Tag: portland

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.

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.