Ethos | Spring 2022

WINTER SPRING 2022 | VOLUME 13 | ISSUE 3 SPRING 2022 | VOLUME 13 | ISSUE 3

THE LONG HAUL The world is eager to move on from the COVID-19 pandemic. Some University of Oregon students still find themselves dealing with the long-term effects of COVID-19.

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Letter from the Editor, On March 11, 2022, Oregon lifted its mask mandate.

Masks have protected us against COVID-19, and for many, they have acted as a sense of security in an insecure environment.

The Eugene community, including University of Oregon students, can now walk into packed venues maskless, leaving little space for those who are immunocompromised or those hesitant to return to “normal.” In this edition of Ethos, we explore the mental, emotional and physical effects of long COVID-19 and what it means to live in a world moving on from it.

Writer Jasmine Lewin lives with long COVID and has since November 2020. In her piece, “The Long Haul,” she discusses the fear and long-term impacts of existing with a condition that doctors and medical professionals know little about.

This story represents what this edition of Ethos strives to understand: how to practice empathy and how to live as part of a community.

In Caleb Barber’s story, “Lighting Up the Darkness,” Roger Jensen, founder of Bent Spoke Outreach, spends his days providing aid and companionship to the unhoused community in Lane County. Through this piece, we see how important it can be to build trust through community support and persistence.

In downtown, Dot Dotson’s, the oldest film and camera shop in Eugene, connects hundreds of old baby photos from Sacred Heart Hospital to their owners. Some had never seen their own newborn photos before. Emerson Brady’s piece, “Connecting the Dots,” shows us how photos can be priceless keepsakes from the past.

Down the 1-5 corridor sits a gem in Oregon. The Enchanted Forest amusement park has existed between the hills on the highway since 1971. After many setbacks from COVID-19, financial struggle and devastation from the vicious 2021 ice storm, this family-owned business shows us what it means to be resilient in Kendall Porter’s piece “Down Storybook Lane.”

Read this magazine with empathy and see yourself in Ethos.

Ethos Editor-in-Chief Anna Mattson

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Email editor@ethosmagonline.com with comments, questions

g

and story ideas. You can find our past issues at issuu.com/ethosma

and more stories, including multimedia cont

ent, at ethosmagonline.com.

Our Mission: Ethos is a nationally recognized, awardwinning independent student publication.

Our mission is to elevate the voices of marginalized people who are underrepresented in the media landscape, and to write indepth, human-focused stories about the issues affecting them. We also strive to support our diverse student staff and to help them find future success.

Ethos is part of Emerald Media Group, a non-profit organization that’s fully independent of the University of Oregon. Students maintain complete editorial control over Ethos, and work tirelessly to produce the magazine.

RIGHT: Jasmine Lewin, a 21-year-old University of Oregon student who has experienced long COVID-19 symptoms since they were diagnosed in November of 2021, says they wish people understood the risks of COVID-19.

SPRING 2022 | ETHOS | 3

Ella Hutcherson Abby Sourwine Fact-Checking Editor

Elizabeth Donovan Wesley Lapointe Natalie Myking Ilka Sankari Vanna Vergara Isabel Lemus Kristensen

Web Editor Rikiya Klasen Copy Chief

Writers

Amanda Lurey

Fact-Checkers

Lauren Brown

Ethos

STAFF 4 | ETHOS | SPRING 2022

Lily Fjeldheim Jasmine Lewin Kendall Porter Kate Jaques Prentice Maris Toalson

Multimedia

Associate Editors

Photographers

Morgan Gwynn Multimedia Producers Kate Jaques Prentice Multimedia Assistants Courtney McCall Emma Slay

Design

Sam Nguyen

Collin Bell

Multimedia Director

Design Editor

Illustration

Managing Editor

Photo Editor

Art Director

Socials

Anna Mattson

Photography

Editorial

Editor-in-Chief

Social Media Director

Jessie Dunn Designers Liz Blodgett Kira Chan

McKenzie Day

Nika Bartoo-Smith Emerson Brady Bentley Freeman

Sophie Barlow Illustrators Maya Merrill Lynette Slape

Caleb Barber

Jaila Cha-Sim Social Media Production Assistant Whitney Conaghan

Down Storybook Lane After two years of unexpected closures, debt and a global pandemic, the ever-resilient Enchanted Forest is preparing to reopen.

20

The Long Haul

28

Native Plants

36 42

The world is eager to move on from the COVID-19 pandemic. Some University of Oregon students still find themselves dealing with the long-term effects of COVID-19.

CONTENTS

12

Bent Spoke Outreach meets Eugene’s unhoused population wherever they are.

Table of

6

Lighting Up the Darkness

The Knight Campus native plants project is one step on the road to decolonizing the university, by bringing back native plants and providing a space of informal learning.

Connecting the Dots How Dot Dotson’s became the invisible string tying Eugene’s community together.

“Redefining Outdoorsy” The outdoors can be inaccessible for people with marginalized identities, but students and the Outdoor Program at the University of Oregon are striving to change that.

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Lighting Up the Darkness Bent Spoke Outreach meets Eugene’s unhoused population wherever they are.

Written by Caleb Barber | Photographed by Ilka Sankari | Illustrated by Maya Merill

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oger Jensen loaded his electric bike with hand warmers, fresh socks, flashlights, and hand sanitizer.

He strapped a hot tin of shepherd’s pie to the bed of his bike trailer. Content with everything secured, Jensen shoved off into the cool February morning.

His first stop was just down the road, a group of four tents connected by footpaths on a grassy field. Jensen parked his bike close to the pavement and retrieved a case of hand sanitizer from his bike trailer. He set it down at the edge of the closest footpath as one of the tents nearest him began to stir.

“Yo, Bent Spoke,” Jensen said to the cluster of tents. “We’ve got food for you here.”

Jensen took the lid off of the tin in his bike trailer and began scooping hot shepherd’s pie into a disposable bowl. A man stepped out of the tent onto the footpath. He introduced himself as Raul.

“One for my girlfriend too,” Raul said.

Jensen handed him his bowl and started dishing up a second.

Raul promised to distribute the bottles of hand sanitizer as soon as the others returned to their tents. He took the bowl and waved to Jensen before walking back to his tent.

This was the first of more than a dozen stops Jensen would make on this ride today. As Bent Spoke Outreach, Jensen delivers hot food, water, survival gear, sanitation items and fresh clothing to unhoused individuals living in the outskirts of Eugene. Jensen delivers by e-bike and trailer, which allows him to deliver to people who would otherwise be inaccessible by car or van.

Lane County’s homeless-by-name list identified 3,136 homeless individuals living in Eugene in January 2022. Most of the unhoused population in Eugene live on the streets and parks closer to the city center, and Eugene outreach groups 6 | ETHOS | SPRING 2022

tend to focus on distributing food and aid directly to those more densely populated locations. Outreach groups like the Way Home and Free People!, for example, provide food pantry services to the densely populated Washington Jefferson Park.

Unhoused people who have been displaced from large encampments like 13th and Chambers, or who choose to live away from settlements like Washington Jefferson, have a harder time coming in contact with food distribution and aid services.

Jensen began operating Bent Spoke Outreach in January 2021 when he realized that many of the unhoused in West Eugene were unable to take advantage of the aid offered in the inner city. He started out making food to deliver on his own, and he didn’t always have the support he needed.

“I was making a couple hundred peanut butter and honey sandwiches for each ride,” Jensen said.

With Jensen making deliveries up to three times a day, six to seven days a week, it quickly became apparent that he couldn’t do everything himself. He started accepting food and supply donations from individual donors and set up an Amazon wishlist to outsource survival gear expenses.

Over time, Jensen accrued a network of agencies and individuals who support him in what he does. The Way Home and Burrito Brigade, among others, are agencies who already extend their services to unhoused people of Eugene. According to Jensen, Bent Spoke Outreach serves as a conduit for food ministries, like the Way Home, to reach individuals who live away from the city center.

Jensen kept riding on the Fern Ridge Trail towards West 11th Avenue to a small cluster of tents and a trailer at the north end of the Richardson Bridge. There he met up with Tyler, who’d been living here in his trailer for about a month after moving around from different locations in West Eugene for about six months.

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Jensen and Tyler chatted for a few minutes as Jensen handed Tyler a couple of hand warmers and a bowl of shepherd’s pie.

A friend of Tyler’s had taken some of his tools and refused to give them back for some time, Tyler said. Only recently did his friend make amends and return the tools.

“It’s been a rough week for friendships and personal relationships,” Jensen said.

