers on Craft and the Creative Life, a Powell’s Small Press Bestseller. Laura, an award-winning journalist, has been published in local newspapers and magazines in New York, Virginia and Oregon. She earned her English degree from Vassar College and she’s at work on a nineteenth century novel about bobbin lace, music boxes and a fainting pimp. See forestavenuepress.com for more information.
An outdoor enthusiast and wordsmith, Jon Bell has been writing from his home base in the Portland, Oregon, area since the late 1990s. After growing up in Mansfield, Ohio, Jon got a bachelor’s degree in history from Michigan State University, then traveled extensively across the American West before landing in Portland. His first published pieces were about some of his backpacking and climbing excursions in the Northwest, including countless weekends on Mount Hood. His work has appeared inBackpacker, The Oregonian, The Rowing News, Oregon Coast, and many other publications. He is also co-author of the climbing guidebook, Ozone, and a former president of the Ptarmigans Mountaineering Club. Visit his freelance writing web site, www.jbellink.com. He lives in Lake Oswego, Oregon, with his wife, two kids, and a black Lab.
On Mount Hood — Book blurbs and thanks
With the paperback of On Mount Hood coming out later this month (7:30 p.m. Wednesday, April 24 at the downtown Powell’s to be exact), I had to find some solid and willing folks to offer up blurbs for the back of the new cover. Luckily, since the book first came out, I’ve met a few of those folks and they have been kind enough to lend some lines to the paperback.
Many thanks to them all:
Kim Cooper Findling, author of Chance of Sun and Day Trips from Portland.
Jon Tullis, spokesman for Timberline Lodge, vice chair of the Oregon Heritage Commission, and the author and editor behind the book, Timberline Lodge: A Love Story. He’ll also be part of the paperback launch at Powell’s on April 24th!
Jack Nisbet, author of David Douglas, a Naturalist at Work and other books.
A second round of thanks, also, to Bruce Barcott, author of The Measure of a Mountain, who gave me my first blurb ever, which is now on the cover of the On Mount Hood paperback.
On MOUNT HOOD 