Up Fanno Creek

The Tualatin River's Bulldog

Brian Wegener astride Summer Creek - one of the most degraded streams in the the Tualatin Basin.

A few weeks back I put up a post about the Beaverton School Board's plan to bury a 2.5 acre wetland under massive amounts of sand, gravel and crushed rock. See it here. This is one of the most environmentally irresponsible plans I've seen in a long time. However, in spite of meeting stiff resistance from a variety of directions, the plan is somehow continuing to lumber forward through the approval process.

As part of that process, the Beaverton Planning Commission held a public hearing of the plan on May 27th (2015). I could not attend in person, but a video recording of the meeting is available online, so I watched it last night. Something leaped out at me early in the proceedings: this plan, regardless of any wetlands issues, is nowhere complete or well structured enough to be approved by the city, much less anyone else. The planning commission itself found enough issues with it to rule for a continuance, which will give the applicant a chance to work on tightening up some serious loose ends related to transportation, and finding some kind of resolution to an interesting boundary line dilemma between Washington and Hillsboro counties. 

The planning commission also voiced concerns related to the proposed destruction of wetlands deemed necessary in the current plan. Helping to elevate this issue, and also offering solutions to its knottier aspects, was Brian Wegener, spokesperson for the Tualatin Riverkeepers. A detailed overview of his comments can be found in his followup letter to the commission (here). In a nutshell, the Riverkeepers is asking the commission to make removal of wetland-fill provisions a precondition for any future approval of the development plan. This seems very reasonable, given that the proposal to fill the wetlands is driven by an interest in duplicating mixed use sports fields that would be built on other portions of the campus. 

One particular detail I feel obliged to mention here is the city's staff appeared unaware the wetland in question is not only covered under the South Cooper Mountain master plan, but also listed as being an integral part of what is described as having "the highest preservation priority." (See especially pages 24 and 54 of this document.) Several of the commissioners appeared to be unaware of this aspect of the situation as well. It is not uncommon for the left hand to have little or no idea of what the right hand has been up to in organizations of all sizes and stripes; still, it is regrettable that something so basic and important as the city's master plan for the area would be so poorly studied by those who must make critical decisions about the disposition of critical resources therein.

The planning commission will meet to hear the applicant's responses to their concerns June 24th, 2015. The public will also be able to comment in this session as well, but only on items not already covered in the May 27th hearing. Since this issue has direct implications for the health of the Tualatin River, I hope many of the basin's Watershed Folk will be there to stand up for the wetland. One thing is certain, whoever else may show up, Brian Wegener will be there. He is the Tualatin River's bulldog. 

 

COUGAR RIDGE

I felt a great sense of loss when we pulled up stakes in Portland and headed for Olympia, Washington. I knew I would really miss the creek and the many friends I’d made in the process of writing about it. After nine months, that sense of loss is still very strong. However, living here in Olympia has turned out to be a wonderful experience. Folks are very friendly, and the physical environment is downright fabulous.

This morning I leashed up the dog and took off for a short walk through the neighborhood. “Cougar Ridge,” it’s called, and I still can’t believe we are fortunate enough to be living here. Homes in the community date from the late 1980’s and on. Most are on large lots of a half acre or more and almost all have a bit of Doug fir forest growing on them. They’ve all been nicely landscaped and well maintained, thanks to a user-friendly covenant. The HOA is effective but low-profile, and holds its costs down by cultivating owner involvement in maintaining the common areas. The net effect is a strong sense of community and a great deal of pride-in-ownership. There's also a high level of awareness when it comes to how directly the development can impact the nearby wetlands.

All but the most reently constructed homes in the development sport one of these on its nearest drain plate.

One of the best features of this neighborhood is the access to nature it affords. The Capitol State Forest, a haven for wildlife, rises directly to the north. We haven't ventured into its environs to this point, but will certainly do so soon. Meanwhile, Mclane Creek Nature Trail is less than a mile to the west, and accessible by a pathway leading out of the community and through the woods. 

One of the last vacant lots in the neighborhood, a gateway to Beatty Creek.

