Oregon in October

In early October, my partner and I made a weekend get-away at the coast. On one of our beach walks we found a startling amount of biological detritus washed up on the shore. Nature's drama played out in front of us as we observed a live crab lose a battle with a hungry seagull. How do you tell if a starfish is alive? We weren't sure, so my partner is seen here attempting to give it a second chance on life.

Later in the month we visited the Japanese Garden in Portland, Oregon. Both of us have lived in Oregon most our lives, and neither of us had ever been. It was a blue sky, 70 degree Saturday, so there was a bit of a line to get in. The most photographed tree in the garden had a posse of mostly men crouching and sitting in front of it. I wasn't sure if the scene was one of reverence or one that required immediate feminist commentary about the protruding lenses being shoved under and into nature's singular canopy.