Sasquatch anyone? No---seriously. :P
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Ellen Easton
Was Ellen E. on Wet Canvas
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Steven: Sasquatch is out there, too!
Christine: That's so interesting!
I have a couple of stories about personal "maybe it was" to share.
You know those rumours of a bad skunky/wet dog smells associated with being close to a Sasquatch? Well, when I was in high school, we lived on top of a great big hill (some might say a mountain but we don't have small mountains here) and we just lived in a really flimsy little shack. I had a wool coat because I had to trudge all the way down that big hill to go to school and back up coming home and we got snow up there whether people in the valley got snow or not. I had a cold and couldn't smell much with my stuffy nose, but during the night I did smell what I thought was a really bad stench of a skunk. It was so bad it seemed like I could actually taste that smell. And I mean REALLY bad, but I thought it must change the scent of a skunk when it's real close because this smell was different but skunky. When I woke up and went to school the next day in my warm wool coat, I didn't notice anything odd.
I shared a locker with another student and about lunch hour a teacher came and said I needed to go check to see what might be causing a bad smell in my locker because someone had complained. My nose had cleared up a little bit and when I walked into the locker room, I could definitely smell that smell---skunky-but-different smell---and it was my coat! And not only did it stink, it stank up the whole locker room from a closed and locked locker in the room. No wonder people on the bus had looked at me strangely and acted odd. Wool does pick up odors. I had to leave school early and take a ride with the counselor to take my coat home. A regular skunk spray wouldn't have been so oddly potent and clinging. It would have clung to the house but there would have been signs of a spray in that case and there wasn't.
And then a few years later during the CB radio craze we had here back then, I had some friends who were up in that same forested area trying to see if they could see a strange something-or-other some other folks had seen up there on a dirt road. When they were coming back down, they suddenly just completely histerically called out on the CB that they'd seen something walk across the road in front of them. They came barreling down off the hill and were convinced they'd seen Bigfoot. They even called the Bigfoot research organization the next day. The researchers did come investigate and they said they had found where it had bedded down and they said they could see remnants of stuff showing that it had eaten there. They were young men, not kids and they had screamed like little girls. The researchers said there had actually been a Bigfoot there. It was harvest time so that made sense that it could find stuff to eat on that spooky old hill. There would have been apples and berries and such up there from abandoned homes from old times when people raised a lot of their own food.
If any of you want to do a Google search to see what kind of forest we have here, you could type in Hwy 58 Deception Creek and see what it's like around here. There's almost 2 million acres of dense rain forest here and there are plenty of places these creatures could live and thrive. It's just like the forests up around Mt. Rainier in Washington where the Navy plane crashed and they can't find the bodies, if anyone heard about that a few days ago. We have dense, lush undergrowth here and huge trees. This is a place where you don't go hiking alone because people sometimes just disappear.
There's a professor in Idaho who really impresses me with his serious research on Bigfoot. Jeff Meldrum is his name and he's been in some documentaries and has written a book you can get on Amazon but I've forgotten the title. I'll see if I can find it and post a link later today.
Christine: That's so interesting!
I have a couple of stories about personal "maybe it was" to share.
You know those rumours of a bad skunky/wet dog smells associated with being close to a Sasquatch? Well, when I was in high school, we lived on top of a great big hill (some might say a mountain but we don't have small mountains here) and we just lived in a really flimsy little shack. I had a wool coat because I had to trudge all the way down that big hill to go to school and back up coming home and we got snow up there whether people in the valley got snow or not. I had a cold and couldn't smell much with my stuffy nose, but during the night I did smell what I thought was a really bad stench of a skunk. It was so bad it seemed like I could actually taste that smell. And I mean REALLY bad, but I thought it must change the scent of a skunk when it's real close because this smell was different but skunky. When I woke up and went to school the next day in my warm wool coat, I didn't notice anything odd.
I shared a locker with another student and about lunch hour a teacher came and said I needed to go check to see what might be causing a bad smell in my locker because someone had complained. My nose had cleared up a little bit and when I walked into the locker room, I could definitely smell that smell---skunky-but-different smell---and it was my coat! And not only did it stink, it stank up the whole locker room from a closed and locked locker in the room. No wonder people on the bus had looked at me strangely and acted odd. Wool does pick up odors. I had to leave school early and take a ride with the counselor to take my coat home. A regular skunk spray wouldn't have been so oddly potent and clinging. It would have clung to the house but there would have been signs of a spray in that case and there wasn't.
