Celebrate Readin' in the Rain along the North Fork Siuslaw River.

"And for another thing, there was nothing not a thing about the country that made a man feel Big And Important. The flora and fauna grew or died, flourished or failed, in complete disregard for man and his aims. I say there was no permanence. Even that town was temporary. I say it. All vanity and vexation of the spirit. One generation passeth away, and another cometh: but the earth abides forever, as forever as the rain lets it."

-Ken Kesey, Sometimes a Great Notion

The inaugural selection for Readin' in the Rain- Eugene's first city-wide community read along- is Sometimes a Great Notion, Ken Kesey's poignant portrait of an Oregon logging clan. You can't appreciate the book properly until you get out to the Coast Range west of Eugene, the inspiration for Kesey's masterpiece.

Kesey's Coast Range is an extravagant physical and psychic landscape filled with rugged mountains and even more rugged human inhabitants. The incessant rain breeds lush ferns, fluorescent green mosses, swollen rivers, and outlandish personalities. It's a dynamic and impermanent geography where only the biggest and most flamboyant specimens thrive.

A good place to experience the unparalleled vitality of the Oregon Coast Range is the Pawn trail, an easy mile long stroll through a gorgeous old-growth forest in the upper reaches of the North Fork of the Siuslaw River.

Directions: Take Hwy. 126 west from Eugene for approximately 42 miles to Mapleton. At Mapleton, take a right on Hwy. 36. Head east on Hwy. 36 for 3.2 miles. Take a left at the sign for the North Fork Siuslaw River and Pioneer Trail. Stay on this road, which alternates between pavement and gravel, for 6.4 miles, where you'll cross the North Fork and take a right on North Fork Road. Head up the river another 5.4 miles, take a right onto Elk Tie Road, and park immediately on the right at the well-signed Pawn trailhead.

On the way to the Pawn trail, four miles from Hwy. 36, you'll pass the Pioneer Trail, one of many testaments to the ephemeralness of human fixtures in Oregon's temperate rainforest. The trail follows a turn-of-the-century wagon road that once linked the Willamette Valley and the Coast. A bridge that crossed McLeod Creek has long ago collapsed and all but disappeared. The road itself is unrecognizable under elbow-deep moss.

The Pawn trailhead is the site of a small village established in the early 1900s. The trail takes its name from the first letter of the last name of four of the first homesteaders of the area: Poole, Akerley, Worthington and Noland. There's nothing left of the original settlement, undoubtedly a victim of the same rain induced ennui that plagued the first Stamper homesteaders in Sometimes a Great Notion.

At the start of the trail you'll find a ragged interpretive booklet full of interesting facts about old-growth forests (and some typical Forest Service obfuscation about why there's hardly any left) in a plastic bag jammed inside a kiosk. The first hundred yards of the trail provide a great view of the North Fork looking downriver. The trail is a loop- if you stay to the left you'll pass through a grove of enormous Douglas fir and western hemlock before you drop down to the riverbank, which is dominated by alder and a few big red cedars. There's a ton of beautiful white trilliums along the trail in April.

The best part of the trail are the giant big-leaf maples draped in a blanket of deep moss, and gnarled old Douglas firs with broken tops and massive U-shaped branches.

It's a great place to read the book and watch the river. If it's not raining.