Wy'east from Tabor, In September Mode

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Happy Labor Day 2022 from the north east slope of Mount Tabor, where the visage presented by Wy'east looked thusly:

The peak is sans snowcover, which reminds us of last year in August when the record-setting torrid wave swept through, deleting all remaining snow cover in one swell foop. 

Despite weather records attesting that this August was the warmest August in the history of Augusts that have been recorded hereabouts, this is more in line with the usual. About this time, September, what remains of Wy'east's snow enrobement is gone, or at least as near as makes little difference from the POV of any spot in the Rose City offering a view. 

Dramatic Clouds, October Morning

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Another one from the files: One October morning six years ago there were low clouds partially obscuring Wy'east from view and the sun was illuminating it dramatically.

Wy'east With A Light Coat

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Just as Luuit was dusted with the white stuff over the last weekend, so was mighty Wy'east (Mt Hood), as my 122nd and NE Shaver St/Rossi Farms POV will show.

I know things can't last forever, but I adore Rossi Farms just for being there and providing this sensational window to the east, and I hope they're gonna be there for many a year more. 

And Wy'east looks good with a even just a little snow on 'im, especially after our extra-torrid summer.

Snowless Wy'East

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The dryness of the year is only enhanced when one looks at the state of Wy'East as it is, now. 

A few weeks back, a friend (and several others) posted up pictures of California's Shasta, utterly bereft of snow. I'm not a local to that and I imagine that late in summer, Shasta's usually down to next-to-nothing, but it was not only unsettling to see it that bare but that bare that early in the summer. That heat wave we endured took some thirty per cent off Tahoma's (Rainier) snowpack along. 

Wy'East being a more modest peak than either of those two, I had to expect no small amount of white gone. The wildfires being what they have been, I've not seen the mountain itself for a few weeks; the mantle from those east-of-the-Cascades infernos spreading westward enough to turn the eastern horizon into a visual miasma (I'll comment on that in a subsequent entry). 

Work being what it is, I come home during the afternoon now instead of the morning. And when I passed by my favorite photo spot, NE 122nd and Shaver in front of Rossi Farms, this is what I saw today:

Now, I've looked back through my historic photos and have determined that Wy'East looking this way in September is not really all that unusual (I'll post some comparisons in another subsequent post). But when seen through the lenses of this historically torrid Oregon summer and the mounting anxieties about the changing climate, it seems a little drier, a little more dessicated.

The only white left on Wy'East are its modest glaciers. Here's a close-up with the two most visible from my POV called out:

And so it, so far, goes.

Storm Tossed A Blanket over Wy'east

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Rain's coming this weekend, they say. Then warm and sun. But first, Oregon rain ... the real stuff.

Wy'east anticipates.

 The clouds on the right hand side give The Mountain almost a Tahoma-like chest. The thin window in the cloud deck on the left, letting a great shaft of light illuminate the north slopes, is unique and memorable.

The Sentinel Over Powell Blvd

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Opportunities to spot Wy'east vary all over Portland. The great peak is visible in many areas, not at all in some thanks to terrain and tree cover, and sometimes, it plays peek-a-boo.

It does the peek-a-boo act along the stretch of SE Powell Blvd just at the east end of the Ross Island Bridge. But this produces a sort of invigorating challenge; deciding on just the zoom and the parts of the tree-covered east side to use to nuance the visual impact of the mountain on what is in front of it.

As typical, the juxtaposition of the human-inflected landscape against the ancient volcanic cone produces a visual tension I just cannot resist.

Wy'east: Bigger From NW Gresham Than You Think

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Gresham is, to some degree, defined by Wy'east. The mountain's European name -- Mount Hood -- is all over everything out there; the local community college and about half (it seems) of the businesses in town call themselves Mt Hood-this-or-that.

When you go out there, it's plain to see why. At about 11,245 feet, it is Oregon's tallest mountain, and cuts quite a figure (as I relentlessly document) from just about every viewpoint. Its shape on the horizon has become iconic, in a way, for the Portland Metropolitan Area. And, as big as it seems from Portland, from Gresham, which seems just over the foothills, it looms larger.

This is a view from the upper slopes of the hill Burnside Road descends on before it intersects with Eastman Parkway, NNW of the Gresham business district, on the edge of the desolate parking lot of the still-vacant Gresham K-Mart:

If the greens of the trees in the foreground look a little dark, that's a correct observation. The Brown Eyed Girl wanted to get some views as she too had her camera with her this day, and while the day was more or less fair (with a mugginess that attenuated our energy ... but, still fair) there was a very high overcast that filtered all the sunlight and caused the great mountain to nearly fade into imperceptibility. After I loaded the picture into GIMP and played around with color levels, however, I was able to make the mountain pop out and the foreground became rather artistically abstracted, somewhat. 

Wy'East Over Morning Traffic

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A throwback to December 2019: Wy'east, on a chill morning, while I was still using the ten-toe express to get to and from werk, during the Time-Of-No-Olivia.

I hated not having the VW (and it was causing no small amount of stress) but the scenery was a compensation.