Less than a quarter-mile walk from my front door – first by neighborhood streets, then by a small path through the woods – lies Beatty Creek, one of Mclane Creek's larger tribs. 

An out of the way place on Beatty Creek I've named The Bend. I visit this spot frequently. 

Not far downstream from The Bend a male chum salmon contends for best position next to a female.

This morning as I sat next to the stream I reflected on how it compares with Sylvan Creek, one of my favorite Fanno Creek tribs.

• They each rise high (1000ft +/-) and finish low (200ft +/-)
• Both can be accessed in multiple places without trespassing private property
• Both support a great deal of wildlife, including salmonids
• Both have been significantly degraded as a result of human land use practices

But there the direct comparisons end.

• Beatty Creek’s environmental challenges stem mostly from the agricultural activities of small farmers; Sylvan Creek is a classic example of a stream suffering from the Urban Stream Syndrome.
• Beatty Creek runs over gravel left behind by the retreat of glaciers that plowed up this area during the last glacial period.
• Sylvan Creek runs mostly through channels cut through deep deposits of loess blown into the Portland area when those same glaciers began to retreat.
• And while both have experienced the impacts of human activity since the 1850’s, Sylvan Creek’s challenges have been far more life threatening than those experienced to date by Beatty Creek.

My first visit to Sylvan Creek in 2007 was a key link in the chain of events that ultimately led me to write Up Fanno Creek. Will spending time with Beatty Creek lead in a similar direction? While it is too early to tell, my best guess is “No.” I don’t think I could go the distance with another literary effort of that magnitude and duration. However, there’s no doubt that I will soon begin connecting to the Watershed Folk in this area. I still feel strongly about wetlands issues. No doubt I will continue expressing those feelings in some form or another as I become more fully settled in the wonderful wetlands that surround Cougar Ridge. 

Confluence - Beatty Creek on the left, Mclane Creek on the right.

 

 

Related articles

Farewell Fanno Creek

 

Farewell Fanno Creek

Along this short and forgotten reach it is hard to believe Fanno Creek was once called "Drano Creek.".

(Note: this was written April 4th, 2014, when we were still in Portland.  We made the move the 18th, but It’s taken me this long to find time to edit the photos and insert them into the text. The moment is long gone-by, but I still feel the pang; so here’s my thinking at the time, when the approaching departure loomed.)

It was supposed to be a slow and orderly process. My wife would retire sometime this summer. Then we’d begin looking around Oregon for a smaller and maybe less urban place to live and play. It looked to be a relatively low pressure series of events. We vowed to take our time with the process. We figured it might take a year or two to completely make the change. But in February a bouncing baby boy showed up in Olympia. Overnight, everything changed. Suddenly on the table was the idea of moving to the area so we could be just down the street from him and his five year old sister and seven year old cousin.

As appealing as the idea was, I struggled with it. I’ve connected at a very deep and visceral level with Oregon and its people. I’ve also involved myself pretty deeply in the everyday affairs of Fanno Creek. For seven of the last fourteen years we’ve lived in Portland, I’ve made the creek the central focus of my personal and professional activities. Walking away from it now seemed almost an act of abandonment; not just abandonment of the creek, but also of the many Watershed Folk who will continue to work so hard on its behalf. However, the move would also put us two hours closer to my son and his two children in Edmonds, a fact that ultimately clinched the deal for me.

There was still hope we might be able to make the transition in a relatively slow and easy-going manner. But the house in Portland sold in three days, which caught us almost completely by surprise. Luckily we had been researching the Olympia market for a few months and were able to find a dandy new house less than a week later. All that took place in the first two weeks of March. Since then it’s been a mad-scramble to get everything sewn up so we could be ready for the movers by end of this week. 

So there it is. In a few days we will be pulling up stakes in Portland and replanting them in Olympia, Washington.

