Where The Water Comes From

I've been working long days up in the Bull Run Valley, south and east of Portland in the foothills of the Cascades. Much of Portland's drinking water comes from here (one reason why we're working there). And the Bull Run water is so clear and clean and sweet that the City waterworks does not filter it. But the real treasure of this plase, behind the locked gates that keep out litter and sprawl, is the pure Cascadian beauty of it.

Indeed, to call this place "beautiful" is to shortsell beauty; the Bull Run is perfect in the way that nature can be perfect, by being complete in itself. The dark firs and cedars are reflected in the bright water. The mist drifts dreamlike through the heavy forest. The sounds are the rush and roar of water on stone, wind in treetops, the calls of birds; the delirious twitter of the wren, croak of raven, skeer of jay. It needs nothing but to be where and what it is.

There are places where time slows to the rate of the erosion of a stone or the growing of a douglas-fir. Where even the works of Man are subsumed, and softened, by the rich land around them.

This is one.I have to sleep. Hope you enjoyed the visit to the valley of the Bull Run. G'night.