Anyone reading this? I've a suggestion. Live your life as though you were a tourist there. Sight-see your world even if you've seen it a billion times before. I can only speak for myself here, but in a life in which I hunger for, and am largely bereft of artistic stimulation (we proles don't need art, you see), it's gotten me a hell of a long way. 

Wy'east, Blanket of Cloud

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There hasn't been a 'strictly-Wy'east' post here for a while and the cloud-cover today rather demanded that I rise to meet this challenge. 

The result.

The sky rather like nacre, the summit of the volcano draped in cloud, the clounds in front of that throwing dramatic shadows on the lower slopes of the peak they shaded. 

Flawless, as usual. Is it ever anything else?

Wy'east And Rocky Butte Lamp Post

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... and, of course, where there's Zehnkatzen Blog Post there is eventually Yet Another Photo of Wy'east. This should surprise nobody by now as the mountain is the totemic image to me as it is to George Orr, only his dreams changed everything and mine change very little. 

The composition pretty much suggested itself. I don't think I need explain it any more than that.

There is a thing to point out though. See that little cloud cap on the summit, there? That started forming in earnest at that time ad, while it didn't go into a full lenticular cap, it did persist for the rest of that day, and was pretty amazing. 

Wy'east From Columbia Blvd Traffic

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A few chapters ago I promised yet another Wy'east photo, and I have them from Rocky Butte, but I wanted to share this one first.

The aspect of Wy'east, seen through (and despite) a welter of traffic signals and 'phone pole wires and stopped traffic at the intersection of NE Cully Blvd and Columbia Blvd has a certain energy to it, and it tells a story of a most patient mountain. We people have the land and do with it as we will, but Wy'east ... well, Wy'east could the Dude a thing or a million about abiding. 

The peak abides.

A New View: Wy'east from 116th and NE Prescott

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Stumbled on this one. There is a viewpoint not too far from my usual vantage point at NE 122nd and Shaver, by Rossi Farm, that provides a new frame for our beloved volcano.

This is how Wy'east appears from the corner of NE 116th Avenue and Shaver Street, at the northwest corner of the Parkrose High School Campus.

Immediately in front of us is the baseball field at Parkrose HS; the low-slung buff colored affair in the middle distance is the Burgerville on NE 122nd; beyond that, some trees; the point in pointing them out is the perponderance of deciduous trees here, which gives the whole thing a bit of a different feel. 

Not every tree in Oregon is an evergreen. Well ... just most of them.

The framing captures the imposing feeling of the mountain just rather perfectly, and actually a little better than the Rossi Farms POV. In the gestalt, though, it's not better on balance ... different. Supports a slightly different mood, that of the mountain amidst the city, as most of us usually see it.

Wy'east With A Fire In The Sky

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This was Wy'east from the Rossi place at NE 122nd and Shaver today. There was a lot of red and gold in the sky so you know I couldn't pass that up.

A lot of fire in the sky. The sun rising cast a golden haze around the shoulder of the volcano. 

I've begun to become just perhaps a little enamored of this tall, portrait-y format because you get enough of a ground to anchor the idea and this tall towering column of sky to create the majestic backdrop. 

The skies over Wy'east have been most dramatic of late, and today was no exception.

The First Clear View of Wy'east In A Very Long Time

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I usually kind of am indifferent to clear blue skies, much preferring the variegations of the cloudy and overcast but after the wildfire-choked Western sky of the past couple of weeks, even overcast-loving me is enjoying the clear blue.

Still, it took a little longer than I thought for the mountain to present. Precipitation followed by foggy mornings (well, it is getting into Fall). But here ... for the late Brenda Balin and all those others who happen by here for a view of Oregon signature peak ... is Wy'east at sunrise, taken from the stretch of NE Killingsworth St just west of I-205 I pass hither and thither through every working day:

The peak is in silhouette but that's mere apparency. The sun this day was rising off to the left, to the north (as is appropriate for this time of year), over Larch Mountain, to be exact. One can just make out the pattern of glaciers on the flanks of the volcano (no snow, as of yet).

Here's a wider view of the scene:

That distant humpback on the left there is the aforementioned Larch Mountain. And again it strikes me how hard it is to frame a picture so that the psychological weight of the mountain communicates. Seems rather small, here. 

We all have a different vision, and that applies to the indifference of the sensor of the Canon camera I use. Such is photography, I guess.

Wy'east Over Division, Six Days Ago

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Diving back deeper, I was finally able to coax a image to resemble things the way I remember them.

I do, as it happens, do a little manipulation of most of the images I post. I try to keep it to the absolute minimum, white balance, color enhance maybe. I suppose many photographers do same, but even though I've learnt a great deal about composition and framing over the years I've shot digital photos for fun, sometimes those cameras just don't pick up the image the way my eye and psyche do. 

Sometimes one feels one's telling a fib with the insane amount of photo editing that is available, but then, if every photo's a story and I'm trying to tell a moment, it's also a sort of integrity that I try to make that photo resonate with my memory of the moment. 

I guess.

