PLSO The Oregon Surveyor Mar/Apr 2019

Professional Land Surveyors of Oregon | www.plso.org 7 From the PLSO Office the profession in the state of Oregon, while giving it a modern look and feel. Individual objectives include: 4. Update the website to be consistent with the look, feel and information of marketing materials which were generated through a recent rebranding effort. 5. Simplify the navigation of the website and add more modern functionality. 6. Bring our online store (currently housed on ecwid) into the Wild Apricot platform so that PLSO may provide member and non-member price structures. 7. Upgrade the site to be functional with hand held and portable devices. After forming the RFP and sending it out, PLSO received eight responses, two of which were noticeably the top two choic- es. On Saturday, March 16 the Board of Directors agreed to move forward with The ARRC. established in 2000, The ARRC is a multigenerational business, combin- ing fresh perspectives with seasoned experience, as well as a Service-Disabled Veteran Owned Small Business (SDVOSB). We felt that a multigenerational business would be a good resource to serve the needs of our multigenerational member- ship. Our goal is to be fresh and modern for our younger sector, but still user friend- ly for our older members. Membership involvement is important. Even if you feel like I do a lot of the talking (I tend to think this makes me charming), PLSO is member driven. Having feedback and ideas from our website users creates a better end-result. PLSO is currently creating a Redesign Task Group that will be working with me and assisting The ARRC throughout the redesign process. They will need to con- tribute by participating in the initial kickoff call, provide timely feedback on design ideas, and evaluating major milestones. Ideally, the Task Group will be made up of various career levels—from PLS to students—so that we have well-round- ed feedback. Do you think you would be appropriate for this group, or do you know someone that would be a good fit? Perhaps you missed the survey and wanted to give me feedback or a wish list of things you’d like to see on our site? Send me a note at execdirector@plso.org . I can’t wait to hear from you.  x different shade of green than the rest of the foliage. At first, I think that’s kind of strange and decide that its justmoss, but then become curious enough to investi- gate further as it it looked like it might be a cut off, four-inch staub. Could it be an old brush line cut? Curiosity gets the bet- ter of me however, and as I reach out to touch it, the mossy top comes off in my hand leaving a smooth wooden surface. I dig around it and give it a tug. Suddenly, without any resistance at all, a stake, cut on four sides to a tapering pointed tip, slides right out of the ground inmy hand like it was a greased pig! “What the……?” The stake was bright amber and smooth as the proverbial baby’s back side. It ap- peared to be a Sitka Spruce limb that was cleanly cut on all four sides and coated with a thick layer of pitch. Sitka Spruce are very resinous, and it looked like the pitch just naturally oozed after it was cut and hardened because it was as smooth as a bowling ball. It didn’t look to be very old because it was in perfect shape, but then I saw it. Eureka! There at the top of the stakewas scribed “C 1” preserved in a thick coat of amber. As much as I wanted to take it back to the office, we weren’t packing any steel to replace it since we were in monument recovery mode for this trip, so I slid it back into the silky smooth three-foot deep square hole and shot its position. From that, we recalibrated our search coordinates and in the next cou- ple days, recovered two more identical spruce limb stakes for the Snoqualm- ie Lode and another on the adjacent Mugwump Lode. (Yes, it really is named “Mugwump” on the plat…) I’ve heard that the iron found in the southeast Alaskamuskeg bogs can help preserveburiedor floatingdense grained wood and I believe that’s the reason why we found absolutely no decay in the spruce stakes that we recovered, having been buried almost a hundred years. These moments are the reason “Why We Survey.”  x Message from the Chairman continued from pg 5 T