Carlton and Ruth Smith 2011 Christmas Newsletter

Here it is, Christmas Eve, and time to blog about the past year. It has been good overall, if a bit lean.

The young folks let me (Ruth) go snowshoeing in the White River canyon with them. Always so beautiful there. While Crystal and I were eating our lunch, a couple gray jays came to visit us. Such beggars they were, and very tame. They took a chip that Crystal held up. Then I tried to coax them to sit on my hand. With the palm up, they would not do it-but palm down was fine. Those smart birds must have realized I could not grab them that way. After I got back home I
found out that these birds are able to spend the
the winters in snowy places like this because
they take the treats they get and stick them into

the trees with their saliva. It would have been nice to have known that earlier and watch to see if they did so.

In February, I did the Great Backyard Bird count. This mostly involves wandering around my neighborhood looking for birds and counting how many of each kind I see. There were so many cackling geese in the schoolyard that I took a picture so I could count them more easily and accurately.

Carlton fixes computers for many people in the course of a year. He ends up with a lot of old computers and parts.

Ruth went to Idaho for the regional teen Bible Quiz tournament. It is quite a treat to spend a few days with such amazing young people. On my journey to and back again, I stopped several times to explore. Along the Columbia Gorge, the Columbia desert parsley was in bloom. Tho' most parsleys have yellow flowers, this one is pink, and is found only along the Columbia River. And this goose was sitting on her clutch of eggs right by the Snake river. Neither the goose nor I would have liked to be this close to each other - except there was a nice big fence between us.

Our friends, the Jenkins family, moved to Hawaii in the spring - and the job of recycling pallets came back to me. I recycle a few pickup loads of broken and odd size pallets -also scrap lumber and broken wooden furniture- each week - and the business complex that I serve pays to have it done.

At the end of May I journeyed to Kellogg Springs Camp to help get the camp ready for summer. There is generally quite a crew - we mow the place, pick up all the limbs that the wind blew down during the winter, clean out all the cabins and meeting places, clean the roofs - and oh, so much more. This year I replaced a downspout drain line under the kitchen, dealt with the mice, spiders, and yellow-jacket issues, sprayed bunches of weeds, fixed lights, doorknobs and locks, put a gutter back together, and I forget what else.

The snails and slugs got my interest this year. This is the Pacific side-banded slug.

Throughout the year, we have been been in a Saturday night group - reading stories by Christian authors and discovering principles of Christianity reflected in their writings. This year we did several of the Chronicles of Narnia, and capped the year off with "The Christmas Carol" by Dickens - a truly excellent story. Carlton has been supplying leadership to the group and preparing the story material for us to work with more conveniently.

Later in the summer I had the privilege to taking two girls to camp and them returning to pick them up again. When I arrived to pick them up, the whole camp was engaged in a massive game of tug-of-war, counselors and staff vs campers. I don't know who won, but it was quite a contest.





In August Crystal and some of her friends were part of a dozen runners that ran 216 miles in a relay race in central Oregon, the Cascade Lakes Relay. I believe this is the longest relay of its type in the US. Each runner runs 3 sections (legs, they call them), so the "baton" (which was really a slap-strap) was passed 35 times. I volunteered to monitor a parking lot at one of the exchange points - and ended up in the desert in the afternoon (but it was not as hot as last year). This is Crystal running the costume leg the next day. She is dressed up as a turtle. The race took about 36 hours from start to finish. It is really an amazing happening.



The next week (I must have been crazy) I went backpacking with the teens from church. This was the year of heavy spring snow, and Jefferson park had too much snow to hike in, so we set off for parts unknown in the southeastern quadrant of the Mt. Jefferson wilderness. A five mile hike in, and we camped at a really beautiful lake, Carl Lake. The next day we hiked over to Elk Lake - five miles north - through forests, by ponds, over lava beds, across streams, and patches of snow. At the edge of one of these snow patches, I made the find of a lifetime - the pasque flower in bloom. Pasque means Easter - and this flower is known for blooming so early in the high Cascades that I never expected to see it. That day, I saw several of them. Then, of course, 5 miles back to camp, and the next day, 5 miles packing out.

Also, during the summer, I did some volunteer work for the local park district, surveying the shrubs and trees in a couple of the local parks. In this park, there is an industrious beaver.

One of my friends took a fall this summer too, and landed in the hospital for a lot longer than she liked. I am glad to report that she finally has mended up pretty well and got her life back. In the meantime, she kept me some busy.

I signed up for a challenge in the fall to motivate myself to improve my level of fitness. It was a good motivator, but I was still pretty pokey. This was a 3 mile footrace with assorted obstacles. Getting across this flotilla of inner tubes was one of the harder ones. Fortunately, it was ok to get wet.

Also, having been blessed by a neighbor who took delight in dumping zucchinis and summer squash on me, I searched for uses for these great blessings, and a friend suggested I make ratatouille. Never heard of it - so I went online, and found out. The traditional versions look like a tomato zucchini stew - but I found one made by slicing and roasting the vegies - and prepared this dish for one of our Friday night pizza gatherings.

Carlton has made himself busy this year acquiring a collection of literature that is now in the public domain. This includes a lot of wonderful classics. This collection is all computerized, and he has already given it away to several people - a library of about 8000 books.

I just can't get blogspot to put the pictures in the order I want them, so here are two from the backpacking trip - featuring Carl Lake and Mt. Jefferson .

And last of all - while out exterminating - I found this delightful plaque in a coastal resort. The owner kindly permitted me to take a picture of it and told me it would be ok to put it on my Christmas greetings.

Whew, it is still Christmas Eve.

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!

God bless us every one!

-and a Happy New Year

Carlton and Ruth Smith