“Out here’s like that in general,” Tyler said. “It is harsher in the winter, though.”

Some unhoused people in West Eugene live in locations completely inaccessible by car, secluded and difficult to find on foot. Even when Jensen can access even the more remote encampments, keeping track of all the unhoused people in his network can be a real challenge. Many don’t have a reliable cell phone or computer, so Jensen works to meet with people in person. He checks in with most of his regulars three to four times a week, but sometimes people just disappear. When this happens, Jensen will check jails and hospitals, but if they aren’t in either of those places, he has few options for tracking them down.

“I don’t know if they’ve found a couch to sleep on or if they’ve passed away,” Jensen said.

Because contact with the unsheltered people in his network can be tenuous, Jensen relies on word-of-mouth to keep track of many of his contacts. Jensen describes some of his contacts as “peer leaders,” which are people who take on more responsibility within their encampments and who other unhoused individuals gravitate towards for help or security.

Coordinating with peer leaders helps Jensen account for as many people’s needs as possible. Jensen will meet an average of 140 to 180 people during each outreach ride, and he can’t afford to spend too much time with each individual. Instead of going door to door, checking in each tent, Jensen can rely on peer leaders to distribute food and survival gear and disseminate information.

Terry Sampson, who’s been living unhoused in Eugene for 15 years, is one of those peer leaders. On this ride, Jensen was having trouble tracking him down.

“You know Terry?” Jensen asked Tyler as he refastened the lid to the shepherd’s pie.

“Yeah, is he all right?” Tyler said.

“Yeah, they made him move last night,” Jensen said. “The police gave him a 24-hour notice.”

“Tell him to swing by my place,” Tyler said.

Near mid-day, Jensen found Sampson with some friends off of Seneca Road, a few blocks away from where he’d been the night before.

Terry, an unhoused individual living in Eugene, picks up food from Bent Spoke Outreach. Terry says that being unhoused is not comparable to camping. According to Terry, camping connotes leisure, while his life is characterized by survival.

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Sampson met Jensen early in the formation of Bent Spoke Outreach and gradually turned into a valuable part of Jensen’s West Eugene network. When the two met for the

first time in February 2021, Sampson had brusquely turned him away.

“He told me to fuck off,” Jensen said. “I said, ‘okay, but I’ll be back.’”

Jensen did come back, and over the next few months, Sampson warmed up to Jensen’s aid. Jensen said he considers Sampson a peer leader — other people living on the street trust and look up to him.

Right now, Sampson said, he prefers living away from the city center. He’s wary of living too close to inner-city sites, like Washington Jefferson Park, where frequent site clearance and drug usage make for an unstable standard of living.

When asked if he’d opt for living in a Safe Sleep site if he had the opportunity, Sampson said he didn’t trust them and that he would still be concerned about having his belongings stolen.

“That’s why I don’t sleep at the warming shelters,” Sampson said. “I don’t trust them.”

Sampson’s concerns about theft are not unfounded. For many unhoused individuals, everything they own is in and around their tent. Leaving their belongings unattended for any amount of time might result in important or personal items being stolen. Fear of theft and hoarding are survival instincts for many unhoused individuals, said Jensen.

Jensen plated up some shepherd’s pie for Sampson and his friends. Sampson’s bicycle and bike trailer were parked across the street. Sustained wear and tear made the bike unrideable.

If he wanted to move from one location to another, Sampson would need to stand and push the bike, laden with all of his belongings, to the new location.

Sleeping outside on public or private property in Eugene for any amount of time is also risky. Some Eugene city ordinances permit certain types of public camping, but section 4.815 of the city’s municipal code gives the Eugene Police Department the ability to enforce public camping restrictions, and can force unhoused people like Sampson to move. The code defines prohibited public camping as “any place where any bedding, sleeping bag, or other material used for bedding purposes, or any stove or fire is placed, established or maintained for the purpose of maintaining a temporary place to live.”

Sampson, who sometimes sleeps on a tarp with a rain cover, says these restrictions are inhumane, especially given the winter climate in Eugene.

“Camping is something you do on the weekends,” Sampson said. “I am surviving, I am living, but I’m not fucking camping.”

Jensen said he has posted up with a camping chair outside of someone’s tent, given them a bus pass and waited for them as they traveled into town to fulfill aid appointments. This brief guarantee of security is something not often afforded to the unhoused.

Roger Jensen, founder of Bent Spoke Outreach, delivers supplies, sanitation products and hot food to unhoused individuals all around Eugene. Jensen founded Bent Spoke Outreach in 2021 as a response to the lack of support he saw for unhoused people in Eugene.

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By mid-afternoon, Jensen’s tin of shepherd’s pie was just about depleted, but he needed to make one last stop before he ended his ride for the day. He exited the Amazon Creek bike path and pulled into the parking lot of HIV Alliance.

Along with providing syringe exchange and HIV testing services, HIV Alliance also supplies Naloxone to syringe exchange clients, first responders and the general public.

Naloxone, sometimes more commonly known as the nasal spray Narcan, is an opioid antagonist that, when administered during an opioid overdose, can restore normal breathing to the patient. Bent Spoke Outreach is not a healthcare or addiction service, but having Narcan handy helps minimize harm until Emergency Medical Services arrives to provide more comprehensive care.

As HIV Alliance staff prepared Narcan kits for Jensen, he sat down at the adjacent booth for a quick COVID-19 test. Jensen would be going on his first vacation in a year, he said, and he wanted to make sure he tested negative before traveling. Jensen would be in Spokane, Washington, for the next 10 days in, spending time with loved ones and considering starting a Bent Spoke Outreach branch there.

Between mutual aid, the unhoused population and the city government, Spokane seems more disconnected than Eugene is currently, Jensen says. Spokane’s 2020 point-intime count reported that 35% of the city’s 1559 homeless individuals were living unsheltered, a 10% increase from the year before.

Jensen says he doesn’t plan on leaving the Eugene area until he knows that Bent Spoke will run smoothly without him. Jensen is Bent Spoke Outreach’s only consistent rider since its inception, and his role as West Eugene’s only outreach-by-bicycle service is not easily filled or replaced.

His tin empty, Jensen took the loop trail west past the Amazon Corridor. He parked his bike in the warehouse in front of Everyone Village, one of Eugene’s Safe Sleep sites. Jensen has been living on-site at Everyone Village since December 2021. The warehouse at the front of the property serves as Bent Spoke’s base of operations, where Jensen can store survival gear for future rides and maintenance his e-bike.

When Everyone Village opened for new residents in late 2021, Jensen helped 27 people relocate off the streets and into transitional or semi-permanent housing. In January alone, Jensen helped relocate 18 people.

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“For a lot of residents, having a lock on the door is a first,” Jensen said.

Jensen remembers an individual he’d helped move from the streets to Everyone Village. Jensen knew he was a peer leader in his community. When he found out that that individual had been living in a tent for 27 years, Jensen encouraged him to apply to live at Everyone Village. Thanks to Jensen’s recommendation, the individual was soon moved in and adjusting to life indoors.

Pastor Gabe Piechowicz, a key leader at Everyone Village, handed him the keys to a tiny home. Later that night, that individual came up to Jensen’s conestoga and asked him, “Should I leave the porch light on at night or shut it off?”

“That’s your home,” Jensen replied. “You get to make those decisions.” Jensen had known this individual for 11 months, and he had never seen him smile before that moment.

As of February 2022, about 200 of Lane County’s 4000 unhoused people live in a programmatic alternative shelter project.

As each project site develops, vacancies will open up, but no one site can offer a panacea housing solution. Not every unhoused person in Eugene will have the opportunity to move into a Safe Sleep site this year, and not everyone will want to.

Whether they’re living in a house, an RV or a tent, Bent Spoke Outreach tries to establish relationships and build trust with as many people in the unhoused community as it can.

Jensen unlocked the door to his conestoga, a soft-roof singleroom shelter. Today’s ride was shorter than most, and Jensen had dozens more people to check up on before his trip to Spokane. He decides to rest up before reloading his bike and doing the whole thing over again that evening.

Jensen returns to Everyone Village to restock his trailer. Jensen bikes multiple routes throughout the day and has to return several times in order to have enough supplies.

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w o D 12 | ETHOS | SPRING 2022

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After two years of unexpected closures, debt and a global pandemic, the everresilient Enchanted Forest is preparing to reopen.

