Eclipse 2017: In Celebration of a Family Farm, Friends, and Pure Awe

The "diamond ring" emerging from totality. Photo by Allen Denver.

In today's hyper-speed news cycles, the 2017 total eclipse that sliced across the USA on August 21 is old news. But in the days since, I've been replaying that amazing 1 minute and 48 seconds in my mind, lingering over the too-brief spectacle.

It was the most thrilling, mind-bending, magnificent natural event I've ever experienced.

The bonus? It capped a wonderful weekend on a family farm in the Willamette Valley filled with happy, interesting people, great food, and kick-back fun.  Life doesn't get much better.

Over 40 people and 7 dogs converged on the farm situated conveniently in the path of totality. We ranged in age from 6 to almost 80. Many of us pitched tents in the orchard, some slept in RVs and campers, while others lodged in the barn.

As people arrived over several days from Seattle, Portland, and even Santa Cruz, California, it was fun to meet old friends and make new ones. As Tonia said, it was like "a family reunion with the people you like even though some of us had never met."

Some went hiking and exploring in this beautiful, pastoral patch of the valley near Silverton, and some stayed close to relax, cook, or read. Several kids picked fat, sun-ripened blackberries for pie, which hostess extraordinaire Mary Lou helped them make.



The taste of late summer in the Pacific Northwest.

Although there was a possibility of clouds, I awoke before sunrise on Monday morning and peeked out of my tent to see sweet clear skies. As fast as possible, I threw on a fleece sweater and jeans, grabbed my cameras, and ran out in the morning quiet to shoot the sunrise, my favorite time of day.

 

Eclipse day sunrise - minus 4 hours.

After another hearty breakfast of farm fresh bacon, eggs, fruit, pancakes, and more, the anticipation edged up several notches.  We spread out in a couple open fields and patches with good views to the east, set up chairs and cameras, got out our eclipse glasses, and watched as the moon slowly crept across the sun in tiny but increasingly large increments.

Sheet spread out to catch the post-eclipse wave shadows.

About half an hour in, the light started to visibly dim, the temperature dropped, and a slight breeze picked up. I reached for my jacket and put it on.

As the moon encroached more over the sun, the light was unlike anything I've seen, as if someone turned down the dimmer switch in the sky.

Shortly before totality the roosters started crowing, and I heard what sounded like an owl hooting from the patch of woods behind the field. A short hush fell while the last sliver of light faded from view, as if everyone held an intake of breath for an extra second.

When I could no longer see any light at all through the eclipse glasses, I tore them off.

That first stunning glimpse of a big black circle in the black sky, surrounded by the white glow of the sun's corona shimmering outward in delicate filaments of light, will forever be seared in my mind. 

(For you art history types, it reminded me a bit of the dramatic crown of thorns in Grunewald's famous Eisenheim alterpiece, only more exquisitely gossamer.)

All the photos I've seen don't quite capture it. But they're close.

Totality. Photo by Allen Denver.

People whooped, I heard what sounded like a bomb or fireworks go off in the distance, and I found myself bouncing around, saying to no one in particular, "THIS IS SO AWESOME!!"

I'd heard people say to look around, so I did. In this instant predawn/dusk, there was a tinge of red on the horizon in every direction. 

Then I grabbed my camera and snapped some shots, put the camera down, put on my regular sunglasses and gazed up at that wondrous sight above again. I remember thinking, if this was a few thousand years ago and I didn't know what caused this, it would be a fearsome sight indeed.

Far too soon totality was over. I wanted more.

Some of us drove away quickly to try and beat traffic (no such luck) and some people stayed another night at the farm. I waited until after dinner and headed north at 6 pm. After 8 long hours on the road without a break, I pulled up to my home in Seattle at 2 a.m.

Of course I want to see another total eclipse now. Next time I wouldn't try to take any photos and would instead focus more on the sun and surrounding sky during totality, without sunglasses. I'd heard conflicting things about the safety of viewing without any protective lenses during totality (consensus: it's safe). As a result, I missed seeing the stars in the background around the sun.

So how about you? Did you make it to the totality zone and see this spectacular phenomenon? If so, how did you react or feel? Would love to hear about your experience in a comment below.

And perhaps Chile in 2019?

Photo by Allen Denver.

