Note: RIP JL 1/25/09

Muriel Willingham: Millennium Harper of Oregon Covered Bridges, 2002
Subject: [MillenniumHarpers] Sites #24, #25, and #26 (Fanfare, please) From: Muriel Willingham

Hi to Questers, family, and friends --

I'm done!!! We did it!!!

Today when the Weather Guessers were wrong again (partly sunny, NOT fog and rain) we grabbed the little Scottish harp and the afternoon, and headed west to play at the final group of covered bridges -- three of them, near Mapleton, north of Deadwood, and somewhere in the middle of nowhere just west of Triangle Lake. Again, we saw parts of the county we'd never been anywhere near. It's been fun for both of us.

Official report to the MQ list forthcoming.

Muriel, Millenium Harper of Oregon Covered Bridges

WHEE!!!

(Below is shown the original declaration in early 2002:)

I, Muriel Willingham, hereby declare my intention to undertake a Millenium Quest. I will visit and play my harp at all the covered bridges in Lane County, Oregon, where I live.(Lane County is about the size and shape of Connecticut.) Twenty of these historic structures still exist, dating from the 1850s to the 1950s. Fourteen are open to traffic and 16 are on the National Register of Historic Places. To complete my set of 25 sites, I will visit and play at 5 of the 11 covered bridges in Benton and Linn Counties,which adjoin Lane County to the north.

Lane County was the first Oregon county to build covered bridges on a large scale, and still maintains more than any other county west of the Mississippi. The bridges were built using the material most readily available to early settlers, the huge Douglas fir trees which forested Western Oregon.

I will document my Quest with a scrapbook, using photographs taken by my husband or a friend invited to accompany me on each trip. I will include a written description of each bridge as I find it on the day I play, and get signatures from people who may be present when I play. I have contacted the Covered Bridge Society of Oregon of my intent and will notify them of my
activities.

My purpose in this Quest is twofold; publicizing the covered bridges in this area, which are an important, unusual, and beautiful part of its history; and publicizing the small harp as an instrument suitable for playing outdoors.

I expect to finish the Quest by December 31, 2002.

Muriel Willingham
Eugene, Oregon