Regular readers are familiar with my obsession with Sauvies Island. It is one of my favorite spots to photograph, or, more importantly, to be. I regularly visit to air out my soul.

Since this week’s blog is devoted to recent encounters, I will report on last Thursday’s meeting with unfettered joy – a sunny Rosh Hashana stroll on Sauvie. I went there to walk and contemplate, so the photographs are incidental; in any case Portland has an uncrowned king of Sauvies Island photography, Ron Cronin.  Check out his work – the variety of landscapes and seasons he captures are unparalleled ( and that is saying a lot in a town that is teeming with talented and devoted nature photographers. http://www.augengallery.com/Artists/cronin.html

Here is one of Ron’s images that someone smart at the art museum added to the collection.

PAM has diverse paintings of Sauvie as well: I can think of Charles McKim’s 1920 landscape painting Sauvie Island

and Percy Manser’s Fall Trees near Water, 1928.  

Henk Pander has done multiple water colors over the years there, of which this is one of my favorites.

The funny thing is, I could lead you to the exact views represented by these paintings if you give me a day and pack your rain gear…. little has changed in almost 100 years. Somehow that contributes to the sense of being in some totally authentic landscape, something not marred and something shared with other artists.

I walked the Oaks Island trail last week, a 5 k round that will close by the end of the month until late April, to protect migrating birds and nesting waterfowl. The puppy thought he had landed in paradise, chasing those swallows and eventually flushing out a gaggle of geese – unclear who was more startled, the birds or the bird dog.

The grass was golden, the waters calm, and the trees washed free of the accumulated dust after the recent rains. The red-winged blackbirds gorged on the occasional drifts of wild seeded sunflowers and the herons did not disturb the peace with their squawking voices.

And here they were: the sandhill cranes announced themselves from afar with their cries, then flew by in formation, returning from wherever they travel to for a winter’s rest. My favorite birds this time of year.

“Sandhill Cranes give loud, rattling bugle calls, each lasting a couple of seconds and often strung together. They can be heard up to 2.5 miles away and are given on the ground as well as in flight, when the flock may be very high and hard to see. They also give moans, hisses, gooselike honks, and snoring sounds. Chicks give trills and purrs.” I think the Cornell Lab of Ornithology got positively poetic in their choice of adjectives…. if you push the sound button on the lower end of the attached link, you get to hear them.

https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/sandhill_crane/sounds

I was trilling and purring for the rest of the week – that is until the German election results came in….