I blundered into a patch of stinging nettles while hiking cross-country in the Elkhorns a few weeks back. This unplanned encounter, which happened in the sort of squelchy spot where nettles often lurk, annoyed me slightly. My bare calves, which bore the brunt of the prickling, were somewhat more put out by my lack of attentiveness.

At the time — despite the short interval, the event has already acquired the nostalgic patina of a bygone and more innocent era — I presumed that nettles were about the most dangerous plant I’d be apt to step on in the mountains.

(And I felt fortunate at that — I’m clumsy, and so prone to stepping on, and in, most anything, including thunderstorms that pelt me with hailstones the size of marbles, except the hail, lacking the smoothness of a marble, leaves welts. )

As many of you may know, over the past several years the Forest Service has been engaged in a public process to designate roads, trails, and areas for motorized use on all national forests throughout the country.

The use of motor vehicles, particularly off-highway vehicles, is one of the fastest growing forms of outdoor recreation on national forest lands. The efforts are focused on looking at a system of routes that provides recreational opportunities and access for public motorized use, while providing protection to national forest resources.

I wish sometimes that I kept a journal.

I don’t mean a diary. I have no need for a cute little volume with flowers on the cover and whose pages I would, I fear, clog with cloying poetry inspired by a pretty vista I had seen in the mountains.

Nor am I conceiving of a Twitter-like (Twittery? Twitterish?) document which records every banal aspect of my daily routine. The Internet is quite full enough without adding to it my tally of jelly beans consumed or phone calls made and received.

What I’m thinking of, rather, is a simple chronicle that preserves for each day one or two events, the details of which I might want handy so as to revive my failing memory years later.

Please forgive our indulging in an overused nautical analogy, but as Oregon’s economy has been foundering these past several months, it seems to us that state workers have more than their share of reserved seats on the lifeboats.

For instance, according the Oregon Employment Department, private sector wages in the state rose an average of 2 percent in 2008.

I’m in my office waiting for a text to my cell phone.

As I write this column, Baker High School’s baseball team is playing Henley near Klamath Falls for a berth in the state championship game. Kial Richardson, sister to Baker player Trace Richardson, is texting game updates to a whole bevy of Bulldog faithful, including me. I’m updating the score to the breaking news section of our Web site, www.bakercityherald.com, as soon as I get them.

Two Americans were murdered this week because they chose careers that some people don’t approve of.

On the list of ridiculous reasons to kill somebody, this ranks right beside “hey, he looked at me funny.”

On the day my older daughter was born I broke at least one Oregon law and possibly a few federal statutes.

The former could have cost me a couple hundred bucks, a bail I would have gladly paid. The federal rap, though, might have had serious repercussions — my own FBI file, for instance.

This is how I rate myself, exercise-wise: first a walker, second a hiker, third a runner.

But now I have a dilemma: I ran a half-marathon on May 16, so does that elevate running to first?

I have a love/hate relationship with running. It’s usually somewhere in the middle of a run — especially if we’re doing hills or intervals — that I think, “Is this really my idea of fun?”

The answer, I must admit, is yes.

I don’t have a favorite TV program but I try to catch at least a couple of the categories on “Jeopardy!” every weeknight.

I like to remind myself that what I know would comfortably fit in a leaflet, and what I don’t know would fill to bursting a great library.

So let’s say, by way of example, that ABC decided to stop showing “Jeopardy!” on Tuesdays and Thursday.

But on Wednesdays and Fridays you get two episodes per night instead of one.

That’s twice as many daily doubles on those two nights.

(It’s also, unfortunately, twice as many of Alex Trebek’s annoying French pronunciations.)

The preceding “Jeopardy!” hypothetical pretty well describes what’s actually going to happen with the Baker City Herald starting the week of June 1-5.

I don’t have a favorite TV program but I try to catch at least a couple of the categories on “Jeopardy!” every weeknight.

I like to remind myself that what I know would comfortably fit in a leaflet, and what I don’t know would fill to bursting a great library.

So let’s say, by way of example, that ABC decided to stop showing “Jeopardy!” on Tuesdays and Thursday.