The reality and magnitude of the change didn’t hit me until last Thursday, when I developed an overwhelming urge to get away from the packing and cleaning and reconnect with the urban bush. I snuck off to a spot you won’t find on most maps of the Fanno Creek watershed, a place I named Lost Creek when I wrote about it in my book. It took a little bushwhacking and scrambling to get to my favorite sitting spot. On the way in I encountered dozens of these little violas.

Once I reached my perch, I pulled out a pack of peanut butter crackers, opened up my thermos of coffee, and settled in for a half hour or so of simply being there. Whenever I caught myself drifting into a reflective mode I would focus instead on a simple sensory detail and force myself to describe in my mind the shapes, colors, sounds and scents I experioenced in those few private moments - the epiphytes that feathered the trunk of a leaning tree; the perfume of a nearby cottonwood; the tangy odor of Doug fir needles crushed by my passage; and a million other bits of real information.

When it was time to leave I made my way down to the bed of the creek and then downstream to my point of entry. It seemed only fitting that I stumbled across this trillium-nettle combination just as I was hauling myself out of the creek.

As I stepped out of the bushes and onto the sidewalk, I felt more than a little raw. “Farwell Fanno Creek,” I muttered, and struck off toward a new watershed.

My Show

The folks at the Washington County Museum/Hillsboro were kind enough to ask me to present a portfolio of photographs to the public. It went on display May 6th and will be up for at least a couple more months. The images were selected from the thousand or more I shot as documents while I was researching Up Fanno Creek. That research began in 2007 and was mostly wrapped up by 2011.

It was never my intention to make a coffee table book out of the project. When it came to things like focus and composition, I wasn’t always as attentive as I might have been. In fact, if it hadn’t been for encouragement of Juliet Shen, the book's designer, it might have made it to the shelves without a single shot. In the end we included a couple dozen shots that I think really helped round out the text.

The photos in the book were all selected on the basis of textual needs, and were reproduced in B&W in order to keep the retail price as low as possible. As a result some of the more compelling color shots never received much public attention. In what I think was a model for collaborative editing, the museum folks and I selected a total of 30 images that depict the yin-yang nature of Fanno Creek’s past, present and future.

I’ll be back at the museum the 18th of June to deliver a short presentation on the book and a walk-through of the show. I hope you will join us!

Open Letter to Richard

All that's left of the Greenwood Inn in Beaverton 

A few months ago I began receiving occasional notes from "Richard" on Up Fanno Creek’s FaceBook site. I always meant to get right back to him, but invariably something would sidetrack me and I’d fail to follow through. Since he was kind enough to visit the site in the first place, and kinder still not to give me hell for failing to respond in a timely way, I decided to tackle all his excellent questions all in one post:

Dear Richard:

Thanks so much for your interest in the watershed, and for your questions (Italics below) regarding several interesting areas along Fanno Creek. I apologize for being so long in answering them and hope you don’t mind me turning them into the fodder for a post to my blog. I hope you find my responses useful, if not interesting. I also hope you will continue taking a lively interest in The Watershed!

1. When did you last see the demolished Greenwood Inn Hotel by the southeast intersection of highway 217 and SW Allen Blvd?

I travel north to south through the watershed at least a couple times a week, usually traveling on Scholls Ferry Road. That has me crossing Allen Blvd. on a regular basis; but I rarely travel east to west along Allen, so I don’t actually recall EVER seeing that structure. I’ve dug around on the internet a little, but there’s not much there, as you probably know already. Here’s what I was able to dig up using Washington County’s niffty mapping tool:

a. The lot (R189584) for 10700 SW Allen Blvd. (street address for the now absent motel) is 8.54 acres.
b. It’s described as being “Commercial/Vacant.”
c. Assessed value 2013 was $5,208,030
d. 2013 taxes were $97,608.92 – but the total tax liability is $492,987.66 because…
e. back-taxes (2010-2012) amount to $398,307.01
f. Ownership information is not available online; but if you really want to know, here’s what the county says to do:

Owner information is considered public record. However, Washington County does not provide this information to the public via our online applications. The County Administrative Office (CAO) assists the Board of Commissioners in providing overall policy direction to county programs. Question regarding County policies can be sent to [email protected] If you require more information about this property please call our Assessment & Taxation Department at 503-846-8741.

