March 17, 2026

Bucking up firewood rounds; Dad remembers his Mom's teaching days; brittle bush and creosote bush; OHSU's AIRC

From the Woods

What to do with the leftovers of salvage logging? Turn it into firewood! On
After the Sunday morning ritual of Dad-made soft-boiled eggs and toast, Dad says to me, “I’ll have you drive the truck.” He drives the Kubota up Collins, through red-gate west to where logs lay in the salal and Oregon Grape. Tom and I follow in the truck with its handy toolbox and saws. Tom wraps the chain around the butt end of the first log, Dad pulls it out of the brush, powers up his saw, and starts cutting rounds. Tom rolls each to the road for easy access with the dump trailer.

I’ve brought my Stihl Rollomatic Mini, a battery operated saw with a 12–inch bar hoping to buck up some of the smaller logs. I haven’t used it in a couple years, so I open it up, clean out caked up sawdust and decide I should lubricate the saw blade. There are two containers of fossil-derived liquid in the back of the truck, but I’m not sure which is which. One is a repurposed "Softsoap” container—I pick it up, walk to Dad and ask, “Is this chain oil?” He replies, “Yes, it’s bar oil.” He didn’t even chide me for not knowing the proper terminology.

I remember which buttons to push to power up the saw, slice off a three inch knot, start biting into the tree, and my chain falls off. I need more lessons.

People Older Than Trees

This week, I received messages from two students I taught in the Bronx in the late 1990s. They both fondly recalled being in my class—I’d been instrumental in making them readers. I was moved. When I remember my time in the Bronx classroom, I mostly remember failure. These students’ messages brought me to tears.

I was telling Mom and Dad about this and and Dad recollected a memory about his mother who was also a teacher (both my grandmothers were teachers). The memory brought tears to his eyes. He then remembered Teresa Boylan, the rancher in Kansas who made sure he got to college almost on time.

We never know who we will touch.

I Need to Know More

The brittle bush (encliea farinosa) was blooming everywhere in the low mountains around Joshua Tree. I learned Spanish priests dried and burned the leaves for incense causing the plant to be nickamed incensio. Our guide commented that the priests needed something big to impress members of the Cahuilla Tribe because they used psychedelics in their religious ceremonies. I’m not sure if a church full of smoke would be enough. . .

Another often-sighted bush was the creosote bush (larrea tridentata), which has many uses, and a very cool insect that lives on it, the lac sale bug. Its secretions form a impervious shell and Cahuilla used it for sealing food in jars, attaching arrowheads, and repairing broken pottery. (source)

Stumptown

Tom held down the home front while I was gone. My travel-partner Luci’s husband Dave was in Portland for a few days so Tom showed him around his lab at OHSU’s Advanced Imaging Research Center.