Hi, my name is Linda. This is my personal home and hearth journal.

I am a self-trained herbalist. I became a vegetarian when I was a teenager in the 1960s. I was a San Francisco Bay Area hippie in the 60s and early 70s. Then I became a mom - the most important job I've ever had.

Now I live in a very small mountain community. The nearest fast food restaurant is more than forty miles during summer, and more than seventy miles in winter when the pass is snowed under. I've never owned a cell phone, but I talked on one once.

Country Kitchen Pantry - Herbs, Spices, Cooking, Recipes

Thankful For Living Through The Fires

Today I’m thankful that we lived through the fires. Often when there are forest fires, people die. This time four people died locally, three of them related to the forest fire activity in town.


Probably in a bigger town we wouldn’t notice so much, but here people don’t die very often. If they do, their memorial notices end up taped to the post office door.

It started on Saturday when a local resident failed to negotiate a curve two miles east of here, and ended up dying in a roll-over accident. Her three passengers all survived. She was in her 70′s or 80′s.

Next there was a helicopter crash Monday morning. Really weird, in that this is the second year in a row we’ve had a fatal helicopter crash locally during a fire. Last year two fire fighters went down about ten miles southwest of here, right in the Klamath River near Independence Bridge. This year a single pilot died in a crash about twelve miles south near Norcross Campground, the northern gateway to the Marble Mountains. He was 61.

Stranger still, on Monday afternoon two out-of-town men employed locally as fire-camp cooks drowned in the Klamath River near a swimming hole I’ve been to dozens of times. Apparently they didn’t realize that we who live here swim in the creeks, not in the river – and especially not at the confluence of a creek with a river. A current pulled one of the men under, and another went in after him. Big mistake for both of them. They were both in their 30′s.

What a terrible loss of human life. My sympathies are with all the family members dealing with these tragic deaths.

. . .

Recently at MySpace a site change made it possible for me to put another one-liner at the top of the page. My page now says, “Linda is quite happy to be alive.” That just about sums it up for me. I use MySpace to keep in touch with my children, and to promote some of my online activities, including this blog.

. . .

I wasn’t feeling up to writing an article in Happy Camp News about the deaths that transpired, so I asked the woman I’m trying to sell the site to, to write it. She did an upstanding job of it: Tragedy In Happy Camp. I love her writing style.

. . .

Yesterday Bob and I went shopping in Southern Oregon. We had a great day. I bought some healing jewelry, a tie-dye t-shirt, and some exercise equipment. We ate at a Chinese restaurant in Grant’s Pass.

Filed under: Thankfulness — Linda @ 12:41 pm



« Previous PageNext Page »



RSS Blog Feed

RSS Blog Feed

RSS Comments Feed

RSS Comments Feed


To subscribe to this blog by email,
enter your email address:

Home :: :: About This Site



Buy More and Save on Recycled Supplies and Furniture at OfficeMax.com

Google