Today I resumed the First Saturday park walks with the city of Eugene! A small group of us made it to the gate, which is not very obvious. It was probably too hot to do the walk, even in the morning. We are in a heat wave at the moment. My pumpkins love it!
Our guide stood on the pavement and waved us in. I followed cars on a grassy road between blackberries, willows, and calling towhees.
Two red-tailed hawks circled way above us. “Do they hunt up there or are they just hanging out,” a woman asked. I told her they look like they are just hanging out.
You get to Black Oak Basin by passing Lane Community College. Turn left on Bloomberg road, just before the SeQuential biofuels station.
The public can walk through here if they know about it. The city has minimal signage and very little publicity. One reason is a lack of parking. Also they need to be sensitive to neighbors. It’s a dead-end road.
I like to learn about parks but I like stories and history and animal plant native stuff and our guide liked policy. If you like policy, look here.
We were surrounded by black oaks. Thus the name of the park (though there are white oaks too). Black oaks reach up and out with lighter green leaves while white oaks have darker leaves and a gnarly limb pattern.
We walked over bear scat full of cherry pits.
There is a tension between recreation and habitat restoration. I’m still thinking about this. I heard it while looking at cherry trees, poison oak berries. I learned today that poison oak has berries and animals love to eat them and have no problems.
I asked questions about orchards. I like old orchards. Our guide said something about feral pears and I was hooked. They have thorns and don’t taste very good. I am now forming a band called the Feral Pears so watch for us in your town.
We stood around listening to more details about managing nature. And then she fell over. One of the women in our group fell like an oak tree. It looked like she hit the back of her head. It scared me.
I’d been aware of this couple having conversations. The heat and incline were becoming overwhelming. I was anxious as she looked distressed in a very quiet subtle understated way. I felt worried, but it would take a major interruption of the group to address this. And I didn’t know her at all and what if I was reading things totally wrong?
I jogged over to her on the ground. She came around but was a bit confused.
After a couple minutes they suggested she could get up and walk back. I screamed in my head no no no no! Then I asked the guide if they could get a car up here and he said yes, and they agreed to get the car while I stayed with her. The others continued on.
She was shy and a bit dazed but she had just fainted so I tried to not overwhelm her. I made small talk. We talked about trees that we could see. We discussed if we were looking at the oak basin. I said “well, they are oaks and it’s a basin!”
I’ll go back later and do the loop.
The heat was really intense by the time we all left. The pennyroyal blanketed the walk, made our steps smell fresh, the scent of life in motion.
Check out this park!
Feral pears