Written by Kendall Porter | Photographed by Wesley Lapointe

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thickly forested hillside watches over I-5. Its century-old trees hide the fantastical structures of the Enchanted Forest from the view of passing drivers. The sign, however, can’t be missed. Towering over the highway, the vibrant illustration of Humpty Dumpty sitting upon an archetypal storybook castle only hints at what remains unseen.

The Enchanted Forest sits 7 miles from the center of Salem, Oregon, nestled between farmland, vineyards and an army green quarry truck adorned with the Decepticon logo from Transformers. It lives on Enchanted Way, which parallels the highway and leads guests from their exit to the parking lot.

Stepping into the park highlights the stark difference between the real and fantasy world. It can be surreal just being here, Tim Ward, a young park employee, says.

All of the original structures, depicting the fantastical escapades of characters from Snow White to Little Red Riding Hood, are hand-sculpted and hand-painted. The art style, inspired by the likes of Norman Rockwell, adds to the ambiance of childhood fairytale illustrations.

Every brush stroke speaks to the story of the family who built the park from the ground up. The trees would tell tales of resilience and innovation. As a family-owned and familyoperated theme park, the Enchanted Forest faces a lot of uncertainty unfelt by parks backed by multi-billion dollar companies. Despite all of the challenges faced, the park remains standing.

For the first few years after the park finally opened in 1971, it was a family affair. The Tofte family was staffed wherever needed. Susan Vaslev, 14 at the time and the oldest of the kids, worked the combination entrance and gift shop while her siblings manned the hot dog stand, cleared trails and wiped down tables for guests. The youngest of them was only four years old.

Despite the financial risk, it was a time of “pure excitement,” and no one doubted it would become a huge success.

The night after opening weekend, Vaslev and her siblings celebrated on their parents’ bed as any child would dream to: by tossing the $1,000 cash the park had made in the air and jumping around in it. Vaslev, while admitting she was naive at the time about the cost of maintenance of running a theme park, will never forget that first weekend. For her parents, however, the money meant paying off half their initial loan –– and a promise of a bright future ahead.

During the winter months, the park is empty. Structures covered with blue and brown tarps line the path of Storybook Lane, which leads guests into the park. Windows remain motionless where animatronics were removed to survive the winter. The trail, usually spotless, is covered in a layer of fallen branches, cones and needles.

While all the King’s horses and all the King’s men couldn’t put Humpty Dumpty together again, Roger Tofte could.

This is standard for the Enchanted Forest’s off-season.

While the park is only open six months out of the year — from March through September — maintaining the park is a procedure for all 12 months. Rides are taken apart and tested. Patching cracks in the sidewalk and touching up paint is a constant affair. The log ride itself takes six weeks to pressure wash, Vaslev says, which can only begin once the water is turned back on without risk of freezing.

Tofte, park’s founder, bought the hillside property in 1964 after a road trip to Minnesota made him and his family notice the lack of roadside family attractions in Oregon.

He was a man with many ideas — constantly searching for a side project outside of his job at the state highway department — but none had stuck. He repaired watches, painted plates and houses and even invented a board game.

On that trip, however, he realized he could apply his artistic talents to fill the gap and build an attraction of his own.

The park goes on a strict day-by-day schedule in preparation for opening March 18. It will be the first time in two years that the park plans to open for the entire sixmonth season. Once February hits, there are no days off.

Anything that goes wrong during this period is a setback, Vaslev says.

“When Dad originally built this, I know, naive as we were, we thought, ‘Oh! We’ll be able to vacation during the winter!”

Vaslev says. “And that was the opposite of the truth.”

The Enchanted Forest amusement park was impacted heavily by COVID-19 closures and restrictions, but March 18 marks the beginning of what Susan Vaslev, the park’s co-manager and art director, hopes to be the first full season since the fall of 2019. Since then, Vaslev, daughter of the park’s founder, Roger Tofte, watched as her family’s park remained vacant and their debt increased. “We’re very hopeful for this year,” says Vaslev. “We will slowly start working out of this.”

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Going into 2020, the Enchanted Forest as a company had no outstanding debts. However, with the onset of a global pandemic, the family-run theme park struggled to keep up. The Enchanted Forest was set to open for the 2020 season around March 17, but state mandates and the looming threat of COVID-19 forced the business to stay closed. All of their alternative plans were rejected and income stagnated.

The park’s season was cut in half, unable to open in any capacity until June 27, 2020. Even then, the Enchanted Forest had to comply with a capacity of 250 people including staff, which was “next to no money” for a business that averaged a couple of thousand visitors each day, Vaslev says.

The Tofte family needed to find the money for the park to survive the winter.

“Our backup plan was to sell our houses,” Vaslev says. While she and her husband were struggling with the decision to let go of their home initially, as the closures crept on, they began to accept what sacrifices they might have to make to save the family business.

When the Oregon Chamber of Commerce sent out a notice that businesses would not be receiving any assistance and would need to rely on third-party means to stay afloat, the Tofte family got to work.

Determined to make it to the park’s 50th year, the Tofte family brainstormed all of the revenue streams they could.

They opened up an online storefront to sell the merchandise sitting in the gift shop. They started to auction prints of ride sketches and concept art.

Tofte also finally agreed to start a “Buy-a-Brick” campaign in the Enchanted Forest. Now people can donate a set amount of money and, in return, have a customized brick installed in the park. Despite no longer needing the funds, Vaslev says it’s a program they’re never going to end because of how meaningful it has been to people. She remembers one letter in particular, written by a father who had lost his son at a young age. After years of searching for the right place to commemorate his name, he decided on the Enchanted Forest, as it was where his son was happiest.

The pathway winding through the Old European Village is now decorated with a checkerboard of pink bricks, memorializing events from weddings to graduations to deaths.

Marking the beginning is a brick placed by the Tofte family in

honor of Wyatte Tofte and Peggy Musso, two beloved family members who had passed in the Beachie Creek fire.

The bricks are placed in a sand base and are a part of park history forever.

But the Tofte family’s most successful venture, by far, was their GoFundMe page. What started as a simple ask for help soon skyrocketed to more than $466,000 in donations as the public rushed to help the struggling business.

“When we were fundraising, we were very low-tech,” Vaslev says. “We would just state [what was happening] in our own words. Not dressed up all fancy, just us.”

The GoFundMe page, locked from receiving funds since last summer, is a testament to the community’s support.

The page accumulated 644 comments and 8,500 donations, immortalizing the sentiments of people from across the country, determined to keep the park afloat.

“Enchanted Forest is a totally unique treasure,” Mark Madland says in a comment. “It is a place of wonder that is irreplaceable.”

Reasons for donations range from preserving history to fond memories of the park made in the past decades. Some parents want to take their kids, such as Katie Winters, who writes that it’s her dream to bring her son now that he’s old enough. Others simply dream of seeing the park themselves one day.

“These places are far too important to be allowed to disappear,” John Nolan, who is from Pennsylvania and read about the Enchanted Forest in a travel guide, says. “I hope that once COVID is just a memory, I can make the journey to Oregon and visit the Enchanted Forest.”

Riding on the coattails of near-financial devastation, the family could only think about reopening. But in February of 2021, disaster struck again. The winter ice storm hit with a ferocity that left hundreds of thousands of people without power. Vaslev says the Enchanted Forest suffered some of the worst damage she had seen yet.

“We lost so many trees,” Vaslev says, and when they fell, they “cut through things like butter.” She added that in the fallout, “there were so many trees, you couldn’t even walk.”

The Toftes didn’t know the extent of the devastation until the fire department called. The Challenge of Mordor, an indoor ride in the park, was experiencing such severe flooding that it set the alarms off. Without power, Vaslev did the only thing

There’s more to Susan Vaslev than meets the eye. With her experience as a harpsichordist and a touring concert pianist, Vaslev composed all of the park’s soundtracks. There’s a twinkle in her eye when she speaks about the park’s history. “All of us kids, we all really believed in Dad,” says Vaslev, recalling the thrill of the park’s early days. “We didn’t have the doubts of an adult.”

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The Crooked House sits on the vacant Storybook Lane, which was the first section to be built by Roger Tofte in the late 1960s. “He started with Storybook Lane,” says Vaslev. “He had a lot of plans in his head for the future, but that’s how it all started.”

she could: texting every contractor she knew to see if they’d be available the next morning.

Today, Vaslev notes that the damage is hardly visible.

The Enchanted Forest’s resilience reflects that of its owners.

The park’s success has been built through the decades of work of a single family.

Vaslev always thought she would be a concert performer.

When she studied in Paris, she planned to perform during the winter and come back to Oregon during the summer to help 16 | ETHOS | SPRING 2022

out at the park. When her mom was diagnosed with cancer, her dream changed, but she’s never regretted coming home to be with her family “for a second.”