Six days ago, before the smoke arrived for good, me and the Girl were out doing whatever it was we were doing, and stopped, as we have habit to do, at the Dutch Bros on SE Division just east of 136th. It's a verity for us. Very nearby there is a pedestrian overpass and I noticed that Wy'east was presenting interesingly under the incoming smoke (which I already visually explored here and here. It was here along Division, though, when I realized I had something visually worth capturing. 

There was a lineup at Dutch Bros, so out of the car I leapt, me and Birthday Hat. Short adventure with Birthday Hat, but that's for the next entry. 

I tried to frame the mountain, but when seen in the viewfinder it mellowed back so much it was all but impossible to compose effectively, so I seat-of-the-pantsed it using surrounding hills and other things that I could see. Eventually I'm here in front of my computer and I can play with curves and, even though this is not what the camera appeared to capture, this resonates with the memory of what I saw.

Old Wy'east usually presents well from this part of Division. Once I got the color where I wanted it, it visually imposes quite aptly.

Here I'll include a bit of pull-back for context. 

This takes in not only Division just below the overpass and the PGE substation at 138th and Divsion but also our insurance agent's office. 

Anthony Kondos. Nice guy. We recommend him. 

There is an endless internal dialogue with me going on when it comes to scenes like this, and its participants are constantly amazed that looking on something like this mountain, which I regard with almost a fetishistic intensity, comes out one fulsome way in the brain and the psyche but another diminished way under the indifference of the digital camera. Our brain really works hard at playing things up for us. 

This dialogue has no resolution, one supposes, and perhaps no end save sufficiently-advanced senesence or biological decease. 

So it goes.

Wy'east Under the Big Smoke, Part 2: From Vancouver

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As I alluded to last episode, we were up in Vancouver for personal reasons. The Brown Eyed Girl has a personal friend she visits up there, and she's helpin' him through a time, and she's seen these angles and knows them, and was thrilled to finally get to share them with me.

The previous was northbound on the Glenn Jackson Bridge which carries I-205 over the Columbia River between Oregon and Washington. This one was on Washington's SR-14 eastbound pointed toward Camas and, in this case, just about to pass the exit to SE 164th Avenue.

The lack of any snow cover on the great peak is remarkable, and a bit eerie considering the circumstances. I hope to get more photos of this view when the Big Smoke is gone ... and with some snow cover on.

Just a couple of very modest glaciers up there right now.

Wy'east Under The Big Smoke

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While yesterday Portland was under clear skies while Salem suffered under the fire's plume, today the plume moved north and threw its blanket over us as well.

Today also I found myself going up into Vancouver for a number of personal reasons. Those reasons are not so important maybe but they did give me a chance to get a shot of Mount Hood, Wy'east, beginning to be obscured by it, from the Glenn Jackson Bridge.

This was Wy'east today:

The chance to use the mighty Columbia as a foreground doesn't present itself to me often, and when you get that chance, you use it. 

It's a scary time, but a visually arresting time.

The Smoke From A Distant Fire, Summer 2020 Edition

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This is a thing that seems to be more and more usual as we head deeper into the 21st Century.

A number of wildfires make the news each and every fire season now, and they've become so massive that smoke floats in from nearby states. Not so much today's, though. Here, at the height of the hot, we have two over on the eastern slopes, Lionshead and White River, near Madras and Bend, in that area. There's also one in far eastern Washington that may be contributing.

I was wanting of a picture of Wy'east as a salute to my departed friend Brenda, and I was able to get it, after a fashion. But the sky on the way to 122nd and NE Shaver was remarkable:

 

This is looking east down NE Prescott Street just east of NE 102nd Avenue, in the Parkrose neighborhood. Prescott Elementary school is immediately to my right. And just look at that demarcation in the sky there. As sharp as one can expect. 

Wildfire smoke, making its way into the Willamette Valley. Again, in 2020.

The view of the mountain was ... well, just look:

The corn on the Rossi farm was looking good, however. So there was that.

Wy'east With A Side of Sunbeam

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After that last photo, seeing how the clouds were bunching close to the horizon and seeing the orange-red to the shadows beneath, I got over to NE 122nd and Shaver, by the Rossi place, to get what had to be a memorable shot of Wy'east.

It wasn't as grand as I'd hoped, not much detail. The sunlight at this time of year, especially during the hot days, is overpowering and gets that way very early. The glaring sun washes out everything on the horizon, and if it's been more than one or two days of hot, there's that subjective bleaching out of the sky that I always see. But I was able to get this shot of the mountain in silhouette, with some of those amazing clouds and some sunbeams coming in from the left upper part.

Wy'east From Elk Point, July 15th 2020

3717We went on a long ol' drive today, spanning the city to bring you the constant variety of sports. Only there was no sports. So I took shots of other things.

I learned there was a place in the West Hills of Portland called Elk Point, and that it has luscious views. Here's a bit of one, run through the posterizing filter on the Canon to bring out some detail.

Wy'east, a perennial favorite of mine, from a viewpoint I don't usually aspire to. But more on that later.