Here in my Township

I'm sad, but I'm not going to make it to Market tomorrow. I hate missing the last outdoor Market, with its festive atmosphere and possibly good sales. I toyed with the idea of just taking a tiny load, the hats and bags, and a little infrastructure, but my incision from the surgery hasn't healed and the stress of the 12-hour day won't help that. It needs rest and gentle treatment. I already abandoned the boot a little too early and have done a little too much on my feet in the last few days. Darn.

But instead I will make sure I am prepared for Holiday Market load-in, which I am of course because I got it all organized weeks ago. I'll listen to the Saturday radio shows that I so rarely get to hear and watch the Woodworker show. I'll ride the stationary bike with my good foot.

In a couple of weeks this will be a memory and I can get on to being anxious and worried about something else. Looking forward to that.

But of course the extra time means more house research and I have a new stack of books thanks to Colleen who took me to the library. Just as we had to rush off for our meeting I found a book about River Road which had the 1860 Cadastral Map that clearly showed the Davis claims along the river there and that got me so very excited. Benjamin and Lycurgus Davis picked big tracts of land right there on the river and another Davis, Joseph, set up on the other side of Benjamin. I'll have to see how they were related, if they were. Seems likely. I really cannot wait until I can get on my bike and follow the path all along what was their land (once they took it, that is). I'm hoping to find some architectural remains somehow but that is not that likely. Maybe those two trees...

There is also a section corner right south of me on the Fairgrounds somewhere, or maybe up as far as 18th, and I will see if I can find the exact spot of that, just out of curiosity. I doubt there are markers, but maybe on the telephone poles or something. Have you ever noticed those little metal plaques on some of the poles? I will investigate.

In case you don't know what I am talking about, it's the numbers given to the landscape when it was first surveyed by the white guys so they could divvy it up. I live in Township 17 South, Range 4 West, Section 36 of the West Willamette Meridian. Knowing these numbers allows you to pinpoint your location on the map and provides a relatively logical system for finding boundaries. It has helped immensely to find the original claims and the info about my own. I suppose that a GPS might be handy on the ground and maybe I'll see what I can do with my phone. I have barely explored all the ways I can use my smart phone, but there it lies waiting for me to join the 21st century.

I'm kind of immersed in the 19th. I've started reading the Oregon Trail accounts in search of the Davises and others who came here in the 1850's. It's endlessly fascinating still but soon I will have found all of what has been written. It turns out that if you don't have descendents, you die and are forgotten. No wonder they all placed such high value on having sons.

It was very hard what they did, striking out on adventures that included quite a lot of danger and death. Many, many of these people lost their children and spouses and treasured possessions and built back up with a huge amount of hard work. I imagine, though, that when they started farming this deep river soil they were quite pleased with themselves. No doubt you could grow pretty much whatever you wanted.

So they had some food security, and now over 150 years later we are using the Willamette Valley to grow some of those staple crops again. The Willamette Valley Bean and Grain project is getting some press and what an innovative and encouraging project it is! I've been enjoying the many dry bean varieties and other grains for a couple of years now and I am so happy for people like Kasey who are seeing the results of their own very hard work and dedication.

One of the most fun and bittersweet aspects of watching these young farmers in their highly productive years, seeing them build their families and their social networks of other young families, and remembering my thirties and forties when I was working my ass off building my own, is that I feel profoundly the passage of time. Generally I kind of look to the next project and time slips by unnoticed, but ever since I found myself at sixty a couple of years ago, something shifted.

One of these days it will be over for me, really over, hopefully not for a couple of decades. But loss is constant and there are already things I won't do again, like being a farmer and being a young mother, and taking off on grand adventures without a care. I guess crossing the mountains in my Jeep, pouring oil into my engine with its broken piston, will make a good saga and I had better write it. 

Like these long-gone people I have begun to feel connected to like family, if nobody writes it down, the oral history will someday be forgotten, or at least not easily accessed. The tiny little clues might not get added up. I was watching a program about the big statues in the Easter Island region, how the legends said the statues walked. Always dismissed as impossible, finally some curious people made it happen again. They proved that a couple dozen people and some ropes could indeed make the statues walk. 

But without that word *walk,* they would probably have tried a whole bunch of other methods without success. Without the tiny clues I am finding, like people's maiden names and grave locations and the records of building permits and such, I would not be able to even accurately speculate about this very recent history of my neighborhood and township. 

So I'm glad that I am an archivist and accumulator of artifacts, glad I saved so many small items I found on the property. Someday I may figure out what those little slabs of marble I found were used for. I'll find out when the river rocks were spread under the house, and why my roof rafters are four feet apart. 

Someday I am going to put it all together and make it make sense. I hope I am not as speculative and plain mistaken as some of the historians I've read. I hope I don't end up writing historical fiction instead of history (fine line there, isn't it?) But if historical fiction is all I can manage, that will be okay too. Sometimes imagining how it might have been leads us to the discoveries that prove our points. It's a pretty creative process to do this research.

And it's a really effective distraction from this frustrating situation I've been in all freaking year. It has definitely kept me going and forestalled true acceptance of my dismal (though temporary) reality. It's a fulfilling type of escapism.

But dang, I want to be on my bike freewheeling along the river, thinking about agriculture, or downtown thinking about crafts and food. At least I will most definitely be over on the Huddleston property next week, selling my wares where they used to race their fine horses. It will be good, kind of like a family reunion. Which reminds me that I have to write that story too, take the oral traditions of the Saturday Market to the next level. That will be a long, complicated story that will have far fewer clues perhaps, though many more interviews. With only forty-some years to explore, most of my people will still be within a phone call's distance. Big difference, and a huge challenge. But it will be satisfying I think. Come see me with your stories.