Now, Vaslev is the art director for the park. She writes and directs all of the plays put on. She composes all of the music, immersing guests from one section of the park to another. She created the Enchanted Forest’s own band “Possibly Irish,” which she still performs in. Years ago, Vaslev even learned how to stain glass — many of the windows adorning the European-style street are her own custom-made creations.

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Carrying on the legacy of the park’s first years, the Enchanted Forest is still a Tofte business. Many key figures in the day-today operations of the park are part of the family, Vaslev says.

The park employs three generations. Her sister works behindthe-scenes, her uncle works on the construction, and her son is head of maintenance. Tofte is 92 years old but is frequently seen walking the paths of the park he dreamt up decades ago.

Her youngest sister doesn’t work for the park directly but now owns her own architecture firm, in part inspired by the creative environment they grew up immersed in.

Expanding on the park — which used to happen almost yearly — has been put on pause while the family gets back on its feet.

- John Nolan, a donor to the Enchanted Forest’s GoFundMe

That is, all except for one project. Replacing the Western Town’s old Museum of Comedy, Vaslev is currently working on reworking the space to better reflect the past few years.

To honor the park, a new museum will showcase the past 50 years of the Enchanted Forest’s history: a collection of all of the items they couldn’t bear to let go of such as old street signs.

“We watched my dad get an idea, pencil out ideas, decide on something, turn in plans, and just start building. He drew up all his own plans initially,” Vaslev says. “The big thing I learned from him is that if you get an idea and you’re ready to go, just start it and just keep working at it and keep working at it. And eventually it gets done.”

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18 | ETHOS | SPRING 2022

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Jasmine Lewin, a 21-year-old University of Oregon student who has experienced long COVID-19 symptoms since they were diagnosed in November of 2021, says they wish people understood the risks of COVID-19.

“I also wish people would stop treating COVID like a temporary issue,” Lewin says. “Those of us with long COVID will suffer from Covid indefinitely.”

20 | ETHOS | SPRING 2022

THE WORLD IS EAGER TO MOVE ON FROM THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC. SOME UNIVERSITY OF OREGON STUDENTS STILL FIND THEMSELVES DEALING WITH THE LONG-TERM EFFECTS OF COVID-19.

Written by Jasmine Lewin | Photographed by Isabel Lemus Kristensen | Illustrated by Sophie Barlow

SPRING 2022 | ETHOS | 21

I

t’s December 2021, and I’m receiving my COVID-19 booster shot in the sterile, linoleum-lined examination room at the back of a Safeway.

“I saw somewhere that COVID vaccines can help lessen long COVID symptoms,” I say. “Could that happen with the booster?”

The pharmacist looks at me with a sympathetic expression before telling me that if the initial two vaccines didn’t help at all, the booster shot sure won’t.

Disappointed, I describe my symptoms halfheartedly, hoping that maybe, somehow, my case could be an exception. The pharmacist pauses to search for the right term before telling me that it’s likely my lungs have “hardened.” I still cringe when I remember that word; it’s not an adjective you want used to describe a vital organ.

I was diagnosed with COVID in November 2020. Two years later, I’ve never fully recovered.

When I was first informed of the diagnosis, my heart dropped. The first words out of my mouth were, “Are you kidding me?” The doctor replied that he wouldn’t joke about something as serious as this and handed me my test results to prove it. Holding the paper with shaky hands, I felt a rush of fear and anger. I’d done everything I was supposed to do.

For eight months before being diagnosed, I kept myself isolated, following every rule the CDC projected. I wore my mask anytime I had to leave my apartment, even outdoors. I relied on Zoom and social media to keep up with my friends. I even avoided public places like grocery stores and pharmacies, opting to receive deliveries to my apartment lobby instead. My pre-existing asthma was severe enough to be a concern in the face of a novel respiratory disease spreading across the globe.

The doctor who diagnosed me said I probably caught it in my elevator, which transported hundreds of unmasked students up and down the floors of my apartment building daily, dubbed “the party apartment” by classmates. He called it a “Petri dish.”

Management refused to let residents know about COVID cases within the building, making it difficult to know whether I was at risk for exposure, but I never really felt at ease there.

I eventually stopped asking people to wear their masks in the

22 | ETHOS | SPRING 2022

elevator after a boy who lived on my floor casually replied with a long stream of curse words.

After reporting this particular incident, management said they were doing the best they could, and there was an official mask policy in place. But it seemed to me like nobody was willing to enforce it at any point during the pandemic.

I shut inside my unit and attempted to calm my fear and panic by recounting my age, my relative health, my ability to access medical care and the accommodations given to University of Oregon students suffering from COVID. Any comfort found in these facts disappeared as weeks, then months went by. My chest remained painfully tight, my breathing always shallow. I tried to ignore it and wave it away with a few hundred puffs of my asthma inhaler, telling myself it had to be over soon. I did my best to avoid the elevator in my apartment, worried that I might catch COVID again with my already damaged lungs.

The apprehension eventually culminated in an exerciseinduced asthma attack in the third-floor stairwell, where I briefly passed out trying to bring groceries back up to my unit.

I came to a few minutes later, my heart racing and my lungs still wheezing. I dropped the groceries and crawled up two more flights of stairs to my unit, where my asthma inhaler sat on my desk. I don’t go anywhere without my inhaler anymore.

Two months after being diagnosed in November, I accepted that this was not a temporary condition. Reluctantly, I typed the words “COVID symptoms not going away” into my laptop search engine. Hundreds of clicks later, I booked an appointment with a local health specialist, who confirmed what I was dreading: I have long COVID. Long-term effects of COVID, also known as long COVID or post-COVID conditions, are described by the CDC as “a range of symptoms that can last weeks or months after first being infected with the virus that causes COVID-19.” A few of the most common acute ailments are a cough, joint or muscle pain and fatigue, though the wide range of symptoms is indicative of the virus’s ability to affect every part of your body.

Though the novelty of COVID has made it difficult to know much about long-term effects, dozens of studies are trying to estimate the risk of having lingering symptoms months after

with

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SPRING 2022 | ETHOS | 23

-Jasmine Lewin

ver fully recovered."

Han Boyd-Hiers, an 18-year-old University of Oregon student, was diagnosed with Covid-19 in January 2022, but they continue to experience symptoms that impact their day-to-day life.

“I wish people didn’t underestimate how sick people are getting, even if it’s not their standard of sick,” Boyd-Hiers says.

24 | ETHOS | SPRING 2022

a COVID infection. The research that we do have has shown that long COVID significantly increases the chance of triggering post-viral syndromes such as chronic fatigue syndrome and a blood circulation disorder called postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome, or POTS. The world is moving on from COVID — at least it’s trying to. Schools are back in session, states are dropping mask mandates and that tentative first month of baking bread and taking cautious walks seems like a distant memory. But my body is still trapped in those last few weeks of November 2021.

Due to the pressing social expectation to return to inperson classes, activities and everyday life, I am no longer permitted to rest in bed all day, get groceries delivered and do the hourly breathing exercises recommended by my doctor. I have graduation to prepare for, and somehow I’ve taken on five different extracurriculars. It’s time to try and go back to normal, but my breathing remains irregular.

Notably absent from discussions of reopening schools, businesses and other workplaces, individuals suffering from post-COVID conditions have seemingly been left to fend for themselves as society continues onward without them. UO’s official page of COVID regulations says “individuals should stay home when sick,” offering no further explanation or clarification for people who remain sick in the long term. It left me wondering if they were just referring to contagious people or if I was genuinely expected to stay home every day that I wake up with damaged lungs.

It’s been predicted by historians that COVID could end socially before it ends medically, meaning people may grow so tired of the restrictions that the pandemic will be declared over, even if the population continues to be severely afflicted.

Studies show that patients who were hospitalized for COVID are the most likely to retain long-term symptoms. In a study published in July 2020, Italian researchers followed 147 patients who had been hospitalized for COVID and

Sophie Hansen, a 21-year-old University of Oregon student who was diagnosed with kidney damage after weeks of not being able to keep food or water down following their initial Covid diagnosis, says it’s strange to think about visiting the doctor for follow-up kidney testing at their age. “My brain never went to ‘I’m going to have kidney damage.’

But here we are,” Hansen says.

SPRING 2022 | ETHOS | 25

found that 87% still had symptoms 60 days after they were discharged from the hospital. A study from January 2021 found that 76% of hospitalized COVID patients in Wuhan, China, were still experiencing symptoms six months after first getting sick.

