Today was a somewhat adventuresome day, at least as “adventuresome” as it gets for me and the dog. For today’s walk, I originally thought to take her to Mary S. Young, but then I realized we’re clean out of balls (they’ve all gotten lost or chewed to bits.) I remembered a gentleman I met at Clackamette Park one day told me I could get whole bags of used tennis balls at the Eastmoreland Racket Club. So dog and I drove to what I thought was the Eastmoreland Racket Club, but it turned out to be the Eastmoreland GOLF club. Boy was my face red. But since we were halfway to Sellwood anyway, I thought we’d make lemonade out of lemons and head for the Oaks Bottom Wildlife Refuge trail, which I haven’t done in a long time.
It was a lovely walk, a couple of miles I guess. Very shady and not TOO overpopulated, though I find pretty much any urban (or even suburban) trail too populated for my liking on the weekend. I prefer to see nobody. But that’s me being antisocial.
We walked the dirt trail down to Riverfront Park, where dog got to cool off in the Willamette River. She found an abandoned pink frisbee which she has decided is her new favorite toy. In the off-leash area she worked on perfecting her frisbee-catching skills. She’s getting pretty good at it! Maybe I’ll post a video someday.
Anyway, the upshot of this story is, as we were coming back, the dog looked up at a humming sound coming from overhead. Absorbed in my own thoughts, I hadn’t even noticed it until the dog did. It sounded curiously like a pipe with rushing water in it. But of course it wasn’t a pipe, it was a huge beehive, in a big hollow tree right on the trail. It had hundreds of bees swarming around it and it was totally awesome. I’ve always really liked bees. When I was younger and more gothy, I used to want to think that crows were my spirit animal, but as I got older I realized how pretentious and overdone that is. So I think I’ll go with bees as my spirit animal instead. They’re hardworking, diligent, pugnacious, and most importantly they know how to treat a queen. 
Anyway, we made it back home and now I have an actual PRINTOUT of directions of how to get to the Eastmoreland Racket Club, where one can, indeed, buy a bag of 50 (!!) used tennis balls for a relative pittance. I know. I called to make sure. And they’re open until 8. Which just goes to show, never go out without a map, unless you’re willing to discover that you have a new spirit animal.
