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Goodbye Oregon, I Love You

A harbor seal watches from the surf near Cobble Beach on a rainy day at Yaquine Head Outstanding Natural Area in Newport, Oregon on October 7, 2017. Original: _L1A8608.CR2

I discovered right away during my interview trip 21 years ago that Oregon was where I belonged. One of the managers found out I liked to hike and took me hiking in the Columbia River Gorge, then the other students and I had the weekend to go out the coast and explore whatever we wanted.

That wonderful Gorge is a half hour drive to the east. My beloved Ridgefield National Wildlife is half an hour to the north (across the river in Washington). Snow-capped Mount Hood and Mount St. Helens are visible from Portland and an easy drive too. Well known for its waterfalls and wetlands and lush forests and rugged coast, all of which I dearly love, there are also high deserts and sand dunes and even redwoods all the way south.

Scenes like this, a curious harbor seal poking up out of the surf at Yaquina Head on a rainy day at the coast, gave me as much pause about moving to Arizona as the summer heat. Oregon has so much to offer, so much that delights me, so much I will miss. Goodbye, I love you.

📷: Canon 7D II | Canon 500mm f/4L IS USM + 1.4x III
🗓️: October 7, 2017

Goodbye Portland, I Love You

The Tom Bihn ID messenger bag on a MAX train in Portland, Oregon

Leaving Portland means leaving a way of life. In our old neighborhood of Irvington I can walk to shops and restaurants. For most of our years here I’ve slung my Tom Bihn laptop bag over my shoulder and walked to the light rail station to take the train to work. I only drive about 1000 to 3000 miles a year, depending on how many long hiking trips I take, so I’ll drive as many miles on our way to Arizona as I might do in a year. It was obvious on my interview trip that life in Arizona will be centered around the car, so I’m going to have to get used to driving to work again. One of the things I’ll figure out during the year we’re renting is how long of a commute I can tolerate, which will dictate what neighborhoods we will consider when it is time to buy.

There is more about Portland I’ve loved, from its progressive ideals (if not always progressive policies) to its eccentricities, such as the day I met someone walking a pig at the dog park. Not a little pot-belled pig, a full-grown pig. People practicing Shakespeare in the park, even our little Irving park. The old neighborhoods. The light rail. The downtown. The city parks. The duck ponds with not just mallards and Canada geese but wood ducks, bufflehead, wigeon, scaup. On and on.

The ever-worsening traffic I won’t miss but we are heading to a much larger city so perhaps we will trade one type of traffic for another. Neither will I miss the ice storms, we’ll see if the misery of desert summers are a fair trade for wonder of desert winters.

It was the lure of Portland that led me to interview with the company where I worked for two decades, the loss of that job is forcing me to leave. I will always treasure our time in Portland, it’s been a wonderful place to call home. Goodbye, I love you.

Goodbye Ridgefield, I Love You

A yellow-headed blackbird straddles two stems at Rest Lake at Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge in Washington

It’s not like Mount Rainier or Olympic National Parks, Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge, not the sort of place you plan a trip around. It’s not scenic, there are no mountains, no beaches, no waterfalls, no old growth forests. But I spent more time here than anywhere else in the Pacific Northwest. I might have spent more time here than all other parks combined. Not because of what it didn’t have, but because of what it did: the auto tour.

There’s a mostly one-way gravel road that winds through the seasonal ponds and lakes of this unassuming little refuge across the Columbia in Washington where for significant portions of the year you have to stay in your car. Because the animals aren’t spooked so easily if you are in your car compared to when you are not, I watched birds and mammals behave naturally from close distances. I met this yellow-headed blackbird, showing off his acrobatic skills as he straddles two stems, at Rest Lake late on a sunny spring evening.

I stayed dry in the rain and warm in the cold. Relatively warm in the cold, I shut my car off when I stopped and sometimes I stopped for hours. I kept an extra coat to drape over my legs on the cold days, extra towels to drape around the car on wet ones. I started playing around with video towards the end once I got a camera capable of good video but it was too late for me to have taken very many, but those few videos joins thousands of pictures in my archives.

I’d be embarrassed to tell you how many hours I sat in my car and watched bitterns hunting at the edges of the lakes. Or watching herons and coyotes hunting voles in the big meadow at the end of the auto tour. Watching the eagles and swans at Rest Lake. Watching red-winged blackbirds, yellow-headed blackbirds, marsh wrens, song sparrows, common yellowthroats, American goldfinches, all from one spot at South Quigley Lake.