And then a few years later during the CB radio craze we had here back then, I had some friends who were up in that same forested area trying to see if they could see a strange something-or-other some other folks had seen up there on a dirt road. When they were coming back down, they suddenly just completely histerically called out on the CB that they'd seen something walk across the road in front of them. They came barreling down off the hill and were convinced they'd seen Bigfoot. They even called the Bigfoot research organization the next day. The researchers did come investigate and they said they had found where it had bedded down and they said they could see remnants of stuff showing that it had eaten there. They were young men, not kids and they had screamed like little girls.
The researchers said there had actually been a Bigfoot there. It was harvest time so that made sense that it could find stuff to eat on that spooky old hill. There would have been apples and berries and such up there from abandoned homes from old times when people raised a lot of their own food.If any of you want to do a Google search to see what kind of forest we have here, you could type in Hwy 58 Deception Creek and see what it's like around here. There's almost 2 million acres of dense rain forest here and there are plenty of places these creatures could live and thrive. It's just like the forests up around Mt. Rainier in Washington where the Navy plane crashed and they can't find the bodies, if anyone heard about that a few days ago. We have dense, lush undergrowth here and huge trees. This is a place where you don't go hiking alone because people sometimes just disappear.
There's a professor in Idaho who really impresses me with his serious research on Bigfoot. Jeff Meldrum is his name and he's been in some documentaries and has written a book you can get on Amazon but I've forgotten the title. I'll see if I can find it and post a link later today.
Ellen Easton
Was Ellen E. on Wet Canvas
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- 184
Here's a link to the Audiobook on Amazon. It's free for a trial audiobook of Sasquatch by Meldrum for new subscribers and there's also a 99 cents a month for the first three months if anyone is interested in that. But there are also a couple other books listed at Amazon that are written by him, too.
I'm sorry I don't know how to make nice, neat little links for the posted Amazon page but I've never learned how.
I'm sorry I don't know how to make nice, neat little links for the posted Amazon page but I've never learned how.
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PaintBoss
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Thanks Ellen! Yeah, that is fascinating. I never know what to call the “mountains“ in Oregon. To us in Ontario they’re closer to mountains, but they’re not snowcapped mountains and they’re not exactly just hills either!
I can well believe that people can get lost there by design or by accident.
What did your parents think of the smell and what was there explanation to you or to others when you had to come home with your coat smelling so badly? Wish Bigfoot would get used to going in the river and washing off a bit more. To smell that bad is not a good thing- dead, rotting meat…
If I saw a Bigfoot close-up, I might go running screaming like a little girl too!! Lol
I can well believe that people can get lost there by design or by accident.
What did your parents think of the smell and what was there explanation to you or to others when you had to come home with your coat smelling so badly? Wish Bigfoot would get used to going in the river and washing off a bit more. To smell that bad is not a good thing- dead, rotting meat…
If I saw a Bigfoot close-up, I might go running screaming like a little girl too!! Lol
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Ellen Easton
Was Ellen E. on Wet Canvas
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Well, right here where I live, we're at 1500 feet but the summit is much higher and we have snow-capped mountains all over in the Cascades. They're around 11,000 feet or more. Eugene is at sea level with hills at around 500 feet. Once you go up over the summit from here, you find high desert, where there are big trees but not so much underbrush so you can actually see a ways through the forest, where on this side of the cascades it's rain forest with tons of moss, ivy and underbrush. Over here, cougars and bobcats and bears could be just a few yards away watching us but we can't see them. And that infrared stuff from helicopters can't see, either, in a lot of it.
As you travel north of Eugene into Washington it's the same in the Cascades and at lower elevations, with lush rain forest over much of it.
I managed to fumble around with Google earth and find the place I live but I tried to post a link here but it didn't work. I'll see if my daughter can help me later.
It was funny to my family, as I remember. I wasn't laughing because it was kind of humiliating when I was that age. My own opinion now is that the smell might get worse if a Bigfoot is nervous or afraid, maybe. In those days, in the earlt 60's, there wasn't the law people had to keep their dogs chained and such so maybe one startled the thing? But I was just a skinny, obviously poor kid and had many home problems so I sure didn't appreciate Eu de Sasquatch stinking up my coat and the locker room.
As you travel north of Eugene into Washington it's the same in the Cascades and at lower elevations, with lush rain forest over much of it.