UO senior Sophie Hansen also had COVID in November 2020. Her first diagnosis of long COVID came a few weeks after the initial positive test result. After days of being unable to keep food or water down due to COVID, Hansen was told that her kidneys were not functioning properly.

Long COVID can cause damage to multiple organs in the body, including heart, lung, kidney, skin and brain. Long COVID can also trigger autoimmune conditions, which happen when your immune system attacks healthy cells in your body by mistake, causing inflammation or tissue damage in the affected parts of the body.

Immediately struck with denial, Hansen told herself she has her youth to her advantage and that continuing to take care of her kidney health would eventually remedy whatever lasting effects COVID had left on her body.

That has not been the case. Hansen describes accepting long COVID as a “really shitty process.” The realization that being young and healthy on paper didn’t guarantee her the ability to fight off chronic COVID-related illness was difficult for her to deal with.

“But now,” Hansen says, “it’s just another aspect of my life I have to think about in terms of budget/ability to afford tests and treatment with really unreliable insurance.”

Despite needing to be kept under hospital observation a few times a month, Hansen tries to slip back into everyday college life. But it’s not easy; Hansen’s sustained kidney damage still makes it hard for her to keep down food and water in general, causing her to become nauseous frequently.

Hansen says she constantly worries about not having access to water or other fluids. Eating or drinking anything outside her home means running the risk of becoming sick and needing to excuse herself. “It’s made it really hard to be away from home,” Hansen says.

UO freshman Han Boyd-Hiers had COVID in January 2022. Their symptoms have since overstayed their welcome. Boyd-Hiers deals with nerve pain and

26 | ETHOS | SPRING 2022

trouble with concentration and balance due to Spina Bifida. These chronic issues were heavily exacerbated by COVID, and remained that way weeks after the initial COVID diagnosis.

“Another thing that has gotten worse is my asthma,” BoydHiers says. “Because it takes so much just to breathe and function. I’ve been using my inhaler a lot more, just because I’m out of breath every time I’m walking, especially if I don’t have my wheelchair and I’m just walking with my cane.”

Boyd-Hiers says those suffering from long COVID have been excluded from the conversation surrounding COVID procedure going forward; they are still expected to go about their day and do everything the way they did before developing long COVID despite their severe fatigue, major brain fog and daily migraines.

“After five days in isolation, the school expects you to have your shit together,” Boyd-Hiers says. “It’s an extremely hard transition for young adults, especially those of us who are mentally and physically ill.”

Boyd-Hiers was expected to continue with school despite continuing symptoms. Still, they say their professors had discouraged any symptomatic students from attending inperson classes, suggesting that Boyd-Hiers utilize the Zoom alternatives and recordings provided.

“My teachers were not the problem,” Boyd-Hiers says.

“My problem was that what they were offering wasn’t accessible for me because of fatigue and the lack of a personal computer.”

By the time Boyd-Hiers was finally recovering from both COVID and a stress-induced sinus infection, their professors were telling them to drop their courses, saying they’d missed too much class.

A Penn State study from October 2021 found that over half of the population diagnosed with COVID will experience post-COVID symptoms up to six months after recovering. The research team says that governments, health care organizations and public health professionals should be prepared for the large number of COVID survivors who will need help with various psychological and physical symptoms.

Due to the sheer prevalence of long COVID rates among COVID survivors, Boyd-Heirs would like to see

more of an effort on the part of the UO to decrease COVID rates.

“I think the school can do a lot to diminish the amount of people getting COVID by doing testing before going into terms,” Boyd-Hiers says. They also suggest that if UO administration notices or anticipates a COVID surge, they should enforce a transition to online class for at least two weeks instead of putting pressure on students and forcing them to risk their health to go in-person.

“I was put in a position where I had to risk my health,” Boyd-Hiers says. They’re currently catching up on three weeks of missed work, without remote resources like a laptop to get assignments done off-campus. Further adding to the stress is the discomfort of a post-COVID chronic cough.

“People are just going to assume I am sick with COVID when I’m not,” Boyd-Hiers says. “I’ve already been sick. I just have a chronic illness.”

PeaceHealth infectious disease specialist Dr. Bob Pelz says the most important steps people can take to avoid the risk of long COVID are minimizing exposure to COVID and getting vaccinated since there is no therapy that helps specifically with long COVID symptoms yet. However, people can generally seek treatment for a specific ailment.

I bought a nebulizer and received what seemed like 100 pages of breathing exercises from my doctor. I’m still waiting to see if these tactics help my lungs improve.

“Good self-care, including exercise, a healthy diet, a good sleep schedule and avoiding tobacco and substance abuse are all important for recovery from long COVID,” Dr. Pelz says, who also serves on Governor Kate Brown’s COVID-19 Medical Advisory Committee. But in more severe cases, he says that “medical care for long COVID often means a team approach with different specialists helping to manage symptoms that can affect multiple organ systems.”

“I’m being monitored regularly and just have to ensure that my kidney health isn’t deteriorating further,” Hansen says. “Beyond that, not much can be done.”

Research is still evolving regarding how long COVID can affect young adults as opposed to children or older adults. But Dr. Pelz says that “adolescents and young adults clearly can be affected, likely with frequency and severity similar to that seen in older adults.”

Today, Hansen remains paranoid that she’ll get COVID again because she knows she’s capable of getting it. She says that “any symptoms whatsoever, even if I experience them daily, are warning signs that I can’t help but acknowledge.”

I’ve managed to take all of my classes this term remotely, but next term’s schedule presents new in-person challenges.

I think about how to explain to my friends and classmates why I’m constantly running late, out of breath and coughing frequently. The last few times I’ve tried, people recoil, assuming I had COVID recently and am still contagious.

“It’s not like that,” I try to tell them. “I had COVID a long time ago.”

Oregon governor Kate Brown has cited March 11, 2022, as the last day Oregonians will be mandated to wear masks in indoor public spaces and schools. Following the decision of the local government to lift the mask mandate, UO has announced on its website that after March 18, 2022, masks will be “welcome though optional, except in health care settings.”

I don’t know if I’m going to keep wearing my mask. In light of everything that has happened, it seems silly to pretend that I have any idea what the future holds.

SPRING 2022 | ETHOS | 27

Native Plants: A Pathway to Decolonization

The Knight Campus native plants project is one step on the road to decolonizing the university, by bringing back native plants and providing a space of informal learning.

Written by Nika Bartoo-Smith | Photographed by Natalie Myking | Illustrated by Lynette Slape

D

riving down Franklin Boulevard, it’s hard to miss the newly constructed building, made mostly of glass, that connects two parts of the University of Oregon’s campus with a skyway bridge. Nestled behind the new building is the millrace many students walk by on the way to Autzen Stadium.

On the second-floor terrace of the newly constructed Phil and Penny Knight Campus for Accelerating Scientific Impact lies a hidden gem: a patio filled with dozens of plants native to Oregon, each carrying their own story.

Vine maple bushes, whose leaves turn a beautiful dusty orange in the fall, are interspersed with varieties of ferns. Douglas iris blooms purple in the spring. Year-round, it provides a stunning array of botanicals.

The sea of green not only creates a great study spot, but the plants themselves are helping to nurture the environment around them. While much of the project is concentrated on the 28 | ETHOS | SPRING 2022

second-floor terrace, it expands to plantings along the stream that flows behind the Knight campus.

Initially, the goal of the Knight Campus native plants project was to revitalize the mill race between Agate Street and Onyx Street and bring the water and its surroundings into a healthier state, according to Moira Kiltie who started the project and is the associate vice president and chief of staff at the Knight Campus. Part of what this meant was incorporating plants that are native to Oregon.

The project started as a way to help foster a healthier environment surrounding the newly developed addition to the UO’s campus. From revitalizing the millrace behind Knight Campus to planting natives all along the terrace and perimeter of the building, this project aims to create a space of decolonial learning and bring forward plants that help the local ecosystems in ways such as providing a habitat for pollinators.

“We’ve been thinking about this as an opportunity to do

The terrace at the University of Oregon’s Phil and Penny Knight Campus for Accelerating Scientific Impact is home to dozens of plants native to Oregon. The goal of the patio is to introduce plants that help local ecosystems while providing a space for decolonial learning.

SPRING 2022 | ETHOS | 29

“I don’t know if decolonization is not only possible but is going to be allowed. But it is our responsibility to try.”