There are a couple of short hiking trails at the refuge, one only open during the warmer months when the cackling geese are gone, but mostly what drew me was the auto tour. Too much so I suppose, I knew I should explore other places more often, if nothing else for the exercise. But I kept having wonderful experiences so I kept coming back.

I haven’t been up as often the past few years, mostly because I was walking Ellie during the hours I would have normally visited the refuge, but Ridgefield I will hold in my heart for all of my days. Goodbye, I love you.

Not Weather Sealed

The broken flash housing on my Canon EOS 20D digital SLR

I had been using the Canon EOS 20D steadily for a couple of years when a sudden gust of wind on a ridge sent my tripod tumbling and introduced the camera and lens to the rocks of the Cascades. The lens was smashed to bits but fortunately the only severe damage the camera sustained was to the flash housing. I didn’t use the on-board flash so I didn’t mind its loss but the gaping hole at the top of the camera made things difficult for someone who loves to shoot in the rain, the camera wasn’t weather-sealed even in the best of times. My solution when using it in the rain was to hold a thick plastic bag on top, durable holdovers from the campus bookstore when I was in school. I still have a couple of the bags although I tend to use Tom Bihn stuff sacks to protect my equipment these days. I have a full-on camera cover but they aren’t so convenient.

My low-tech solution worked, I used the camera heavily for several more years until the shutter packed it in while I was hiking with friends on Mount Rainier. I’ve hung onto the broken camera for sentimental reasons over the years, but it’s time to say goodbye as there’s no reason to take it to Arizona with us. I took it out for a quick photo session before we say goodbye.

Goodbye Irvington, I Love You

The slightly damaged eye of the dragon statue at Irvington School in the Irvington neighborhood of Portland, Oregon

Sixteen years ago it was time to move.

My wife had changed jobs and we needed to find a home with a reasonable commute both to her job in Portland and to mine in Beaverton to the west. We found a wonderful realtor who knew the old neighborhoods and patiently showed us our options as we tried to get a grasp on life in the city. When our home in Salem sold, there was one house that stood in a neighborhood called Irvington, a name which meant nothing to me then yet so much to me now.

I had never lived in a city before so I was nervous about our new life but I need not have been. At first I loved being able to walk to Portland’s light rail system, MAX, as there was a stop near work and I no longer had to deal with the stress of driving every day. But I also fell in love with the old trees, the unique old houses, the old garages, the variety of people, the variety of landscaping, the ability to walk to shops and restaurants.

I fell in love so deeply it became hard to imagine living in the suburbs again.

Then nine years ago we got a dog. The neighborhood I thought I knew opened up to me in new ways. There was the dog park at Irving Park, and Irving Park in general, as back then the pup was up for wandering around the park as a whole. What a beautiful little gem just a few blocks from our house. But it was the walks after we left Irving Park, where I let Ellie wander wherever she wanted through the neighborhood, where I began walking down streets I had never walked down before and fell in love with the art with which people had decorated their homes and yards. There was an artist a block south of here that created a little dragon out of tile and concrete in front of his house, that I had seen on my way to the train, but it was only after Ellie started taking me farther afield that I saw the much larger dragon he had created at Irvington School.

I started taking a camera with me on all our long morning walks and began documenting some of my favorite pieces of art near the sidewalk, the urban wildlife, the urban flora, the paintings, the murals, the poetry, the fleeting chalk drawings, the Jedi, the bird van, the tree art, the stepping stones, the totems, the wishing tree, the desire for peace. And of course the dragons. This is not a community of artists, though there are artists here, it’s a community of families who feel free to express themselves.

Like the damaged eye of the dragon at the school, time takes its toll on all things, neighborhoods included. It was getting pricey when we bought in but it’s much more expensive now. A while back it was designated a historic neighborhood to try to keep the old homes from being demolished and replaced with large modern homes, but that can also keep out the higher density housing that provides more affordable options. Irvington has been wonderful to us, but it has excluded people in its past, and I want it to be as good a home to as many as possible as it has been to us, for it to embrace the strength of diversity.

Thank you Irvington for changing my misconceptions about urban neighborhoods, for giving me a safe place not just to live but to explore. Goodbye, I love you.