Run for the Trees: a Happy Little 5k

I admit it. This happened about a month ago. But sometimes it takes me that long to get to internet things;)

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(okay, so it was mortifying to be wearing the same shirt in public, but we did it in the spirit of the “race,” heh. Also, side note, imagine James’ beard with one more month’s worth of growing and that is what he looks like now <3 )

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So, about a month ago, James and I did this sweet little thing called the Run for the Trees, which is a fundraiser “race” for Oregon Parks Forever and helps support “tree planting and forest protection efforts in Oregon parks.” Originally, it was a partnership between Michigan State Parks and Bob Ross, Inc, an organization I know nothing about but I do remember watching Bob Ross paint “happy little trees” all over his canvas when I was little. And over time it’s become a collaboration with a few different states to help state park stewardship in all of them.

Point being, I registered James and me for the Happy Little 5k, which meant that we basically signed ourselves up to complete a 5k “race” on our own sometime between Earth Day and Arbor Day, April 19-27th.

Though I’d originally thought of it as a run we’d do together, James is more of an excellent biker than much of a runner, and it didn’t ultimately sound that exciting to do a run together. So instead, I made us an awesome 5k route that went through Oaks Bottom and Sellwood Park so that we could bike there, then walk + birdwatch our 5k!

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(busy beavers!)

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It was probably the slowest 5k known to humankind since, as we stopped frequently to look at birds and baby squirrels and the ginormous fish in Oaks Bottom and the beaver chew and on and on and on, it took us over 2 (maybe over two and a half?) hours to traverse 5 kilometers. But that was kind of the point. I did not report our results on the official Run for the Trees website. But I will report some results here, as best as I can remember them a month later;)

• Number of bird species seen: at least 23 (ha, what I can remember)
• Number of western screech owls seen: sadly, zero, though we were looking
• Number of baby squirrels watched: 3
• Number of pairs of binoculars used: 1, shared back and forth
• Number of trees seen chewed by beavers: more than 10
• Number of beavers seen: 0
• Number of bald eagles watched: 3 — one adult and two in their teenage plumage
• Number of osprey seen: 1, finally, after I was bemoaning how there are so few osprey in the Sellwood area this year
• Number of funny looks we got from people who realized we were wearing matching shirts: very, very many

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(midwalk, on the Springwater Corridor, which is fun to walk on every so often since I bike on it so frequently)

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(we even got finisher’s medals. Ha! Which we brought with us to open up when we were done, and which we then wore for our bike ride home, including a stop at People’s Food Co-op for groceries, where it was even more mortifying to be wearing matching shirts AND medals. But we took it for the team;)

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It was great fun and I would definitely do it again:) Maybe next year we can make a whole huge team of goobers in matching shirts looking at birds for 5 kilometers;)