Last week I was in Uncertain, Texas - yes, that’s the real name, supposedly chosen because  nobody was certain what to call the town when the first maps were drawn – co-leading my  annual photography workshop at Caddo Lake. After four years of visiting, the place has  become familiar, but never ordinary. The bayou stretches out in a maze of slow, still, dark  water, lined with ancient bald cypress trees draped in long strands of Spanish moss. It’s a world that feels half-wild

Who are we as a community? We may not be incorporated towns, but we have an identity  nonetheless - one built on shared history, hard work, and the unique beauty of this place we call home. Our story is one that’s been passed down through generations, and it continues to grow with every person who puts down roots here.  A community that remembers its past has an identity. A community with an identity has  pride. And pride leads to protection - protection of the forests, river

Mount Hood’s summit is a familiar sight for everyone who calls The Mountain their home. It’s the backdrop to our lives, a landmark that feels unchanging. Yet in geologic terms, Mount Hood is anything but quiet. Beneath the snow and glaciers lies the record of eruptions that reshaped the mountain and altered the valleys where we live. The story of Mount Hood stretches back roughly half a million years. Like the other great peaks of the Cascades, it rose where the Juan de Fuca

Less than five miles north of Brightwood - deep in the protected Bull Run watershed - lies the place where a young World War II pilot lost his life. For nearly two decades, the forest kept the secret of what happened to 2nd Lt. Alan Clay Strader, whose aircraft vanished on a rainy morning in 1943. On March 26, 1943, 2nd Lt. Alan Clay Strader took off from Portland Army Air Base in a Lockheed P-38 Lightning, a sleek single seat, twin-engine, twin-tailed fighter. Just 20 years