If you've walked toward Pittock Mansion sometime since early August, you may have rounded a bend on the Wildwood Trail and found something that wasn't fallen timber or a mossy stump catching the light wrong. It was a six-foot crow, hand-painted, standing exactly where the trail expects you to keep walking. Nobody warned you. That's the point.
The crow is one of thirty scattered across Portland this fall as part of "Wildwood: Follow the Crows," a public art trail built around LAIKA's new stop-motion film "Wildwood." The studio is based here. The film is adapted from the novel by Colin Meloy, frontman of the Decemberists, illustrated by his wife Carson Ellis, a Portland artist, and directed by Travis Knight, LAIKA's president and CEO. Most of the thirty sculptures live downtown, at spots like Pioneer Courthouse Square, the Central Library, and Director Park. Three of them don't. Three are set directly on the real Wildwood Trail, which means the film's fictional forest has been laid, quite literally, on top of the one Forest Park residents already walk.
That overlap is what makes this worth your attention if you live here rather than visiting for the weekend. The installation has a hard end date. A completely separate, unrelated trail closure on the north end of the same 30-mile trail does not. Both are true right now, and depending on which trailhead you use most, one or both will change how your regular loop works between now and winter.
Why a movie studio picked your trail
Forest Park shows up in "Wildwood" the way it shows up in a lot of Portland stories, as the wild edge just past the edge of downtown. The book's fictional version, sometimes called "the Impassable Wilderness," is a stylized double of the real 5,200 acres that start a few blocks from NW 23rd. The film premieres in theaters nationwide on October 23, and the crow trail was built to run alongside it, not just to hype it. Wild in Art, the organization behind the sculptures, ran a similar citywide trail here before, the Curious Cat Trail, which pulled in more than 147,000 visitors over its run. That's the closest thing to a crowd forecast anyone has published for this one, and it's worth keeping in mind if you'd rather do this walk without a line at the trailhead.
The three trail sculptures aren't an afterthought bolted onto a downtown promotion. They trace a route that already exists, and that a lot of Forest Park and West Hills residents already know by feel: south from the International Rose Test Garden, down through Balch Creek, up past Pittock Mansion, with the Bird Alliance of Oregon (the group most locals still call by its old name, Portland Audubon) sitting roughly in the middle.
The walk, with its landmarks intact
Here's what's actually along that stretch, sculpture or no sculpture.
| Landmark | What you'll find there |
|---|---|
| International Rose Test Garden | Southern anchor of the route, inside Washington Park, near the Wildwood Trail's southern terminus at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial |
| Stone House (the "Witch's Castle") | A moss-covered 1936 WPA structure along Balch Creek, actually a former restroom, one mile up from the lower trailhead |
| Upper Macleay Park | A short climb past the Stone House, with picnic tables and a rest stop before the trail continues |
| Bird Alliance of Oregon | Free interpretive center and wildlife rehabilitation facility housing owls and red-tailed hawks, just off the trail near NW Cornell Road |
| Pittock Mansion | Northern anchor of the route, reached by a half-mile climb through fir canopy after crossing Cornell |
The full sequence runs about three miles one way, six round trip, according to the trail's organizers. If that's more than you want on a weeknight, the shorter version, just the stretch between the Bird Alliance and Pittock Mansion, still gets you two of the three sculptures and the steepest, most scenic climb.
None of this is new terrain. What's new is that for a few months, it's also a piece of a citywide scavenger hunt, trackable through a companion app, with every sculpture eventually auctioned off for OHSU Doernbecher Children's Hospital once the trail wraps.
The clock that's actually running
The installation launched August 7 with a ribbon cutting at the St. Johns Library. Individual sculptures, including the three on the Wildwood Trail, stay in place through October 30. After that, all thirty gather one last time for a farewell weekend, October 31 through November 1, in Darcelle XV Plaza downtown, before they're sold off.
Line that up against the film's October 23 theatrical release and you get an unusually compressed window. Anyone who sees "Wildwood" opening weekend and decides to go find the real trail has about a week before the sculptures come down. If you'd rather walk this stretch without that overlap, doing it before the premiere puts you ahead of anyone chasing the movie tie-in. Either way, by the time trick-or-treaters are out, the crows on your trail will already be packed up for their farewell weekend downtown.
A closure with no such deadline
Now the part that has nothing to do with any of this. On the north end of the same Wildwood Trail, well past the stretch the crows occupy, the Ridge Trail parking area on NW Bridge Avenue is closed indefinitely. The city cites real safety concerns: falling rock and no safe room for pedestrians to walk along NW Bridge Avenue between the parking area and the trailhead. Portland Parks & Recreation's recommendation is to reach the Ridge Trail by bus or bike, or, if you're driving, to park on the east side of the St. Johns Bridge and walk across.
There's a second wrinkle tied to the same closure. A bridge along that stretch is also shut down, and the marked workaround is a stepped bypass route on the Wildwood Trail itself, at mile 15.2. If your regular loop runs anywhere near the north end of the park, that bypass is the detail worth knowing before you're standing at a closed bridge wondering where the trail went.
Unlike the crow trail, there's no announced date to watch for here. "Indefinitely" is the word the city is using, which for a trail closure usually means it's tied to a repair that hasn't been scoped or funded yet, not a project with a countdown.
What this actually changes about your month
Put together, the two updates split cleanly by which end of the park you use most.
- If your regular loop touches Washington Park, the Rose Garden, or Pittock Mansion, you have through October 30 to see the sculptures in their original spots, with the busiest stretch likely to be the week after the film opens on October 23.
- If your regular loop runs north toward NW Bridge Avenue or the Ridge Trail, plan around the indefinite parking closure now, not later, and know the mile 15.2 bypass before you need it.
- Dogs are welcome on both stretches, on leash, with owners expected to pack out waste rather than leave bagged trash trailside.
- The full 30-crow map and companion app are the easiest way to confirm exact sculpture locations before you go, since a few pieces beyond the trail three have moved or been added as the season has gone on.
Most of what changes on a well-worn trail happens slowly enough that you stop noticing it. This fall, two changes landed on the Wildwood Trail at once, one with a firm end date built around a movie release, one with no end date at all. Knowing which is which is the difference between planning a nice walk and getting turned around at a closed bridge.
If this kind of neighborhood detail is useful to you, it's the same lens we bring to the West Hills and Forest Park more broadly, not just the trail conditions but the small, specific things that make living here different from reading about it. If you're curious what else has shifted in the neighborhood lately, or you're thinking about what a move here or away from here would actually look like, ELEETE Real Estate is a good place to start that conversation.