2.a. Have you also been to the creek by McMillian Park that is around a half mile from that demolished hotel? The county/bes/ or someone has restored the creek over there as it goes under SW Chesnut Place. They removed a huge slab of concrete by the paved trail and planted a lot of trees. The trail leads to 5th Avenue in Beaverton.

McMillian Park is a THPRD property. The stream is the same unnamed Hall Creek trib that flows into Little Peoples Park. If you want to learn more about how THPRD manages these kinds of sites – especially the natural resource components – think about attending one of the regular Natural Resource Advisory Committee meetings. Or you could address an inquiry to THPRD proper. Another group that can provide some insight into Beaverton Creek (the end destiny for the waters that flow out McMillian Park) is Friends of Beaverton Creek. Wonderful folks and their meetings are open and fun.

The newly restored stormwater retention pond at THPRD's Little People's Park in Beaverton.

2.b. Also, the Little People Park on SW 5th Ave right by highway 217 has had the wetlands restored lately.

Yes, it has! Another THPRD property. What great work they’ve done on this one. Note the presence of sprinklers. You know quality restoration is taking place when you see a sprinkler system set up like this one. The wetlands here is part of an overflow/retention system that includes Griffith Park (THPRD property) over on the west side of 217. You’ve probably seen that park filled to the rim with stormwater from time to time. Exactly how the two are “plumbed” I’m not sure, but together they take a lot of pressure off of the more heavily developed sections of Hall Creek, one of Beaverton Creek’s major tributaries.

3. What do you think about the proposed plans for light rail in Tigard on either highway 99 or SW 72nd Ave?
(trash in Beaverton wetlands)  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTbRfua5aPs

I’ve not studied the initiative a great deal, as I am not a resident of Tigard. I have several friends who live in Tigard – people whose opinions usually carry a great deal of weight with me – and they are ALL voting “no” on the initiative.

4. Did you see the huge, ugly, two story concrete structure that is on the banks of the Fanno Creek Greenway? It is very close to the intersection of SW Alled Blvd and SW Scholls Ferry Road.
One evergreen tree was chopped on one side. It is hideous. Why there? There are other empty warehouses in that industrial area to the west.

AND

5. Have you seen the prep work for the all-new Fanno Creek bridge on Oleson Road?

I can’t pull an image of the Green Monster you describe here from the general fog that surrounds my brain these days, but I’ll get down to the intersection soon and take a better look. Meanwhile, it looks as if the long studied renovation project for that entire area is finally getting underway. The mess of intersections at the intersections of Scholls/Oleson/Hillsdale Highway/SW Dogwood has been a focus of local, regional and state authorities for at least a couple decades. I went to a couple of feed-back sessions in 2008 but since then have focused mostly on creek issues further to the south. But here’s a good link if you want to get a better sense of how Washington County is approaching the planning process in that area.

Has any of this helped? Sure hope so.

Bauman Park (AKA Blackberry Park) shortly after partial removal of invasive species of vegetation.

Let me ask you a question in return: Have you spent any time in the small park to the south of the area you address in 4&5? It’s called Bauman Park and is a THPRD Natural Area. They’ve been working on it a great deal, but it is a tough little nut of a place. It was once called Blackberry Park. Yard-per-yard, it has one of the most extensive collection of odious plants in it I’ve seen in the watershed. It’s an area that will soon need a “friends” group of its own. On the flip side, for its small size it has some of the best bones of any parkland I’ve seen around here. Check it out!

Touring Bull Mountain's Sensitive Lands

Tour members examine a drainage area designed to reduce erosion of a hillside in one of Bull Mountains ravines.

On January 10th, 2014, I accompanied a small group of scientists and wetlands advocates as they toured three heavily eroded sites on and around Bull Mountain. Brian Wegener of the Tualatin Riverkeepers has posted an excellent overview of the tour at http://tualatinwatch.blogspot.com/. All these sites are significant and were wonderful to see; but the mess in the ravine west of SW Essex Drive was particularly wonderful. I mean "wonderful" in the Oh-my-god-what's-happening-here? sense of the word.

