Trips to High Desert

East, into the Cascades to Sisters, to ride south from there on forest service roads. During a stop for coffee and baked goods, we decided to take a ride northwest to Detroit Lake instead, on forest service roads and remnants of a wagon road, which I think is just a forest service road now. Patches of shade here and there in the high desert national forest. Mess o’ bikes near a patch; I believe that’s Mt. Washington past the trees:

Summer use of a fall campsite. At 3,600 ft., mosquitos had quite a presence when we camped that close to wetlands. A drinking water run; done at top speed to reduce the number of bites:

The Milky Way was visible that night. It’d been a few years since I’d seen that much of our galactic home even though I’ve been home the whole time. Or whole life, actually. This night sky clip I think explains a lot of current videos of what an 80s SNL character called “oofoze”. Panning the camera across the sky when only one star is bright enough for the sensor to pick up makes it look like the star is moving and the camera is still. The opposite case is I think what’s shown; if just one more star were bright enough to be visible to the camera, then it would be apparent that the stars are stationary and the camera is moving:

We discussed family. Unrelated, we discussed how behaviors done for the purpose of defiance or spite are ironically still a yield to the control of those defied. The narrator in a Frisch novel said that about defiant behavior, actually. My friend said he hadn’t heard of the author. I said I discovered him in an independent book store in his town.

Friend weeks later injured self on his ride with our mutual friend. We returned to high desert a week after that for a meteor showers campout, but had to use a car due to his soreness. Near Cline Buttes, central Oregon. I need to learn my trees. This bark makes me think of mesquite, but I don’t think the leaves or needles are a fit. Its sap drips kept me from being able to sleep on the tabletop. I instead put the sleeping pad on the ground and still had the Milky Way and meteors as an animated ceiling paint job.

We reminisced about seeing local metal bands before that virus held the globe in its hands. Acquaintances’ bands, even though I’m not super into metal. Went to see one recently actually. All eyes and ears at the bar were on the metal: