By Miles Merwin

SRN invites everyone living in our Skyline area neighborhood, or folks who have connections here, to share your story on Skyline Voices. It’s an ongoing blog, exclusive to the SRN website, with multiple contributors. Think of it as an outlet for creative writing on all subjects great and small, or a long Facebook post going out to lots of friends.

​Many different roads have led folks to settle in our neighborhood, and some of you were born here. Although we all share some common experience of living in the country, we each have our own perspective based on diverse backgrounds. Everyone has unique stories to tell, which may delight, inform, stir, or engage their fellow inhabitants of rural Skyline.

What is special to you about Skyline? What did your farm animals or pets do that was unusual today? If your ancestors were among the early settlers here, how did they make a living? What was a particularly funny or meaningful or sad thing that happened in your household recently? If you could do one thing to make life better here, what would it be? 

I could go on, but as you see, the potential topics for Skyline Voices are limited only by your imagination. We welcome poetry, photo essays, jokes without profanity, short fiction, gardening tips, stories of real events that are just the facts or stranger than fiction, etc., etc. If you have a high school student at home, this would be easy extra credit for their English class.

Get the idea? Have something in mind now that you want to write for Skyline Voices? 

Here’s how. Tell your story in approx. 200-500 words. Add a photo if you want. Tell us your real name and where you live. (You can use a pseudonym for your post, if you wish, but we do need to know that you live here.) Email it to us at web_edit@srnpdx.org. We’ll put it in the queue, and you’ll get a happy, satisfied feeling when it’s published on our website.

​So please come and occupy this space!

By Miles Merwin

So the old saying goes. Which, ultimately, is too true, of course. However, in the mean time, with some luck and a little advance planning, maybe you could take it with you.

The community meeting in August organized by the Skyline Grange was a timely reminder that wildfire is a fact of life for those of us living in or near the woods. And about a week later, we had a fire erupt on the ridge – a scary exclamation point to punctuate a very hot and dry summer. Thankfully, ODF and TVF&R got that one under control before it could spread into the trees.

So, we started thinking about the possibility of some day being forced to evacuate our home on short notice. What would we take with us, if we had an hour or less to leave? Gulp.

That frightening prospect focuses the mind on what’s important and what’s not. Obviously people and pets come first, with farm animals a very close second. But what about all the rest of the “stuff,” much of it accumulated over many years? 

It comes down to deciding what has great personal meaning, is irreplaceable and can be easily moved, versus the stuff that could be replaced if necessary. That grandfather clock may be a family heirloom but you might not be able to get it into the back of the car in a hurry.

For us, the family photos/videos and few boxes of memorabilia would get grabbed first. Then some artworks that we have made or which have special meaning. And then the practical stuff like computer hard drives, checkbooks, passports, cameras, datebooks, etc. It would be a triage situation where things would be assigned different levels of priority, depending on how much time you had to pack your car.

A friend of ours, a former ODF fire staff person living in the woods, has a made a room-by-room list of what he and his wife want to save in an emergency evacuation. Everyone in the house knows where to find their clipboard with their assignments on where to go and what to get, printed in BIG letters. Items are color-coded by priority. They know what to do, and so are less likely to be overcome by the adrenaline rush of the moment.

Working on the list is kind of like what you do before a big household move. What can’t you live without and what is destined for the garage sale. Not the “fire sale,” we hope.

What would you take with you if you had to leave your house in a hurry?

By Kim Johnson

Today I tried to fix something that has been broken for some time. It required me to crawl under the deck where I planted a thicket of box bushes which I believe my husband told me not to do about eight years ago as it would make it hard to get under the deck. The box bushes are flourishing in case you wondered. 

To navigate the flourishing box bushes, I had to step through the middle of one and then immediately duck down into a crouching position and then partially standup at which time I took a spider web to the face.  Anyone who has ever taken a spider web to the face knows the biological fight or flight response kicks in followed by rapid karate moves. At this point I lost my balance and grabbed a post for balance. Of course the post had a sharp staple sticking out of it, a left over remnant of some festive Christmas lights I tacked up some years ago when the box bushes were tiny. I made a mental note to remove the staple from the post the next time I happened to be walking by with pliers. Probably should also check the date of my last tetanus shot. Not one to give up easily, I proceeded forward and whacked my head on a giant beam. I paused and made a note of the giant beam so that I might avoid it in the future.

I was in search of a GFI outlet under the stairs of my deck. It had an annoying habit of tripping and most likely just needed to be reset. My dad, a retired electrician, had installed this outlet (pre box bushes) when he got tired of tripping over the extension cord that powered the bubbler to my fishpond. Inspecting the GFI outlet, it didn’t appear to have tripped. Since I am no electrician I figure I will exit post haste and call my dad for advice. On the way out I HIT MY HEAD ON THE GIANT BEAM. So what do I do? I grab the post with the sharp staple for balance. 

I call my dad, he trouble shoots my problem but advises me not to try and fix it because I might get hurt. TOO LATE. I traipse back under the deck with a knife to stick in the electrical outlet*. Yes, that was my plan. I manage to avoid another spider web and am feeling pretty good about myself because I didn’t grab the post with the staple. I am practically whistling a happy tune, knowing my problem is about to be solved. I use the knife to push in the little red reset button on the GFI outlet because sometime those buggers can be resistant to resetting. Still doesn’t reset. I get mad; I turn around to leave and HIT MY HEAD ON THE GIANT BEAM.  I realize that I am being punished for planting box bushes. So I do what everyone does when they can’t solve a problem. I start a new project. 

Eight hours into my new project I recall in a moment of clarity that my dad did advise me to unplug EVERYTHING from the outlet before I pushed the reset button. I grabbed my knife and practically jumped over the box bushes, avoided the staple, ducked under the beam, pulled the plugs, reset the outlet, plugged in the fish bubbler back in, turned around and HIT MY HEAD ON THE BEAM. I can already hear the sound of bubbles through the concussion and frankly that’s all that really matters. 

*Kim Johnson lives on Logie Trail and is not advising anyone to stick a knife in an outlet.

The SRN neighborhood is home to a diverse group of folks, some of whom are recent arrivals and some who have lived here all their lives. Everyone perceives the world around them differently, yet our accounts of personal experiences often resonate with those of others. 

Exclusive to our website, SRN presents ’Skyline Voices’ as an ongoing blog written by your neighbors here on the “Hill.” It’s not just a personal blog by one person, but a group blog with multiple authors. Therefore, you will read many different tales on diverse subjects, springing from the minds of some creative writers among us. Some will be factual and some fictional, but always engaging.

We welcome your comments too. Just click the Comments link at the end of a post to add your “two-cents.” Please remember to be civil and neighborly in your comments.

If you live in the neighborhood and are interested to contribute to ‘Skyline Voices,’ we welcome new members to the group. We’re particularly encouraging local creative writers to submit their posts on an occasional but on-going basis. Posts of 100-250 words are ideal. Send posts to srn@srnpdx.org. (Since ours is a public website, SRN reserves the right to moderate posts and comments.)

We hope you will enjoy reading our blog. Check back since there will be a new blog post every week or so.