Happy trails and thanks for visiting Pacific Northwest Seasons! In between blog posts, visit Pacific NW Seasons on FaceBook, Twitter, and Instagram for more Northwest photos and outdoors news.

Thanks to Allen Denver for letting me use some of his great eclipse photos. And extra special thanks to our generous and gracious hosts Mary Lou and Ben.

Hood River Valley Weekend: Down on the Farm

Every year, for five summers now, we return to the farm.

Perched way up Hood River Valley in Parkdale, Oregon, beneath towering, glacier-encrusted volcano Mt. Hood, Draper Girls Country Farm is the pilgrimage destination for high school friends long past high school. We call ourselves the Great Eight.

To the farm employees, we're the "funny ladies," says friendly owner Theresa Draper. We have fun. I'll leave it at that.

But the point is, the Draper Girls farmhouse, surrounded by orchards, riots of seasonal flowers, goats crying like humans, a busy farmstand, and of course The Mountain, provides a homey, comfortable spot to relax into a country pace and reconnect.

Five years ago I posted about Draper Girls and our weekend there, but with so many repeat trips, I treasure going there more with each passing year. It feels like coming home.

Friday afternoon we all arrive from destinations near-ish (Portland), far (Seattle), farther (the Bay Area) and farthest (the other Portland, in Maine). After settling in, the last few years we've chowed down a fabulous barbeque dinner from Parkdale's homegrown Apple Valley Barbeque.

Sometimes we venture down to Hood River for meals, like Sunday brunch at the historic Columbia Gorge Hotel or fancy dinner at Celilo. But really, it's so pleasant up at the farm, this year we just take turns cooking meals in the well-stocked farmhouse kitchen.

Chicken Marbella

Then we settle in and talk, like eight women who've known each other since childhood and haven't seen each other in over a year can talk: with gusto.

Some of us (me for sure) get restless inside too long, and long country walks are in order each day.  This year it's verging on autumn with the apple and pear harvest well along.  

And unlike years past, there's some rain involved. But we're all western Oregon raised, so what's a little (or a lot) of rain?  All that moisture is good for the skin.

Rain on the hills beyond.

Back on the farm, the goats crack us up with their human-like cries, and the fall flowers are at their brilliant peak. It's all so unpretentious and charming.

With dear friends, a comfortable farmhouse to gather, fresh fall fruit right off the nearby trees, and much more, it's another memorable, wonderful weekend on the farm. 


Happy trails and thanks for visiting Pacific Northwest Seasons! In between blog posts, visit Pacific NW Seasons on FaceBook, Twitter, and Instagram for more Northwest photos and outdoors news. 

When You Go
This year's autumn harvest is still in full swing, so think about a trip along the Hood River Valley Fruit Loop for cider tastings, heirloom apple celebrations, and other fall harvest events throughout October and into early November. Hint:  At Draper Girls Farm, their packages of dried apples dusted with cinnamon sugar are addictive. I never leave with just one. The rental farmhouse/cottage sleeps eight comfortably, with four bedrooms and two bathrooms and room for a few more in the living room.

Here's a link to a map of the Fruit Loop and the farm locations.

Down on the Farm: Willamette Valley Walnut Harvest

Sowing and reaping the soil for food, living hard by the seasons: Several generations back, probably most of our ancestors were agrarian. My great uncle had an orchard in Yakima, Washington, where I remember sampling the sweetest, freshest apples ever. How about you?

Maybe that's why I get excited about helping small farmers harvest, like the lavender, wine grapes, and walnuts I've cut and gathered this year. 
 
It doesn't hurt that there's usually good food involved in exchange for a day here and there helping out, like my recent weekend in pastoral Willamette Valley between Salem and Silverton, Oregon.


 When I get invited to spend a weekend on Mary Lou and Benjamin's family farm to harvest walnuts, I say heck yes! Despite the late October damp chill and the roosters crowing at zero dark thirty each morning, I sleep surprisingly well inside my cozy tent pitched behind the old barn. (Well...the walnuts pelting the barn in little explosions when they dropped from the overhanging tree did scare me a bit at first.)

It didn't start raining until the morning I packed up and left.

Our mission is to harvest walnuts dropped on the ground beneath the trees that Benjamin's father planted over 60 years ago.  This used to be part of a much larger farm dating back a couple generations, as are most of the many farms in this part of the central Willamette Valley. Today the family works 2 of the 40 acres, while the rest are leased to a tenant farmer for seed production.

