A walk through the muskeg

There was a break from the rain and the sun came through for a few hours yesterday (Sunday) morning. Elise took a break from the things she was doing and went out for a walk a short ways up Hungry Point Trail. The trail begins just about a quarter mile from our apartment and goes another half mile or so up to the ball field.

After Elise returned I took my camera with me to see what was up there. We've been here a month, but I had never walked this trail. You can see below a few samples of the sights and sounds that I experienced. The trail is packed gravel on muskeg. But even then there were quite a few spongy spots along the way. Good, waterproof rubber boots or hiking boots are a requirement for walking the trail -- unless, of course, you enjoy soggy feet.

What is muskeg? You can go to this US Forest Service page to find out more. Basically it is sphagnum moss and water that continue to pile on top of one another, with some other dead organic material, until the whole pile can be more than 30 feet in depth. You can see below a sample of the colorful sphagnum moss. There is very little in the way of nutrients in muskeg so very few real plants are able to grow in it. The places where trees and other plants do grow are typically the shallower areas where the roots are able to find their way into real soil.

Along the way there was a little forested area where at the edge I found five or six Stellar's Jays making their home. They would fly out of the tree canopies out to the open muskeg to forage, and then fly back into the trees.

Taking advantage of the weather, I encountered quite a few others on the trail -- most with their dogs. I said "Hello" to a pomeranian, to what appeared to be a German Shepherd, and another four or five little dogs. One of them has a uncharacteristically low, deep growl -- something I would expect from a very large dog rather than one that was about a foot long and six inches tall.

More photos are at http://www.pbase.com/markkubo/psg_200610. Most recent images are towards the end of the page.

On my way back I got a call from Elise saying that we needed to go help clean up a kitchen. The original plan for Sunday was to do that in the morning, but we had a call saying we didn't need to come. Once the people who went to help got to the site and started working on it, they discovered it was a monumentally larger job than was estimated (by a factor of five or so). So we went there and worked on it for another four hours or so, scraping, scrubbing, washing.

The Tualatin church had Communion service this last Sabbath. I was thinking about how long it might be since the Petersburg group held a Communion service. Part of what the Adventist church does as part of Communion is foot-washing as we believe that it is an important part of the example Jesus left for the disciples during the Last Supper.

I was also thinking how meaningless and almost farcical the whole ritual of foot-washing has become in light of our experiences and culture. If it's supposed to be a reminder of how we are commanded to serve one another, it's really lost its thrust. As I was thinking again about holding Communion in Petersburg, I realized that the Petersburg church group doesn't need reminders or lessons in serving one another -- they do it all the time. It's done in ways that are real, meaningful, and serves a practical purpose. The Petersburg group doesn't need symbolic reminders. They are living it in their real lives.