Fall fly fishing on the Willamette River

On the confluence
Late September on the Upper Willamette River, the Middle and North stems
fork, big-leaf maple leaves sweep down into eddies
Cascade foothills, Doug Firs reach for low clouds.
Big trout on the confluence, but I flub casts, drag the drift
I drive them down, spooked, to the bottom of the pool
eager smolts somersault — hookset and airborne [...]

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Hood River Fruit Loop, Pear Celebration

KP and I rounded the Hood River Fruit Loop last weekend. It was an excuse to see Mt. Hood and to spend money at local farms. I recently finished Jenny Kurzweil’s Fields That Dream: A Journey to the Roots of Our Food and I was feeling farmy (Rating: B-).

A couple of thoughts from the book [...]

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Book recommendation: Pale Morning Done

I wrapped up Pale Morning Done last week while I was on the road, and I give it a hearty B+. It’s a great read — both for its fish-porn aspect and life lessons for a guy in his twenties. Marshall (who seems a bit old to be learning these things, in my opinion) finds [...]

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East Coast: Rat race redux (how I survived Boston)

I spent last week in Boston for work. I haven’t been back here in almost a year, and the culture shock is pretty staggering. The energy around the office is really wild. Just a few hours in there and we get all sorts of interesting ideas going, new projects, issues settled. Working remote is convenient, [...]

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Tabling for trout at the Eugene Celebration

Last weekend I ran a table for Trout Unlimited 678 at the Eugene Celebration. We managed to sign up a bunch of new members thanks to some free trial memberships from Mike Beagle.

It was also an excuse to take some out-of-town volunteers on a McKenzie River run — Blue River to Rennies Landing. FYI: This [...]

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Copper-Salmon Wilderness Bill introduced today

U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden and U.S. Representative Peter DeFazio today introduced legislation that would create the Copper-Salmon Wilderness, a 13,700-acre swath of wild land in southern Oregon’s Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest. The area encompasses the headwaters of the Elk River, one of the last, best coastal salmon and steelhead streams in the state. Wyden and [...]

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Eastern Oregon Roadtrip Wrap-up

After spending several days in the Steens area, the Eastern Oregon roadtrip continued for another week. In the course of that week we saw two more mountain ranges — The Elkhorn and the Wallowa Mountains. I hiked three wilderness areas — Steens, North Fork John Day and Eagle Cap. And we saw the most wild [...]

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My Book: Data centers, energy and the environment

TechTarget just published the first chapter of my book. It’s about data center energy efficiency and it is currently under lock and key, behind a registration wall. But if you’re interested in seeing what I’ve been working on for the past 10 months, definitely download the Green Data Center book. If you’re not willing to jump [...]

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Steens Day 5: Eastern Oregon roadtrip continues

Early morning light streams into our room at the Frenchglen Hotel. We slept through the lunar eclipse, but I don’t miss the sunrise on the front porch. I am not however, motivated enough to head back to the top of Steens.

Unfortunately, that tends to be a theme. I know that my best shots are going [...]

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Steens Day 4: Keiger overlook at sunset or bust!

Day four starts in Bend, OR — a place I’ve actively boycotted due to its megasprawl, strip mall, bastardizing of the Cascades — the view that has blessed and cursed this town. We spend enough time in Bend to get coffee and gas and a copy of Bill Sullivan’s Eastern Oregon book – indispensable (couldn’t have [...]

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