I managed to fumble around with Google earth and find the place I live but I tried to post a link here but it didn't work. I'll see if my daughter can help me later.
It was funny to my family, as I remember. I wasn't laughing because it was kind of humiliating when I was that age. My own opinion now is that the smell might get worse if a Bigfoot is nervous or afraid, maybe. In those days, in the earlt 60's, there wasn't the law people had to keep their dogs chained and such so maybe one startled the thing? But I was just a skinny, obviously poor kid and had many home problems so I sure didn't appreciate Eu de Sasquatch stinking up my coat and the locker room.
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PaintBoss
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Oh, I’m sure it was very embarrassing and hard to explain as a child. And I think it might’ve been hard for your parents to explain it as well. I can just feel how embarrassed you might’ve been thank you for the explanation about the topography there. I don’t know enough about Oregon other the coastline is beautiful. I wasn’t sure if there was snowcapped places there.
And the link works great!
And the link works great!
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Ellen Easton
Was Ellen E. on Wet Canvas
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Here's a link (if I did it right) showing what the road up east of where I am. On the other side of Oakridge you find the tunnel and there's a Facebook group that's designated to road conditions and hazards so people who need to travel over to Bend and other areas east and northeast will know what to expect and whether chains are required or not.
Editing to add: I lost it somewhere. I'll find it later.
OK I had to do it this way. I saved pictures twice and darned if I can find where they went. This link will have to do. This is what our road report will look like very soon to the east of me. The Cascade mountains are a string of volcanoes that are inactive and where I live is considered to be the foothills on the way up to Santiam summit and on over into the high desert area of Eastern Oregon. Mt. Hood is our tallest mountain at a little over 11,000 feet and then over across the summit from me is Bend where you can see the Three Sisters and more.
Editing to add: I lost it somewhere. I'll find it later.
OK I had to do it this way. I saved pictures twice and darned if I can find where they went. This link will have to do. This is what our road report will look like very soon to the east of me. The Cascade mountains are a string of volcanoes that are inactive and where I live is considered to be the foothills on the way up to Santiam summit and on over into the high desert area of Eastern Oregon. Mt. Hood is our tallest mountain at a little over 11,000 feet and then over across the summit from me is Bend where you can see the Three Sisters and more.
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Ellen Easton
Was Ellen E. on Wet Canvas
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Christine: Here in Oregon we have everything. Year round ski-ing, a beautiful rugged coastline, rain forests and high desert woods, and lots and lots of water. There are lava fields all around us, hot springs at the McKenzie pass and just east of where I am now on the way to the Santiam pass. (Shhh! Don't tell anyone but in my drinking days I had to climb a tree in my birthday suit when I skinny dipped in the snow at the hot springs near here. I was in a hurry to get into the warm water. This can just be our little secret, right?)
We have huge sand dunes out on the coast and Crater Lake is to our south. Waterfalls everywhere, lakes and rivers, and there's a lot of rocks people hunt here. Too much to name, really. A friend who came here from California to visit was just enthralled. We took him to the snow, the rain forest, the ocean, the giant sand dunes, a restaurant at the summit of the pass where we had lunch with deer grazing outside the restaurant window---all in one day trip.
I added these pictures and for fun, threw in a picture of a "surfing cougar" and a beaded barette I made for a friend. I couldn't get a good picture of the barrette but it's all done in varying shades of red size 15 beads and turned out to be kind of an optical illusion of a real rose in 3D I guess you could say. It was amazing to me and I hoped I could capture that effect in a picture but I couldn't. The edging is also size 15 beads but black and faceted. I also made her a handmade journal with a rose in bead embroidery on the whole front of it. Her name was Rose---how did you guess?
We have huge sand dunes out on the coast and Crater Lake is to our south. Waterfalls everywhere, lakes and rivers, and there's a lot of rocks people hunt here. Too much to name, really. A friend who came here from California to visit was just enthralled. We took him to the snow, the rain forest, the ocean, the giant sand dunes, a restaurant at the summit of the pass where we had lunch with deer grazing outside the restaurant window---all in one day trip.
I added these pictures and for fun, threw in a picture of a "surfing cougar" and a beaded barette I made for a friend. I couldn't get a good picture of the barrette but it's all done in varying shades of red size 15 beads and turned out to be kind of an optical illusion of a real rose in 3D I guess you could say. It was amazing to me and I hoped I could capture that effect in a picture but I couldn't. The edging is also size 15 beads but black and faceted. I also made her a handmade journal with a rose in bead embroidery on the whole front of it. Her name was Rose---how did you guess?