- Perry Chocktoot

informal education, to get more people to become aware of the environment that we’re walking in as being an environment that has been occupied for centuries, and how people other than the people today might have used and lived within the space,” Kiltie says, referring to her hope that the space will serve as a place of learning.

Jason Younker, newly elected chief of the Coquille Indian tribe and the assistant vice president and advisor to the president for sovereignty and government to government relations at UO, is working with tribes around Oregon to ensure that the project centers Indigenous knowledge.

Younker’s central role in the project is connecting with Oregon’s Indigenous tribes to get placards assigned to each plant. These will display their scientific name, English common name, Indigenous name and some of their uses. Working closely with the tribes is a decolonial way of working on this project, highlighting Native voices and acknowledging the importance of different forms of knowledge.

The UO sits upon land once home to the Kalapuya people.

Many of their descendants are now part of the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde and the Confederated Tribes of Siletz.

Joe Scott, culture bearer for the Confederated Tribes of Siletz, says colonization was not just taking away land from Native 30 | ETHOS | SPRING 2022

people but physically disconnecting them from the land as well. This disconnection often meant attempting to strip away thousands of years of intergenerational knowledge. “Losing our land was losing ourselves,” Scott says.

According to Scott, decolonization is an ongoing process that addresses the impacts of colonization.

“It can look like a lot of different things. You know, it can look like acknowledging first foods and plants as a part of us as people and putting those things back in the ground,” Scott says. “That’s an act of returning us to our place, our Indigenous food plants.”

For Younker, while the university still has a long way to go in its own process of decolonization, this project is an important step in the right direction. A big part of this initiative is a form of decolonization through teaching about the plants.

“When decolonizing aspects [of a project], you have to make absolutely sure the information you put down is correct,” Younker says. The history of colonialism is a history of erasure, and so in order to work towards decolonizing, it’s imperative to listen to the tribes, Younker explained.

There is no one way to decolonize — instead, it’s a process that starts with listening to Native voices, Younker says. For him, one step is by “changing the understanding of places and the landscapes.” Teaching about the history of a place is the primary goal of the native plant project, which aims to create a space of learning that acknowledges the history of the land on which the campus resides.

On campus, there are a few places where the Native presence is highlighted, according to Younker. Some of these places include the Many Nations Longhouse and the EMU amphitheater, where the flags from the nine federally recognized tribes of Oregon fly. The native plants at the Knight Campus and the placards, including Indigenous names and uses, are where Younker hopes to highlight the Native presence on campus.

“I see the university’s responsibility is we want to prepare students to work in a very diverse world, with diversity of thought and acceptance,” Younker says. “And you can only do that when you have a diverse campus. And that includes decolonization of even the simplest things, like putting a camas patch on Knight Campus.”

Many plants included in the project are traditionally used by all nine of the Confederated Tribes of Oregon. Younker is assigning

Plants native to Oregon, such as barren dogwood trees, Oregon creeping grapes and sword ferns, live on The Phil and Penny Knight Campus for Accelerating Scientific Impact second-floor terrace.

each plant to a specific tribe, and they will provide the name and uses of that plant, specific to their tribe, for the placards.

The leaves of the gha-gum-lak-o, or Douglas iris, help prevent thirst, according to information gathered by Younker so far on the plants he assigned to the Klamath tribes. Western Columbine roots can be mashed up and applied to help relieve aching joints. The Oregon grape is both an antidiarrheal drug and a blood-clotting agent. These are just some of the many plants and their uses specific to the Klamath tribe.

Another plant particularly important to the Klamath Tribes is willow, known as “yoss” to this tribe, according to Chocktoot.

Chewing on a strip of the bark helps relieve headaches, and the branches are traditionally used to make gathering baskets and fish traps.

The names and uses come from a spreadsheet Younker is working on in collaboration with Perry Chocktoot, culture and heritage department director for Klamath Tribes.

“I don’t know if decolonization is not only possible but is SPRING 2022 | ETHOS | 31

The sword fern, or Polystichum munitum, is arguably one of the most familiar plants of the Pacific Northwest. These ferns grow well in mostly shaded areas, but can thrive in the sun as well. They can be found all around us here in Oregon during all parts of the year.

32 | ETHOS | SPRING 2022

going to be allowed,” Chocktoot says, describing the attitude of the U.S. government as a whole, while also reflecting on how this project may be a step towards decolonization for the university.

“But it is our responsibility to try.”

While the native plants project can only do so much language restoration and decolonization, including the native names of plants is an important step in acknowledging other forms of knowledge and the history of the land this campus resides on.

While several of the plants have already been planted, one is yet to join the others. Camas, or “quamash,” according to Younker, is waiting to be gathered in the spring and brought back to campus for planting. The purple flowering plant is a major food source. While Younker thinks the starchy bulbs taste like paste, they are an excellent energy source. The bulbs are prepared in various ways — mashed into a cake or smoked — Younker explained, holding up his own jar of smoked camas bulbs.

While the native plant project signs are not up yet, Kilite is hopeful that they will be up by the end of spring.

“I look forward to once this project is completed, inviting the tribes to do a blessing,” Younker says, encouraging the university to be proud of this step in the process of decolonizing and highlighting the Native presence. “Decolonization is not easy, and it’s not always welcome. And this is one of those ways that we can.”

“Losing our land was losing ourselves.”

- Joe Scott, Culture Bearer for the Confederated Tribes SPRING 2022 | ETHOS | 33

BATTLING BLACKBERRIES The invasive Himalayan and European Blackberry species are posing a threat to biodiversity and wildlife in western Oregon. While these blackberry plants are prized for their fruit, they harm the environment by out-competing native plants, overtopping trees and choking up waterways.

In turn, animals have less access to their normal food and water sources. Ethos Multimedia Director Morgan Gwynn explores the issue and asks experts about what can be done to stop the blackberries from taking over.

*Scan the QR code to visit Ethos Multimedia

A SHIFTING COLLEGE EXPERIENCE: HOW FOUR UNIVERSITY STUDENTS CHANGED THEIR EDUCATIONAL PATH DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC Forced into navigating their college experience during a global pandemic, Tess Murphy, Katie Mayer, Merc Heredia-Ferran and Sienna Ross all share their story of what it has been like being a student during COVID-19 pandemic. In spring of 2020, schools shut down or went online globally. Professors and students alike had to recontemplate their next steps during a time of intense anxiety and uncertainty. Now, after undergoing complete career shifts or taking a gap year, students are redefining what a college education means to them.

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2022 | 10th ANNUAL

Do you know an exceptional student worthy of an award?

Help celebrate the tenth annual 25 Ducks and nominate a deserving student. Taking nominations until Thursday, April 28th.

W E ’ R E F O R T H O S E W H O R E S P E C T A L L O F O U R C O M M U N I T Y ’ S D I V E R S I T Y.

Be more.

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Helen Tendick looks at the photo collage of her late son, Nicholaus. According to Tendick, all of the photos embody Nicholaus, or Nick, with his big laugh or being with his family. “Nick had a big heart. I remember he came back one night without shoes and a shirt because there were kids outside that were cold. He would literally give the shirt off his back. That’s the kind of person he was,” Tendick says.

Connecting the

D ots

Written by Emerson Brady | Photographed by Photographer’s Name | Illustrated by Illustrator’s Name

36 | ETHOS | SPRING 2022

How Dot Dotson’s became the invisible string tying Eugene’s community together.

Written by Emerson Brady | Photographed by Vanna Vergara

I

n the back room of Dot Dotson’s is a row of filing cabinets filled to the brim with the negatives of thousands of babies born at Sacred Heart from 1950-2000. Annette Pfautz, long-time Dot Dotson’s employee, sifts through the negatives, pointing out some of her favorite photos as if she’s looking through photo albums of her own.

“Some of them are so sweet and smiling, and others you can tell had a rough time posing for their picture,” Pfautz says as she shows me a roll of one of the more photogenic babies.

Nestled in the heart of downtown, Dot Dotson’s is the oldest film and camera store in Eugene. For nearly 100 years, photographers, students and film enthusiasts have come to Dot Dotsons for their film needs. But behind the friendly staff and collectors’ cameras is Dot Dotson’s best-kept secret.

Over 20 years ago, Sacred Heart Hospital asked Dot Dotson’s if they would like to keep the boxes upon boxes of undeveloped rolls of film from the maternity unit. Dot Dotson’s accepted but didn’t have a plan for how to use them.

The negatives sat in the store’s attic, collecting dust for 20 years until one of Pfautz’s friends inquired about the negatives.

“My friend asked me if I could check and see if her family member’s baby photos were in one of our files,” Pfautz said.

