Oct. 19, 2008 6:31pm

4-5 yrs ago, I would run/jog/walk with Tufnel for hours at a time, trying to get rid of the excess anxious energy that built up from the work week. We would park at the beginning of the Logging road and make our way, slowly warming up as the road sine-waved up,down,right and left, finally leveling out—the road and our pace—at the reservoirs now fenced for national security and have to huff it past the caretaker’s house with its massive but ponderously un-agile St.Bernard whose sub-woofer bark could be heard/felt several hundred yards before seeing the dog and was easily dispatched by a feint to the left and a quick run to the right that the dog was hopeless to match/catch up with, then past onto the now gravel and narrower road that mostly went down and then slowly ascended until we got to a second locked logging gate. Past the gate was a strange area with an old shotgun blasted Stop Sign and narrow path leading off to the left surrounded by wickedly twisted trees. We went eastward.

The road was now mud and boulder strewn which made the footing difficult and mishap prone and caused even the dog to slow down and pick his way across this bit, but we’d get past this and start climbing higher until we hit an elevated plateau of mud, shit, piss, beer cans, and spent shotgun shells. Off to the right (south) was a road, really not much more than a ditch; a sluice of running shit clearly meant for ATVers.

The plateau was probably 50×50 yards and contained a huge wet mud pit, inexplicably water logged even during the driest summers, with deeply rutted, tire tracks coming to and from it like wild animal tracks. Continuing Eastward was what I now know was the beginnings of Pipeline Road, which is an honest-to-goodness county road that can be legally driven on, but has had all Astoria side access cut off because it would be treated like Irving Avenue: a whiskey run road for the inebriated who need to get across town quietly and uncaught.¹

So last night while the kids were in bed and we had guests over for dinner, I was told that the seemingly offlimits Pipeline road was indeed accessible and that there were cougars,² at most 2-3 tops and tended to leave adults alone as long as there was lots of noise and dogs about and so he decided to show me how to get up there. We left after dinner and less than 2 mile from where we had started, we were suddenly driving up Old Williamsport road and within a few minutes the city glow had disappeared, replaced by the bright moon; it had been a clear sky last night with at least several hundred stars visible. We finally stopped at the junction of Williamsport and Pipeline and he pointed out that we could drive all the way to Svensen Market Road which always had access open to Pipeline.

So today I took the kids and wife out to show them what I had seen last night, but it didn’t look the same at all. At night, everything was spooky and removed and completely unconnected, but during the daylight, the road was serviceable and the surrounding woods had a disordered, un-suspenseful look. When we finally got up to the junction, I took a left to re-visit the mud pit from hell. I hadn’t been back there in years ever since I was told to watch out for cougar, but I never took that as a serious threat. What stopped me from coming again was when we surprised two hunters who mistook Tufnel for a small bear; I decided that these long runs would have to be phased out for something more cyclical/elliptical.

We finally reached the plateau and we ran into some kids in a F-100 that was lifted, sported “Big Meat” on the wheels and appeared to be both lightly armored and armed—in other countries this would be regarded as a junta but here in Astoria, it’s just your neighbors that you don’t you really say hi to. Needless to say, we eyed each other …

Darn … need to write more … later

1. A friend pointed out that it was High Order Irony that Irving ran past a certain well known person’s house. [↩]
2. He said, `I think it’s wonderful that we live in place where you can take a short walk and have to worry about whether you’re going to be attacked by cougars.’

   I don’t know if I have the cojones to go mano-a-mano with nature at this level. [↩]