The last time I trecked through this ravine was in the summer of 2009. That day I entered at the same access point we used on our tour - the place where Essex meets SW Lauren Lane. Then as now there was a barricade in place with a sign that identified the area as being part of the Tigard Greenway. But back then the "trail head" was simply a worn spot in the weeds and the ravine itself was considered unsafe for hiking, at least officially. The trails through it were not well constructed or even regularly maintained. At that time it was possible to spot places where the walls of the ravine were clearly on the move, but the complex of pipes that appear in both this post and Brian's were still a few years in the offing.

Trailhead in 2009.

While major erosion was clearly taking place all along the walls of the ravine - particularly along the eastern wall, the Essex side - I don't recall seeing anything quite so extreme as what we saw on the 10th. What's happened, I wonder, to move the situation so far up the curve in the 4.5 year interval? My guess is that what we saw on the tour was merely the result of process-over-time. In all liklihood the foundations of the problem were laid when the homes were in the process of being sited and built. Where the movement of water through and over land is concerned, a great deal of change in landforms can take place in minutes and hours, much less in years! That's particularly the case when the ground itself is rotten ("rotten" in the mountaineering sense of the word) and the volume of water it is subjected to is substantial

In addition to issues with the integrity of the slope where the pipes are installed, a few hundred yards further along the rim to the north, the rear foundation of one home is clearly under attack by geological and hydrological forces that are working incessantly on the walls of the ravine. The ground in that area has been covered with a layer of heavy plastic, presmuably in an effort to slow down the process of erosion during the rainy season. I'm not privy to the facts of the case, but my guess is that it is at least serious, if not critical. The situation is similar to others that have taken place previously on Bull Mountain, particularly further to the east along Derry Dell Creek. But the gash that is home to Derry Dell is merely a crack in the ground when compared to the young and growing canyon that lies between SW Essex and SW Ascension Drives. 

There are 60+ houses along the upper elevations of the ravine. They were built there in the mid-to-late 1990s, and the construction of each and every one of them was regulated by statutes and and/or standards estabished by the City of Tigard and Clean Water Services (CWS). The basic documents in force at the time would have included the City of Tigard's Municipal Code and Clean Water Services Design and Construction Standards. Over and above simply providing guidance and regulations aimed at insuring compliance with a wide variety of municipal, regional, state and federal strictures, these codes are intended to protect life and property. That being said, a couple of questions immediately spring to mind:

1. Presuming that the city and CWS enforced the permitting process properly, and presuming that the builders and their designers followed through on their ends of the deal by executing their projects in a proper and professional manner, why is at least one home along the rim of the canyon (and possibly more than one) now (apparently) in jeopardy?  

2. Am I off base in thinking that (a) either something has changed in the fundamental conditions related to the area, or (b) some of the strictures and best practices in either or both the Tigard Code or CWS Design and Construction Standards weren't well enough grounded to prevent the problem from developing in the first place?

I think these are important questions for both Tigard and CWS to address because an ambitious develoment called "River Terrace" is being proposed by the city for an area of Bull Mountain just west of the the ravine that's been the focus of this post - an area that almost certainly has already played a part in the erosion on Mike Meyers that Brian talks about in the first segment of his post. Given previous incidents at Derry Dell and the current state of the ravine between Essex and Acension, it would be unfortunate if a new and major development were to take place on Bull Mountain before existing slide AND erosion concerns were fully and adequately readdressed.

Thanks in part to a technology known as LIDAR, the complex geology of Bull Mountain is more well understood than ever before. Also more well known than ever before is the dramatic interrelationship between that geology and the stormwater that visits it on an anual basis. What this means is that current scientific data is more than sufficient enough to help the city make smart and sustainable decisions about how it manages its stormwater management responsibilities.