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Ellen Easton
Was Ellen E. on Wet Canvas
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For anyone who might have a little over an hour to watch a documentary on Oregon that's really interesting and pretty, here's a link;
At the very beginning where the guy says "welcome to Oregon" you'll see the video show a very green area of dense forest with a whole lot of green moss all over everything and a waterfall and stream. That's what it looks like where I live. If you step into the forest from right here at my house, that's what it looks like and we have a creek behind my house and a waterfall a little ways up the hill from here. Also fallen logs like that shows.
The narrator is definitely not speaking with an Oregon accent, though. He sounds like he might be British, the way he pronounces Willamette and other things. And the scenes and places just skip around a lot but it's a very beautiful documentary and I loved watching it because I can't get to all those places now. I've lived in a lot of places in Oregon. One of my favorite experiences was the writer's retreats I went to on the coast at Heceta Head at the big house shown at the last of the documentary.. I don't know if the collection is still there but one of my stories used to be there in a collection of short stories written by some of the people who went to those retreats. I also went to one that was held on a lake just south of Florence.
My ancestors on my father's side came to Oregon from Fairlight, East Sussex in England in 1880. They settled the upper McKenzie are and raised hops. On my mother's side were pioneers, too, but they settled in Kansas back in the 1800's and then came to Oregon right before I was born. I've always lived in the Willamette Valley except for a couple brief times I lived at the coast or in Washington. I've certainly never been a world traveller. I don't fly and I don't swim. I don't even go to the hot springs anymore. (wink, wink) But I enjoyed this documentary so much because I've been to almost all the places it mentions. I was thinking about how I've actually taken so much for granted about the beauty and diversity here because it's always been my home. I'm going to bookmark the documentary and do some paintings from it maybe.
At the very beginning where the guy says "welcome to Oregon" you'll see the video show a very green area of dense forest with a whole lot of green moss all over everything and a waterfall and stream. That's what it looks like where I live. If you step into the forest from right here at my house, that's what it looks like and we have a creek behind my house and a waterfall a little ways up the hill from here. Also fallen logs like that shows.
The narrator is definitely not speaking with an Oregon accent, though. He sounds like he might be British, the way he pronounces Willamette and other things. And the scenes and places just skip around a lot but it's a very beautiful documentary and I loved watching it because I can't get to all those places now. I've lived in a lot of places in Oregon. One of my favorite experiences was the writer's retreats I went to on the coast at Heceta Head at the big house shown at the last of the documentary.. I don't know if the collection is still there but one of my stories used to be there in a collection of short stories written by some of the people who went to those retreats. I also went to one that was held on a lake just south of Florence.
My ancestors on my father's side came to Oregon from Fairlight, East Sussex in England in 1880. They settled the upper McKenzie are and raised hops. On my mother's side were pioneers, too, but they settled in Kansas back in the 1800's and then came to Oregon right before I was born. I've always lived in the Willamette Valley except for a couple brief times I lived at the coast or in Washington. I've certainly never been a world traveller. I don't fly and I don't swim. I don't even go to the hot springs anymore. (wink, wink
) But I enjoyed this documentary so much because I've been to almost all the places it mentions. I was thinking about how I've actually taken so much for granted about the beauty and diversity here because it's always been my home. I'm going to bookmark the documentary and do some paintings from it maybe.
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PaintBoss
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Thank you very much Ellen for all of that. I’m going to be watching that documentary. I did watch a YouTube video where a guy is on his motorcycle in the summertime any he drove up from California and he doesn’t say anything, but he just drives and drives and you get to see the most stunning views of the changing landscapes and the towns
That’s a funny story about skinny-dipping ha ha. And that rose beadwork is absolutely beautiful. I guess I can see you call them foothills but to me foothills look a little bit different. but then I’m thinking of the foothills in Alberta. Which eventually turned into mountains. I spent time in the Cooleys, which were very interesting too. if you can’t travel much, you landed in a good spot!
That’s a funny story about skinny-dipping ha ha. And that rose beadwork is absolutely beautiful. I guess I can see you call them foothills but to me foothills look a little bit different. but then I’m thinking of the foothills in Alberta. Which eventually turned into mountains. I spent time in the Cooleys, which were very interesting too. if you can’t travel much, you landed in a good spot!