Come Saturday morning,  Mary Lou has been up early fixing breakfast for the crew of friends here to help harvest. Like I said, we'll eat well this weekend.

After stoking up on biscuits, bacon, and coffee, it's time to head out back and search for walnuts. I follow Benjamin out to the edge of the orchard, where he points out some walnuts on the ground beneath a tree.

"This tree has lots of nuts.  If the outer cover comes off easily, that's good. But if it sticks, don't bother."  I didn't know that walnuts grow sheathed in an outer pouch that looks sort of like a green Italian prune on the tree.

On the ground where we gather the nuts, the outer layer is slimy in this damp misty weather.  I pick them up with my surgical-glove covered hands and pull at the covering.  Nuts that pop out easily go into the bucket and later into big canvas bags in the back of Benjamin's pickup.

This manual labor is quiet and methodical.  It gives me time to just be with the trees, the fallen leaves, the mist, and the land.

Benjamin has been harvesting nuts from these trees since he was a boy.

Across the dirt field another small farm.

Some trees aren't as productive, and the search for nuts in the layer of fallen leaves feels like a challenging and sparse East Egg hunt. Sometimes we're bending over, sometimes raking, and sometimes just down on our knees on the ground, scouring the leaves and uncut grass for walnut gold.

Walnut yoga?

Soon enough it's lunch time, and we relax and enjoy another wonderful meal Mary Lou has prepared.  And of course good wine; this is the Willamette Valley, after all, where wineries surround us. Our crew ranges from retirees like Mary Lou and Marilyn to my nephew Alex who lives nearby in Salem.

After lunch we put in several more hours, and I do battle with a particularly infertile tree, raking and combing through leaves carefully.  With each walnut I find, it feels like I've won a mini-lottery.  This tree doesn't yield much, but the nuts are particularly lovely.

Our primary reward for today's toil (but it was truly enjoyable toil!) is a wonderful dinner at the Silver Grille Cafe in nearby Silverton, where Chef Jeff Nizlek features savory Willamette Valley cuisine.  Three thumbs up to this charming and intimate café, where the meals feature locally sourced meats, wine, mushrooms, and produce.  (Mary Lou and Benjamin's walnuts from a harvest a few weeks ago are in my green salad.)

When I was a kid Silverton was not a foodie destination, but today it's part of the whole marvelous Willamette Valley wine-cuisine scene. (Of course no one had ever heard of a "foodie" when I was growing up, and a food culture hardly existed here in the Northwest.)





Fresh pasta, incredible sauce.

Too early Sunday morning  it's time to rise (not as early as the roosters though) and head north for the 4-hour drive back to Seattle.  I feel a little wistful leaving the valley and this pastoral landscape, knowing soon I'll be back in the city fighting traffic.

Do you have any harvest stories to share?  Would love to hear your comments below.

Thanks for visiting Pacific Northwest Seasons and Like Pacific Northwest Seasons page on FaceBook for more photos and Northwest adventures between blog posts.

When You Go
While my weekend was specific to a private family farm, I say jump at any chance out there to help harvest for a day or two. Small wineries often have an email list sign-up for harvest assistance. The Willamette is a wonderful place for bicycling and exploring farm stands, wineries, and little gems of cafes and such.  Go reconnect with the spirit of your farming ancestors!



Hood River Valley Weekend Getaway: Fun along the Fruit Loop

Sometimes the perfect summer weekend getaway isn’t about packing in as much as possible— it’s about relaxing with friends and maybe not doing much at all. Sharing home-cooked meals, talking late into the night, sleeping in, sipping tea, and hiking to a beautiful waterfall…can you think of a much better way to reconnect with lifelong girlfriends you haven’t seen in a year or more?

Down on the Farm
For the annual G8 gathering, this year we rent the spacious and comfy farmhouse at Draper Girls Country Farm in Hood River Valley, Oregon, one of the farms on the “Fruit Loop” drive of orchards in the valley. With elegant Mount Hood looming only a couple dozen miles up valley and a cherry orchard just beyond the front lawn, the bucolic locale sets the tone for a wonderful weekend. What sealed the deal and drew us here, though, were the cute little pygmy goats and young lambs frolicking in a pen beside the house.



