Fall

Semigloss

Oregon · USA

When you ride with TJ Thorne to any waterfall or creek, there are two things you can be assured of: One of us is spittin' out bad pun after bad pun like a Pez dispenser, and one of us is gettin' his feet wet. In the interest of allowing you to get to sleep tonight, I'll give you two but only two hints:

1. Neither of them are me.
2. Both of them are him.

Among his innumerable other quirks, going to Abiqua means respecting TJ's self-imposed tradition of pegging a steel gate at the end of the parking area with a rock from some distance before we can actually set out on the trail or leave for home. I somehow got roped into this lunacy after I'd seen him chuck a good three dozen rocks at the thing without success and started hurling stones at the gate myself. It's a lot damn harder than it sounds, let me tell you. Mercifully, after practically clearing out the stones and pebbles from the parking area, we heard the telltale clang of rock on metal after one of TJ's throws to signal success at long last. Hallelujah, and off we went...

On this occasion, we largely lucked out by having Abiqua all to ourselves save for one young couple who came, selfied, and went, and the rains and spray stayed largely in check. Retrospectively, we also lucked out because I was rolling in a loaner (and quite cushy) 2015 Ford Explorer in the wake of hitting a deer near Sandy, Oregon, a few nights earlier with my Toyota 4Runner. The front grill of my SUV bent inward as if I'd ran into a flag poll, and I can't imagine that doe...I think it was a doe...made it out alive. Sorry, doe. :( In any case, I found out that the daily charge on the Explorer exceeded my insurance coverage, so I ended up swapping it out later for a Toyota Corolla, which probably wouldn't have made it down the rocky road to the trailhead. So yeah, I'm Corollin' for a few more days until I get my trusty but not quite ungulate-proof 4Runner back from the shop...

Anyway, back to the photo. This is a three-exposure composite: Two for focus-stacking purposes and another polarized 90 degrees to maximize the falls' and sky's reflection in the water, without which the foreground looks a little threadbare and would throw the overall composition a bit off balance. I think I've amassed a pretty decent portfolio of Abiqua images thus far, but I'll never grow tired of coming here...it's just such a majestic waterfall beset in an awesome amphitheater of nicely jointed columnar basalt, and Abiqua always shows a slightly different face with changes in the water flow, vegetation, and weather conditions each time I return. And always a good time out with TJ, quirks and all.

Oh, and let the record show that it was my throw that ultimately allowed us to reboard the Explorer and vacate the premises...