“So I found the photos and developed them for her.”

Pfautz’s friends’ touching reaction to seeing the baby photos propelled her to stop hiding these photos from the public.

On Nov. 9, 2021, Pfautz created a post on Dot Dotson’s Facebook page explaining that the store had been sitting on these photos from Sacred Heart Hospital for over 20 years and was ready to give them back to their rightful owners.

“I posted it, and the next day I saw we had a couple of thousand views, and I was like ‘Wow, this is huge.’ And then three days later, we had 56,000 views,” Pfautz says. “I haven’t even checked in a while, but last I saw, we had around 80,000 views.”

The overnight success left Pfautz with a project bigger than

she could have ever imagined. Phones began ringing off the hook, email inboxes became flooded and Pfautz scrambled to place all the photo orders in a timely manner.

“A lot of people who have called in or emailed said they couldn’t afford the pictures at the time or they lost the pictures in a fire,” Pfautz said. “I had no idea it would be so emotional for people.”

The rolls of film are light, but there’s an emotional weight to holding someone’s first photo ever taken.

Terry Evans

Terry Evans was born in 1973 at Sacred Heart Hospital and, until recently, had only seen one black and white photo of himself as a baby.

“The only photo I had of myself was in my crib, a dresser drawer, that they pulled out and pushed back at bedtime,” Evans says. “After my mom passed away, even that photo disappeared on us, and I had no baby photos whatsoever.”

When Evans was a kid, a flood ravaged through the doublewide trailer his family rented out and ruined dozens of family photo albums, including all Evans’ baby pictures. His wife, Amber, recalls only three childhood photos she’s seen of him.

Growing up, Evans’ family never had much money, and after his parents divorced when he was in middle school, their financial situation was put under strain. Evans and his mom moved in with his grandparents.

“Back then we were too poor to pay attention to what we had lost,” Evans says.

When Amber saw Dot Dotson’s Facebook post, she immediately reached out. She hoped that the photo, an artifact of Terry’s childhood, could be brought home. Amber was brought to tears seeing these childhood photos of her husband.

Evans was happy to be reunited with childhood photos.

SPRING 2022 | ETHOS | 37

“Seeing those photos for the first time was amazing,” Evans says. “We compared it to our daughter’s baby pictures, and it was like the same picture, except she was happier.”

Evans described his younger self as “dumb and daring.”

When he was 21 years old, he decided to join the army.

“He jumped out of helicopters, airplanes,” Amber says.

He served in the army for 22 years before deciding to retire from the nomad lifestyle of a soldier.

Evans found the three photos of him as a newborn to be a good indicator of the kind of person he’d grow up to be.

“The first photo’s angry, the other ones like ‘yeah I’m here,’ and the last photo is like I’m looking for trouble to get into,” Evans says.

His wife, Amber, chimes in: “Those photos kind of describe your life.”

Helen Tendick

Helen Tendick recalls the day she became a mother as the greatest moment of her life.

Tendick had her firstbaby when she was 20 years old.

She was single and desperate to leave her small town in Wisconsin. Two years later, she packed up her life in a suitcase and hopped on a train to Eugene, Oregon — just her and her baby, Andrea. Five years later, her second daughter Kacinda was born, a year after that her son Nicholaus and five more years after that came her final daughter Rebecca.

“All I wanted was to have my babies and hold them and love them,” Tendick says.

Both Kacinda and Nicholaus were born at Sacred Heart Hospital, but Tendick couldn’t afford the hospital photos.

Seeking more space and a closer community for her kids to grow up in, the Tendick family moved to a small town in Washington shortly after Nicholaus was born.

“I loved that neighborhood,” Tendick says. “We were all very close. I never had to worry about my kids.” She said her house was a hub for all the neighborhood kids.

In return, she used her friend’s barn as a storage unit for all of her photo albums.

One morning she got a call from her friend that hogs had snuck into the barn and destroyed all the photo albums.

“I couldn’t salvage anything,” Tendick says.

The devastation of losing these photos was immeasurable to Tendick, especially after her son Nick unexpectedly passed away at 32 years old. When Nicholaus found out that Dot Dotson’s had her and her brother’s baby photos, she couldn’t contain her joy.

“Nick left behind two sons who look just like him,” Tendick says. “I can’t wait to show them this photo of him.”

She smiled as she carefully pulled the photos out of an envelope. “I keep the photos with me on my nightstand so I can see them every morning when I wake up,” Tendick says.

Kacinda Trindad, Helen’s daughter, remembers seeing her baby photo before it was lost. Kacinda found out about Dot Dotson’s Facebook page through her two daughters. Her daughters were also born at Sacred Heart, so Kacinda was able to order their baby photos too.

“I never got the chance to order them when they were born, so I did now, and I’m excited to see them,” Kacinda says.

38 | ETHOS | SPRING 2022

In the corner of her house, Helen Tendick sits on the chair in front of her desk where she keeps photos of her children Kacinda and Nicholaus. Tendick received the photos from Dot Dotson’s after losing most of their family photos in a barn in Washington. Tendick always sets the photos on her desk so that she doesn’t lose them again.

SPRING 2022 | ETHOS | 39

Tendick still keeps all four copies of baby photos she received in the envelope Dot Dotson’s gave her. She plans on adding the photos into a frame or the collage she’s created to commemorate her late son, Nicholaus.

It’s been decades since those photos were taken. Tendick is now a great-grandmother to 10 great-grandkids and a grandmother to 12 grandkids. Kacinda is a grandmother now, too, and works weekends so she can care for her grandchildren five days a week. To say the Tendick family is close would be an understatement.

“I feel responsible for preserving the history in my family,” Tendick says. “I want to make sure my grandkids and greatgrandkids know.”

Every year since Nicholaus’ death, the Tendick family has hosted a celebration of Nicholaus’ life filled with dancing, storytelling, friends, family and a chili cookoff. Tendick has a collage of photos of Nicholaus from his teenage years that she brings to the celebration. She plans on finding a place in the collage for the baby photo.

“I want my kids and grandkids and great-grandkids to know that family is the most important thing,” Tendick says. “Your family will always be there for you.”

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Shelbie Litty

Shelbie Litty would consider her dad to be her best friend, though she’s not sure he would know that.

“My husband laughs at our communication because we’re not heartfelt at all,” Litty says. “He’ll send a text message like once a year saying ‘I’m proud of you’ and I cry.”

Litty and her father Kevin may not be the most affectionate toward each other, but Litty cherishes their relationship more than anything.

Litty happened upon Dot Dotson’s Facebook post regarding the Sacred Heart baby photos randomly. After combing through who she could know that would want their baby photos back, she realized her dad could have been born at Sacred Heart Hospital. Litty called her dad, who confirmed he was born at Sacred Heart in 1960. Although Litty has seen photos from her dad’s childhood, the prospect of seeing a newborn photo of him was exciting.

“I have a son and he’s two and looks so much like my dad,” Litty says. “That was a big reason why I wanted to see the newborn photos.”

Kevin is “a man who chooses his words wisely” and didn’t have much of a reaction to the newborn photos of himself.

Litty, however, felt that these photos were another way for her and her son to feel connected to him.

“I framed the photo of my dad and put it in my son’s room,” Litty said. “My dad is his favorite too.”

If there’s one thing that Kevin has taught Litty, it’s to always be there for your kids.

Litty played basketball from fourth grade through high school, and her team was terrible. Litty recalls winning maybe two to three games per season, but her dad was sitting on the sidelines at every single game.

“I remember him not being at one game because there was snow,” Litty said. “I had legitimately thought something happened to him.”

Litty and her husband Chris plan to coach their son’s basketball team when he’s old enough. She’s excited to see her dad reclaim his spot on the sidelines when her son is old enough to play.

“I know my dad will be watching every game,” Litty says.

Pfautz would estimate she’s done about 550 orders so far, but the project is far from finished. She has roughly 1,500 orders left to get through, and that number is only increasing.

“The project has really taken a life of its own,” Pfautz says.

Pfautz leads the way upstairs to the attic, where more file cabinets are filled to the brim with negatives. The negatives in the attic are the oldest photos dating back to 1950. As she’s sifting through more negatives, she finds some of people she knows personally.

“My husband asked me if I could find his coworker for him and look where he is,” Pfautz says.

Who knew that these rusted file cabinets sitting in the attic of a film store were the center of life in Eugene?

If Pfautz has any advice to give to those who still shoot on the film, it’s to keep the negatives.