Chapter 18.775 of Tigard's Municipal Code deals with the topic of "Sensitive Lands." The Municpal Code is reviewed from time to time, as it should be, to make sure it continues to meet the needs of the city and its citizens. Maybe it's time for another look? As I was reviewing the chapter this morning it struck me that while there are specific and detailed sections titled "General Provisions" for floodplains and wetlands, I couldn't find one that directly addresses areas with steep elevations and/or unstable topography - i.e., sensitive lands. For example, the code makes it clear that there should be no development on lands with slopes of more than 25%; but I couldn't find anything that is specific about how far back from the edge of a clearly rotten rim should the footings for a home be placed?

I'm not at all convinced the code effectively addresses the complex interrelationships that exist between the morphology (slope and soil features) and hydrology (wetlands and drainages) of given areas. Each set of variables appear to be set apart from the others and then addressed as if it were a free-standing or self-contained system. Maybe what is needed these days is coding that looks at the elements as groups of similar variables operatnig within the context of a more complex and diverse system? 

Given that a major portion of Tigard's physical footprint stands on some of the most rotten and slide prone geology in the state, and given that a veritable river sometimes runs through it, maybe that aspect of the city's development standards ought to be more well-studied and more effectively addressed?

The deep and steadily growing gash that now runs through The Meyers' property. A sign of things to come?

______________________

Afterword - CWS is in the process of updating its Design and Construction Standards. It will be interesting to see if the final document addresses the issues associated with construction in slide prone areas to a greater extent than they appear to be addressed in Tigard's Municipal Code. Here's hoping...

 

THE LONGEST DAY

We are passing through the Winter Solstice, an event of considerable cultural, psychological and physical significance. My dearly departed mother relished this particular turning point in the year more than any other. It was, she used to say, the longest day and the darkest hour - especially for the birds. She was crazy about the creatures and knew their little, secret ways better than anyone I've ever known. She was a bit of a Druid, when it comes to it, and sometimes prone to thinking darkly. But, in spite of her sometimes somber moods, she felt this moment in the year marked the most wonderful of all the many transitions Nature lays upon us - the Beginning of All Things.

In her life she moved between and among many religions, settling in the end for an odd blend of Paganism and hard science. She was never a religious person so much as she was deeply interested in the "WHY" of life. She taught me to be amazed by and respectful of the belief systems and personal faiths of other humans; but she also taught me to be suspicious of any tenant held onto too tightly - especially if I was the one doing the clutching.

The only absolute for her was a non-personified concept of Nature. It was Nature you could trust, nothing else. You could trust it to be exactly what it is, nothing more, nothing less. Bountiful-barren; wild-delicate; savage and soothing; temporal in the human sense, eternal in all others. Nature is THE mystery - something more to contemplate and marvel at than to be understood or "explained."

This, in the end - the absolutely unfathomable nature of things - was the source of her greatest personal joy and the seat of her considerable strength of character. It was her greatest insight and her greatest gift to those she cared to share it with.

________

There are bountiful days ahead for the birds. Be happy and at peace on their account, and on your own. 

SEASON'S GREETINGS!

 

Perspectives & Priorities

Little Green Heron by Nancy Baur - http://www.duxdekes.com/kits.html

I’ve been struggling lately, and on several fronts. First, there’s my blogging-block, or more accurately my general literary lethargy. When I called a wrap to Up Fanno Creek last October, I just sort of collapsed. I stopped pounding on the keyboard, stopped conceptualizing possibilities, stopped pretty much everything related to writing. Much as I love it, writing at any level is a real psychological challenge for me. Part of it stems from being so insecure that the process of putting together even the simplest post makes me a nervous wreck for at least a couple days.

Another problem with writing is the level of intensity involved. I’m generally unable to write without investing a sizeable amount of intellectual and/or spiritual capital into the process. As a result, writing is an exhausting and rarely satisfying process. On the other hand, I am driven to do it, just as I once was (and am again) driven to take photographs. I don’t understand it, can’t explain it, and only mention it here because periodically the weight of doing either sits so heavily on my shoulders that the only way to get free of the crushing burden is to write and shoot. I’ve been doing way too little of both lately.

