When I moved here to Portland, I got to where I rarely drove. My apartment had a lousy shared driveway situation to where I usually left my car there unless there was a rare opportunity where all my neighbors were gone. I'd always been a walker, but moving to Portland allowed me to integrate walking as a bigger part of my daily life. Eventually, I moved and got to a better situation with driving. But this allowed me to have a better access to nature in the surrounding regions, other than the admittedly large hiking areas that are accessible through Portland transit. So I got more and more into hiking, and these days I'd say it's probably my favorite thing to do. Some of that is due to the bad habit of social media where I feel compelled to share anything I do that I feel might attract interest to my tens of followers [it's a little more, but not much.] But it's also a genuine desire to feel physically engaged and to be in nature, and hopefully in peace and quiet [though that sometimes is hard to find on popular hikes.]
I prefer hikes with some kind of payoff at the end, and it is almost some kind of adrenaline junkie situation. If it's not at the edge of something, I feel like it's blah. Well, that's exaggerating a bit, but I at least like to see a cool bird or an opportunity to take a cool photo, even if there's a lot of huffing and puffing involved to get there. Or occasionally falling down. The most embarrassing is when I am slowly struggling to ascend or descend [actually the trip back down is often way more precarious] while these families with little kids are scrambling with no problem.]
Anyway, here's the view from atop Silver Star Mountain. The best part of it were these ravens that sounded like people yelling.
I fell down once on the way back, sliding on loose gravel going downhill on the trail, despite my hiking poles. Thankfully I only got a scraped arm and some wounded pride. I'm sure the birds got a big kick out of it.
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