“In the future, you never know what will come of them,” Pfautz says. “Whether it’s just memories that you had forgotten about, history comes back.”

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“Redefining Outdoorsy” The Outdoor Program at the University of Oregon is striving to make the outdoors more equitable for students with marginalized identities.

Written by Maris Toalson | Illustrated by Maya Merill

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onning a pair of green hiking shoes, Genevieve Slaton –– a student at the University of Oregon and a co-director of the Native American Student Union –– loaded into a van with 10 other students of color at the Outdoor Program Rental Barn in November 2021. Slaton and her classmates journeyed along Oregon Route 126 to the Blue Pool trailhead in McKenzie Bridge, Oregon. Here, they hiked through a landscape decorated with moss, trees and ethereal light to an “absolutely beautiful” body of turquoise water.

The Outdoor Program hosted this hike in partnership with the UO Multicultural Center as a part of their Redefining Outdoorsy initiative. Slaton says the outing was an amazing experience because it allowed her to go outdoors with other people of color –– something she had not experienced before coming to college.

While the outdoors was accessible to her growing up, Slaton says she rarely saw people who looked like her engaging in outdoor activities.

“I didn’t realize how much I missed out and how much I needed that sense of community back then,” she says. “Back then, being surrounded by white people was all I knew.”

Slaton’s prior experience of the outdoors as a predominantly white space reflects a larger trend across the U.S. According to a study by the Outdoor Foundation, white people are overrepresented in the outdoors, making up 71.5% of outdoor participants in the U.S. despite being only 60.9% of the U.S. population.

But the Outdoor Program at the UO is making the outdoors a more inclusive, accessible and equitable space through the initiative “Redefining Outdoorsy.” The initiative began in 2020 and featured a series of speakers to amplify the voices of underrepresented communities in the outdoors.

This year, the Outdoor Program expanded Redefining Outdoorsy by hosting a conference during winter term and fundraising more than $20,000 to host fully-funded affinity trips –– similar to the outing Slaton participated in at Blue Pool. Affinity trips are hosted in partnership with student organizations. They are only open to students with a specific identity to help underrepresented groups get outside in a safe and inclusive environment free from financial barriers.

Slaton says Redefining Outdoorsy makes the outdoors more accessible for her because it provides a space to engage in outdoor recreation with people who look like her. Before the

Blue Pool outing, she says, she had never been on a hike with so many other people of color.

Slaton says she loves nature as an Indigenous person, yet Indigenous people “haven’t really had something” offered to them through the Outdoor Program until now. She says she noticed Outdoor Program outings were not as diverse before the initiative began.

Outdoor spaces lack diversity, but UO Professor of English and Environmental Studies Sarah D. Wald says stories of BIPOC in the outdoors often go untold.

“There are really wonderful stories out there of heroes of outdoor recreation and heroes of conservation who are BIPOC leaders,” she says. “But we don’t tell those stories, and that then reinforces this idea of what scholars have called a ‘racialized outdoor leisure identity.’”

According to Wald, outdoor leisure has been racialized due to the overrepresentation of white people in the outdoors.

While stories of BIPOC in the outdoors often go untold, Wald says that doesn’t negate the fact that outdoor recreation is still inaccessible for many people with marginalized identities.

The outdoors is inaccessible due to the history of public lands, where most outdoor recreation takes place.

“When we’re talking about racial justice and outdoor recreation –– or other forms of exclusion around gender, around sexuality, around ability –– there’s a long history of how public lands were created, who public lands were created for, how people have used them, how people have thought to use them,” Wald says. “So there’s a lot of exclusionary histories both ideologically and materially that have shaped why the land is welcoming for some and not for others.”

According to the Center for American Progress, the creation of public lands relied on the genocide of Indigenous people.

The U.S. stole lands from Native nations during the 18th and 19th centuries and designated these lands as spaces for white leisure, according to Wald, which continues to influence who feels comfortable on them.

But Redefining Outdoorsy, led by student leaders like Matthew Katz ––the collaborative programming coordinator at the Outdoor Program –– seeks to make the outdoors a much more inclusive environment.

Katz says becoming involved in the Outdoor Program helped him improve as a person and provided opportunities

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to explore the outdoors and connect with others. He wants everyone to experience these benefits.

While Katz says he was fortunate not to experience many barriers to the outdoors growing up, little knowledge and limited queer representation prevented him from accessing outdoor recreation more easily.

“When I was younger, in the suburbs of the Midwest, there were not a lot of queer people talking about going outside,” he says. “I love my position because I see all these really cool people on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter doing all this really amazing advocacy work to show that yes, you can go outside being whatever identity you hold.”

Simon Scannell is the education coordinator for the UO LGBT Education and Support Services and has collaborated with the Outdoor Program to organize outings for LGBTQ+ students. In middle and high school, he experienced barriers to outdoor recreation due to limited time, distance from natural environments and gender dysphoria.

In college, the outdoors has become more accessible to Scannell because he can go outside with people who have similar identities and experiences.

“I used to do cross country in middle school, and then I stopped doing any exercise really, mostly because of dysphoria reasons,” he says. “It’s been nice to be specifically around other trans people and know that we just accept our bodies as they are. And it’s okay to just have our bodies be how they are.”

Scannell says many LGBTQ+ events at the UO are stationary and take place inside, so outdoor outings provide a unique space for community building. He says this community building is important because it allows LGBTQ+ students to connect over their experiences and interests.

Additionally, Katz says access to the outdoors is important because it can develop support for

“I value being outdoors a lot because I feel very connected to nature.

That’s the place where I feel most at peace.”

-Genevieve Slaton 44 | ETHOS | SPRING 2022

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environmental issues like climate change by fostering a connection between people and nature. It is also beneficial for mental health, according to the American Psychological Association.

“I value being outdoors a lot because I feel very connected to nature. That’s the place where I feel most at peace,” Slaton says. “If my mental health is deteriorating, it means I need to go outside. It means I need to be around trees, grass, whatever, because that’s what makes me feel at home.”

Access to the outdoors for the benefit of mental health has only proven more important during the pandemic. According to the CDC, mental health issues have increased since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

However, the pandemic –– as well as movements for racial justice –– has revealed and exacerbated existing inequities.

According to the Center for American Progress, movements for racial justice have demonstrated that many people of color in the U.S. do not have adequate access to the outdoors.

relate to that land and how we respect tribal sovereignty on that land.”

Settler colonialism in the U.S. has impacted public lands and ideas about what it means to be “outdoorsy,” according to Slaton.

To be outdoorsy, Slaton says people believe they must own outdoor gear and have elaborate plans to go outside, which makes outdoor recreation intimidating and inaccessible.

“I think that puts a lot of people off, especially people of color who don’t have access to all these things. And I don’t think they realize that being outdoors also just means taking a walk where there’s nature,” Slaton says. “You don’t really need all of these things and all of this gear to experience or just to be out in nature.”

While going outside doesn’t have to be expensive, the cost of outdoor recreation remains a barrier to access, according to Katz. He says the need for free time to engage in recreation —

“I didn’t realize how much I missed out and how much I needed that sense of community back then.”

-Genevieve Slaton Christian Cooper, who was threatened with having the police called on him while bird-watching in Central Park, and Ahmaud Arbery, who was murdered while jogging in a coastal Georgia neighborhood, are among numerous people of color who have experienced violence in the outdoors.

The Center for American Progress also reported that communities of color are three times more likely to live in “nature deprived” areas. Without sufficient access to nature, communities of color are more likely to develop immunocompromising illnesses, such as asthma, that increase their risk of COVID-19.

However, in addition to initiatives such as Redefining Outdoorsy, supporting tribal sovereignty and land back movements can promote equity in the outdoors, according to Wald.

“When we talk about the outdoors in the United States, we’re talking for the most part about stolen native land,” Wald says. “And I want us to think about what it means to recognize that land as native land and how that might change how we

in addition to the cost of equipment, transportation and more — can present financial challenges because it requires time off of work.

According to Katz, knowledge barriers can also prevent people from accessing the outdoors. Knowledge about the outdoors is often passed down through family and community; therefore, it can be difficult to obtain awareness about outdoor recreation without these connections.

But the Outdoor Program provides resources –– such as affordable gear rentals, clinics and outings –– in addition to its Redefining Outdoorsy initiative to help students at the UO overcome these barriers.

“Redefining Outdoorsy makes the outdoors more accessible because you’re going on a trip with people who look like you and who identify as the same thing as you,” Slaton says. “It makes you feel more welcome. It makes it a lot more fun and exciting to meet new people that you share that common thing with.”

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