On a different but somewhat related front, I’ve also been struggling with my role as “environmental activist.” Just the mere fact that I feel compelled to put that title in quotations says a lot about how conflicted I am about the work I’ve been doing for the last few years. Apparently I am destined to continue doing that kind of work for the foreseeable future. See that beautiful sculpture up there at the beginning of this post? I received this wonderful thing from the Tualatin Riverkeepers back in April. It’s is called the “Green Heron Award,” and it came my way by virtue of contributions I’ve made in the past few years “that have helped protect and restore the Tualatin River System.”

When my buddy Brian Wegener was making the presentation, he voiced the hope that I might keep making those kinds of contributions in the future. That’s been my own expectation as well; but at the moment I am not exactly sure how – or even to what extent – I will proceed to live up to my own expectations, much less anyone else’s. And part of that problem is, I’m not sure what those expectations actually are. What’s my proper role? I mean, there are so many things out there, environmental and otherwise, that need tending to, I hardly know where to begin. What can I bring to the party? How will what I do move the pile in a desirable direction? What pile? What direction? Where should I focus my few physical, psychological and monetary assets?

When I began work on Up Fanno Creek I developed a plan I was able to follow all the way through the entire process. It was simple and direct and, in the end, got me to where I initially intended to go. Think I’ll spend the next few days working on a new one I can use to manage whatever is going to be Act II of my new career as an environmental activist.

Back to Fanno Creek

 
Yesterday morning, after breakfast and a couple hours on the computer, I bundled up in rain gear, grabbed my camera bag and the dog-leash, then took off with Buddy for Fanno Creek. It was 44 degrees and raining steadily when we arrived at our destination – Tualatin’s Community Park. We set out on the soft pathway that leads through the forested section down by the river and ends at the southern approach to Ki-A-kut’s Bridge. Too late, I noted with regret, to see much in the way of wildflowers – the trillium have long gone bye. Still, it was quite lush and many of the restored areas were flourishing.

Before I crossed the bridge to the Durham Park side, I stood on the bank and looked across at the mouth of Fanno Creek. It was like looking at the face of an old friend, one you haven’t seen for a while. From that distance it appeared not to have changed much, but as I crossed over the bridge I noticed that there’s been considerable shifting of location by one of the old snags that lie across the mouth. The stream billowed muddy water into the less muddy body of the Tualatin as it flowed by. It’s amazing how much material in the way of silt and debris this small body of water can carry out of the hills on a rainy day.

We left the bridge and headed up the trail into Durham Park, stopping in a couple places to take photos of the restoration work I first encountered in 2007. Back then the trees and bushes had been in the ground for only a year or so and were still tiny little living things fighting for their lives. Thanks to the efforts of the crews who planted them and the watering system that sustained them through several summers, the vegetation along this walkway is robust and getting more so with every passing day. Bushes and trees that were once less than chest high now towered over me. The overall condition of the foliage was no less impressive.

A short distance north of the bridge – 100 yards or so – lies an area where crews working under the direction of Rob Emanuel (Water Resources Project Manager for Clean Water Services) have begun restoring an area once choked with an assortment of invasive bushes and trees. The area is now open and sun-filled for a good portion of the day. The undesirable trees have either been girdled and left for snags, or cut down and ground up into wood chips. The dense stands of blackberries and reed canary grass that once crowded out large sections of more desirable understory have been beaten back, and in their place a number of herbaceous natives are beginning to thrive. 

At the end of the demand trail that runs through this part of the park there’s a bench. I sat down for a couple minutes and watched the creek dash by on its way to the river. It’s a great place to pause and reflect because there’s not much in the way of distractions, just small details that rapidly come and go across the surface of the otherwise opaque mass: a twig; a whirlpool; flecks of foam; a leaf; undulating patterns of colors and  textures that suddenly appeared, then just as suddenly disappeared. Then out of that mental void came the image of a fallen tree trunk I’d spotted as I passed over the trail back on the Tualatin side of the bridge. What stuck out in my memory was the fact that the clumps of small ferns that clung to its sides appeared to be dying.

