Into the Woods ... and Really Into the Trees

 Monday, July 7, 2014

We had a grand evening last night and a couple of great performances to complete our days at the Shakespeare Festival.    We started the day quietly.  John worked on the blog and pictures while Ben headed out for coffee at the 116 Lithia Coffee Shop where they know him now.  

In the early afternoon we walked over to the OSF for the show “A Wrinkle in Time,” based on a 1960’s sci-fi novel.   The piece was very successfully done by using the book by reading sections from the book while the cast acted them out.   It worked very well, though the play itself is not one we would have thought to chose from a listing.   It’s about good and evil, with heavy Christian overtones.  John thought of C.S. Lewis’ Perelandra novels.

Dinner at Amuse

Dinner was a success at Amuse, quite near the Winchester Inn.   Ben had a fruit salad and Alaskan halibut, which he says was superb, and better than the halibut at Peerless, a couple of nights ago.   John had three small plates—a prawn and potato salad, then sautéed veal sweetbreads and a salad.   We all splurged with beignets for dessert.   The wines were local, a Rogue Valley sauvignon blanc, and a claret also from around here.   The wines are superb in this part of Oregon, though this viticultural area is not well known outside the state.   We have yet to have a disappointing bottle.  In fact the area was written up in the NY Times on Sunday as being a grand place to go for wines and food without crowds—it’s also kid friendly unlike a lot of places.  Maybe in a few years we’ll bring our grandson.

Last night’s play was Sondheim’s “Into the Woods,” which is one of our favorites.  It was our third time to see the play  The first time was at Kennedy Center where we sat in the rafters, the second was a superb production at Signature, and tonight’s was the winner of all three—but only by a little for John because he loved the small theater at Signature where we saw it the last time.  We are always entranced with the lovely happy ending of the first act.  You think the play is over:  the reaction of many in the audience.  You are scarcely prepared for the second act where the characters realize that there are consequences of seeking and then getting what they wanted.   Jack in the Beanstalk becomes a scapegoat, Cinderella breaks off with the handsome prince…and Rapunzel and Little Red Riding Hood don’t do too well either.  The production was done outside in the Elizabethan theater with a superb cast.  The orchestra is on two levels toward the back of the stage with the pianist on the first level, the other instrumentalists above, and the conductor out where the audience sits.

Today we leave for the Pacific Coast and some national parks.   Off to breakfast.

5:15 PM.   Arrived at the Requa Inn on the banks of the Klamath River about a mile from the Pacific Ocean about 45 minutes ago.  The hills are covered with redwood trees. The gently flowing river is apparently the lifeline of an indian reservation that owns one mile of land from the riverbanks on both sides for 40 some miles.  A good time for sipping a nice Gruner-Vetliner.   It’s an old stage coach kind of place, dating from the 1860s I’d guess.  Nice rooms, hot-tub, which we will probably not use, and a dinner reservation so we need not move from the view.

The day was long but gorgeous,  John figures he drove over 5 hours, mostly on hilly, (read mountainous) roads, with trees coming up to the edge of the pavement for the last few miles.   We stopped for coffee at Z Coffee in Cave Junction, Oregon.  Not bad, but a bit too chocolatey for John’s taste and he had only an ordinary decaf.   We lunched on little pastries left over from the Winchester Inn, a couple of bananas, and some yoghurt from the local Safeway in Crescent City about 40 miles north of here.  We look forward to a locavore dinner this evening here in Klamath (not Klamath Falls, Oregon, Klamath, California.)

The Pacific Shoreline

The California Coast

The high point of the day has been the redwood forests.   They are magnificent.  John had seen them many years ago south of here when he lived in California and we had visited a small grove in Sonoma County about 10 years ago.  But there is nothing to compare to mile after mile of 500 year-old trees lining the roadways.  The trees survived fires, droughts and earthquakes since the days of the dinosaurs, but they nearly didn’t survive the arrival of Europeans in the 19th century.  Once they learned how to cut them down, down they came until the 1910s when groups of Californians started to develop a protection scheme.  Now it is a series of National and State Parks along the northern coast of California…and more rigorous logging controls that will save these magnificent trees, both for economic use but also for protection of the ecology and for our pleasure.   

The California Coast

Coastal Range

Taller than the Statue of Liberty