The eight of us who’ve been friends since junior high (and some as far back as kindergarten) have lots of catching up to do. So we sit outside in colorful lawn chairs talking and laughing, watching the hue of Mount Hood’s glaciers and snowfields change as Friday afternoon turns to evening dusk. When it cools down we move inside.



Hiking to Tamanawas Falls
“Anyone want to join me for a hike?” I ask on Saturday morning. While I love talking with great friends, I get antsy without getting outside and moving all weekend.

This year, for the first time ever (and possibly the last), everyone agrees to go on a hike together. Talkative and friendly farm owner Theresa Draper recommends hiking to Tamanawas Falls on the flank of Mount Hood, about 15 miles up Highway 35 on the Mount Hood Scenic Byway. I hiked here as a teenager, but came from the other side of the mountain.

We stop at the wrong trailhead and hike an extra mile (don’t stop at the trailhead near the Cooper Spur turnoff, go a mile farther up mountain!), but it’s a relatively easy 5-mile roundtrip jaunt through mostly Douglas fir forest along a couple rushing mountain streams. T Falls is a very popular hike, and we pass plenty of people as well as dogs, a deer, and a skittering little gray lizard.



Although it’s not a hot day, the heavy mist roiling up and spilling outward from the base of the waterfall cools us down while we sit and take in the view (and talk, of course). Since the rocky trail gets a bit slick close to the waterfall, we plop down on rocks just outside the damp zone and soak up some sun.



Hood River’s Big City Coffee Houses
While I think it’s healthy to be totally unplugged for a weekend, on Sunday morning I drive a dozen miles down valley to Hood River to check business email because there’s no Wi-Fi at the farmhouse and I don’t get decent cell reception. Compared to the quiet up valley, busy downtown Hood River feels like an overcrowded city. (Personally I think this revitalized orchard town peaked in the 1990s.) I bypass packed and trendy Dog River Coffee and Doppio’s and settle in for tea and a scone with my netbook at less-crowded but long-time local favorite Ground Espresso Bar and Cafe on the eastern edge of downtown.



Fruit Looping
On the way back up valley, I can’t resist stopping at a couple farmstands along the Fruit Loop. When I was a kid, before windsurfers discovered Hood River, this area was all about orchards and fruit. Today smaller local farmers are challenged to stay afloat due to overseas competition that undercuts their prices. A tank top I buy at Cody Orchards in Odell from owner Donna Cody sums it up: "An apple a day allows your farmer to stay."

A few miles farther up Highway 35 towards Mount Hood, I make another stop at Packer Orchards to take pictures of Mount Adams to the north (which is a spectacular climb if you're in good shape). But I’m a sucker for good fruit smoothies, so when I wander inside the farmstand and see milkshakes and smoothies available in a zillion combinations of delicious fruit, I have to get one. My creamy raspberry-Marion berry-peach yogurt smoothie is about the best I’ve ever had. Truly.



Cooking on the Farm
Of course with seven moms and a foodie wannabe like me, the meals and snacks we whip up in the well-stocked kitchen are mostly healthful, occasionally decadent, and very tasty. We had planned to dine out one night at a fancy Hood River restaurant, but it’s so nice up here at Draper Girls farmhouse that we cancel the reservations and eat all our meals around the big farm table.





When we need to supplement, we just walk a few yards over to the Draper Girls’ farmstand to restock. I snag some brilliant green string beans, sweet organic cherries, rosy apricots, and a Walla Walla sweet onion. I make a mental note to buy some of that grass-fed lamb available in the freezer to take home and cook up later.

So this is what makes new memories with old friends. Maybe a bunch of guys would bond over a weekend fishing. But we loved hanging out at the Draper Girls' Country farmhouse so much that we’ve pre-booked a weekend next summer. If you stop by the farmstand and see a bunch of ladies laughing over on the lawn by the farmhouse dressed in oddly eclectic retro clothes, it might just be us.



I hope that you, too, can enjoy time with dear friends in such a lovely place.



When You Go
The Draper Girls Country Farm farmhouse, which is right on Highway 35 just north of the Parkdale turnoff, gets booked well in advance, so book early. The house sleeps eight easily in four bedrooms with queen-sized beds. The sofa in the living room is also comfy for sleeping, as one of my friends can attest. The kitchen is completely stocked with good pots, pans, dishes, knives, and more. There's also a wide-screen TV, but we didn't turn it on all weekend.