Typically lush colonies of epiphytic ferns flourish in the trees along the river in Tualatin’s Community park; but as I passed through the area on the way back to the truck, there seemed to be fewer of these colonies in evidence. Additionally the ones I was able to see from the pathway all showed the same prevalence of brown fronds shown in the picture above.

Back in the truck I made a few notes and reflected on the visit. It had been a long time since I’d slogged through the creek’s muddy floodplain. Even before wrapping up the book last October I’d cut down considerably on visits to the urban bush. Instead I’d gotten wrapped up in committee and taskforce work for one group or another – TRK, Metro, BES, THPRD, just to name a few. That kind of work is essential, I reminded myself; but it can’t take the place of actually being with the creek. In addition to spending time on advocacy activities, I’d also become smitten with the idea of working on a new book , this one about the John Day River. As a result I had managed to distance myself from the living reality of the creek and the never-ending threats to its health, even its very existence.

I rummaged around in my pack, hoping maybe to find a forgotten – and by now probably stale – packet of peanut butter and cheese crackers. Finding none, I made a mental note to restock once I was back at the house. I’d be returning to the urban bush soon, I decided. Very soon.

The Fields Property Project and The String of Pearls

The mighty handsome buck I jumped a few days ago while walking the Fields Property.

As I posted last week, tomorrow night Metro and Tigard will be hosting a “Community Open House” designed to help them further develop land-use plans for the Fields Property – Tigard Library, 5:30 to 7:30 PM. If you live anywhere in the Fanno Creek watershed (and in the Tualatin Basin for that matter), I urge you to attend this meeting and let the planners know how, and to what extent, you believe that property should be developed. If you can’t make the meeting, there’s an online survey here you can take that includes a general overview of the three planning concepts that will be presented.

These days, when I think of this property it’s always within the context of its location near the top of the last four miles of Fanno Creek’s 14 mile run.* Below, in the very rough approximation of the creek’s floodplain between the bridge on Main Street and its confluence with the Tualatin River, the creek flows through several parks and dozens of private properties. I sometimes refer to the area as the “Gut,” but maybe a better name, given the positive potential they represent would be “String of Pearls.”


Most of those properties are industrial/commercial in nature and many of them include large portions of undeveloped land that lie deep into the floodplain. Together with the areas already designated as parkland, these relatively undisturbed portions of the floodplain cover around 2% of the creek’s total watershed. More significantly, they comprise .6 square miles or almost half of its total floodplain.

When I look at this string of pearls, the first thing I see is the great potential for the development of a large, multi-purpose, semi-self-sufficient, natural stormwater processing machine. If the development of the Fields Property to include amenities such as soccer fields and baseball diamonds can be avoided, or at least substantially curtailed, there is a great opportunity to enhance the area’s already positive contribution to Fanno Creek’s water quality. What’s good for Fanno Creek is good for the Tualatin River. Hence my insistence that the fate of this property is of significance to every person in the Basin.

As rate-payers, we need to do all we can to insure that the cost of meeting stormwater quality criteria, now and in the future, is kept as low as possible. One of the keys to meeting that goal is to insure that our remaining natural infrastructure is kept intact as much as possible.

I’ve walked the Fields Property multiple times, most recently just two days ago. The open areas that would figure significantly in the development of sports fields are so heavily sloped towards the creek that I suspect a great deal of cutting and filling would need to take place before they would be serviceable. Furthermore, the drainage through the eastern portion of the property is fairly marked, to the extent that the lower areas were very soggy, even ‘though it had been several days since the last significant rainfall. A better use for this area would be to convert it into a prairie, with an emphasis in its planting towards creating habitat for pollinators and field birds.

If enough people give their input to the planners, regardless of what that input may be, I’m reasonably confident that a well balanced plan will ultimately emerge from the process. See you there?

*the beeline distance between downtown Tigard is 2.8 miles, but the stream meanders a total of approximately 4.8 miles to cover that distance.