A Crush on a Dead Poet.

otherwise known as why I always feel like I was born two decades late........

I showed my friend Michael my new apartment today and he later confessed to me, in a bit of a secretive way, "as a fellow reader" that he currently wasn't reading anything.  I know that feeling.  Besides Harry Potter I to VII and Bridget Jones II in the bathtub, I haven't read much either.  I told him I had plenty of volumes on my shelves I had yet to explore.  So, once I got home, I decided to take a plunge, and pick up Willamette Landings by Mr. Corning.

Willamette Landings has a sub title of "Ghost Towns of the River" and is a history of those towns along the river that no longer exist.  The edition I have is a 2nd, done in 1973 (first in 1947).  I knew immediately that I would love it because the basis of the book is from the WPA Oregon Writers' project.

And here is the moment where I first fell in love:

"History is not facts only, but is pulse and breath, a human record--just as also it is a narrative of recollection, retold years later and drawn from many lives, all conditioned by individual, sometimes unique circumstances.  Above all, facts must be honored, but legend too is history."

I dash to my computer to Google my Love, and alas, his flame has extinguished.  But he was more a poet than historian, thus this:  Pruning Vines

Howard McKinley Corning

In February, when the sap's below
The inattentive earth, I take my shears
And prune away the too audacious years.
It's grapes I want and not mere leafy show.
I trim their trailing years' growth to a span,
With only laterals intact for crop;
A snip or two and I know where to stop
To bring a harvest where my hooks began.
It takes some fortitude to cut a vine
Half into dead ends for the cloying mold,
Where growth takes profit as the shears take hold,
Cutting the heart a little ... as I cut mine.
But since it's grapes I want I understand
How to rebuke the heart to fill the hand.

And so I read on:

"The Willamette is one of the few American rivers of any volume flowing north."

Google:  North Flowing Rivers in the US

Answer:  North really means they flow downhill.  All 33 of them.  In the WORLD!  The Willamette is 188 miles of downhill beauty.  But guess what?  The Deschutes is 250 miles!  And Oregon has two of the 17 US rivers listed!  (What are we?  The reverse of the backward flushing toilets in Australia?)

Okay, back to my reading.

"It is the largest river contained wholly within the state of Oregon."

Uh-oh.  I just read that The Deschutes is 250 miles long and the Almighty Google did not list other states it ran through like it did for the Shannendoah or the Monongahela. 

Back to the computer.

Hmm.  Wikipedia says The John Day River is the longest river with it's entire 281 miles inside Oregon.  I would do more research but this book was first published in 1947...

Well, my Love didn't have Google or Wikipedia, so I must forge on!

"From the mountainous region at the head of the valley, the Willamette emerges as three forks.  The Coast Fork bubbles from a mountain spring in a deeply forested wilderness.  The Middle Fork flows from the base of Emigrant Butte, which towers over the pioneer road that threads through the Calapooyas.  These two streams join in the valley's supper reaches....the third fork, the McKenzie, joins the other two."

Hmm.  To the bookshelf.  Lewis McArthur can help me. 

Emigrant Butte lies west of Summit Lake, at the summit of the Cascade Range.  And big shock--it was named because of the emigrants that traveled nearby.

Calapooyas--something I have not seen before, but Lewis explains it all--it is the name of a division of the Kalapooian (First American) family formerly living between the Willamette and Umpqua rivers.

Before I start to read again, my mind becomes a bit unhinged........  If I were promoting this book now, I would start with a VIP tour of the three sources.

Did my new Love walk there? 

Alas, I cannot ponder nor read anymore, because my true Loves calls me tomorrow, and one of them is named McKinley.....

No wonder I never finish a book!

And Michael also told me about an article that said American accents are closer to British accents from the Revolution and the Brits are the ones that "high brow-ed" the tone.  Hard to concentrate when reading about Scotchish explorers.  But Scotland is another story and well, tomorrow is another day............