When Knitting Was a Manly Art

I’m having a heck of a time getting a good photo of the Feather and Fan shawl. Currently working on row 75 of 190. This isn’t the greatest picture in the worlld, but it’s the best I’ve been able to get with this dark green yarn.

Yesterday we spent the day just south of Dee, Oregon, searching a rugged ridge line for the remains of the rail grade and trestles of the Oregon Lumber Company. The climb up to the top of the ridge was one of the hairest climbs I’ve made in a while. We were climbing on a 50-60 degree slope of loose basalt and dirt, with nothing but Vine Maple and Douglas Fir trees to hang onto. The last section was a traverse across a nearly solid rock face and finally to the top of the ridge and a gently sloping backside. We found the railroad grade and two of the collapsed trestles.

The first was down across a stream bed and it was only a bit of luck that we sighted the square timbers amongst the underbrush. Standing on the timbers is Ken, our 70+ year old hiking partner.

The second trestle was a combination of easy and hard. We knew about were it was located, as we had found it’s collapsed bents at the bottom of a rocky cliff, which was the primary reason for our tough initial hill climb.

On the top, the approach to the trestle was through a cut that was hacked through fairly solid rock. No scraping dirt here, though the rock tends to break into flat shaley pieces.

Once through the cut, we stood at the top of a precipice looking over at what was actually two trestles. The one closest to us spanned the gap to a rock pillar, which still has the remains of the trestle on it, and then continued across another gap to the other side. Eileen stands on the edge taking pictures and the actual remains of the trestle surface to her left.

Closeup of the central rock pillar

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