Portland: Pulchritude and Play

Oregon, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

Yes, I plagiarize (with a one-word addition) a famous poem of Elizabeth Barrett Browning to begin this post only because my first two weeks in Oregon have been so unbelievably rich and chock full of experiences that I will need to count my memories and the Oregonian things with which I am already enamored. The list is quite long, especially given the brevity of my time here.

Susannah and I departed on Sunday morning, August 12, 2012 for Portland. I wore running clothes in the car so that I could take brief jogs every time we stopped, and after 5 five-minute runs, I was able to say that I had a slightly less sedentary day than I normally do while traveling. The car ride was great--Susannah and I spoke about everything relevant about the past, present, and future, and we also listened to three chapters (called "books" by Milton) of Paradise Lost from the CDs that Susannah checked out from the public library in Portland. When we finally arrived to Portland at 1:00 AM on Monday morning, we were exhausted and ready to crash but happy to be home.

Susannah and I live in a small, cute house with Susannah's sister Margaret. We live in Northeast Portland, which is known as being a little less yuppie and a little more fun than the other vicinities of Portland. Our neighborhood is stunningly gorgeous--each house has its own personality, and every yard is full of enormous trees, beautiful flowers, and foliage of other sorts. Our own house has an enormous backyard with a coop and fenced-in yard for the four chickens whose daily eggs are eaten and enjoyed. (After watching a documentary on how terribly chickens are frequently abused in the factory-farm system, seeing four healthy hens that each have names, lots of space to run around, and are fed a healthy diet with no strange growth hormones, I am so happy!) Since I'm talking about environmental causes, let me brag about how incredible Portland and our house is. In Portland, there is curbside recycling for everything, and it's amazing. There is also curbside composting, so we collect all of our organic waste in a separate container that is then composted to become soil. Portland is apparently one of the most biker-friendly cities in the country, and I have put this to the test and found it to be true. There are designated biker lanes on many streets, and there are always lots of bikers around at any given time.

I think it's probably fair to say (though I don't have an official statistic to back it up) that most people in Portland have their own garden or, at the very least, their own fruit-yielding trees. In the brief time that I have been here, I've been given a bag of fresh figs from Susannah's cousin and her husband, a bunch of vegetables (onions, peas, kale, and the like) from Susannah's friend Annie, a box of blackberries and a cucumber salad from some new friends of mine (more later) named Brett and Jana, and probably more that I can't remember right now. People give and show love by sharing their homegrown produce, and it's wonderful. This is one of the most fecund, verdant places I have ever seen, and it's paradisaical. There are fruit trees all around town that are heavy with fruit--you'll literally see plums being squashed on the sidewalk because they have just fallen before anyone could get to them. Our backyard is covered in apples that we haven't been able to eat that have fallen to the ground. I picked a bunch of sun-ripened blackberries along the side of the highway today. It's the Garden of Eden here.

The view of the forested hills from the ascent up
Saddle Mountain

I have been able to have so many adventures here, most of which I owe to Susannah's initiative and taking me to great places in her car. Susannah and I both love to hike, and we have literally gone on so many hikes that I can't keep track of all of them. We did a 5 mile round trip hike up Saddle Mountain, which was my first Oregonian hike and really beautiful. The same day, we did a brief, 2 mile or so trip to a beach on the Pacific Ocean called Indian Beach that was shockingly beautiful. A different day, we went on a 12 (I think) mile round trip hike in the Silver Creek Falls area where we saw more than 10 different waterfalls, each unique, some of which we got to stand behind and experience from the other side. We spent another full day doing doing a 14 mile hike around the crest of Mt. Hood, Oregon's highest point. The hike was called Paradise Park, and since it was difficult to get there, there were hardly no people and we could enjoy the fields of wildflowers all to ourselves. There were so many flowers and bees buzzing around that it literally smelled like honey along much of our hike. It was incredible and an experience unlike any I have had before. Here are a few photos (including the one to the left of this paragraph) from the four hikes I mention here.

The coast here is marvelous, with jagged rocks and pine trees
next to fine sand beaches, like Indian Beach, barely visible
below. This part of the Pacific Northwest is a temperate
rainforest, which I didn't even know existed as a biome.

One of the many falls we saw on the Silver Creek
hike. See the tunnel in the rock behind the waterfall?
We got to stand there on multiple of these and see
the water from behind.

 

A vew of Mt. Adams from near the top of Mt. Hood on the
Paradise Park trail

 

A field of wildflowers near Mt. Hood on the Paradise Park
hike that was so fecund that it smelled just like honey

As you can see, the nature up here is gorgeous. However, I've had a couple of adventures involving people rather than just the outdoors, as well. Susannah and I have been reading a Shakespeare play a week, and we started with Much Ado About Nothing since there was a free production of it in a park. We read it, analyzed it, and then watched it with a couple of her friends, a couple named Jana and Bret. Jana and Bret liked me, so they invited me to hang out the next day. We all went bowling, and it was super fun. I'm still a lousy bowler, but I had a great time and made a couple of new friends. (Mom and Dad, you'll be proud--they both have their MBAs and are in the business field! :) )

In the back are me and Brett. I don't remember the name of the
guy in the front, but he was also really nice to me. I hope
he doesn't stumble across this blog!

I've also had the privilege to sample a little of Portland's cuisine. (I'm not letting myself spend too much "fun" money since I'm not making any money yet, but my inner child doesn't mind spending a little bit for frivolous pursuits.) I ate at an entirely vegan restaurant and had some of the best frito pie of my life made with tofu sour cream, cashew cheese, and some other funky things. I also went to the strangest and coolest ice cream shop I have ever seen in my life called the Salt and Straw. Let me tell you some of the flavor names and give you their descriptions:

1) Summer Corn Buttermilk Sorbet
2) Boke Bowl--"Fish Sauce Caramel makes for sweet and tangy ribbons in Kaffir Lime Leaf and Lemongrass ice cream"
3) Pear with Blue Cheese

I ended up getting a scoop of the latter, and it was really good. I tried a spoonful of the Boke Bowl, but the fish sauce was too much for me. Ice cream with stinky cheese and fruit? I'll give it a go. Ice cream with animal products? No gracias, amigo. I suppose we all have our limits. I also discovered the best bread on the planet (right after Mom's homemade wheat bread after fast Sunday, of course), and it's called "Dave's Killer Bread." Read this story on the bread bag:

"I was a four-time loser before I realized I was in the wrong game. 15 years in prison is a pretty tough way to find oneself, but I have no regrets. This time around, I took advantage of all those long and lonely days by practicing my guitar, exercising, and getting to know myself--without drugs. To my utter amazement, I started liking what I was seeing. It's been said adversity introduces a man to himself and I found this to be true. If I had not suffered, I can safely assure you that you would not be reading the label on a loaf of my killer bread. A whole lot of suffering has transformed an ex-con into an honest man who is doing his best to make the world a better place...one loaf of bread at a time."

His bread is all organic, all natural, and so scrumptious. The list of ingredients is short, with everything on there a recognizable item found in nature (there aren't preservatives, so you have to eat it pretty quickly), and the only reason some of his loaves have long lists of ingredients is because one of his breads contains 21 grains! It's so tasty, and it's worth paying a little extra for.

Anyway, Portland is funky, quirky, hip, and gorgeous. People are idiosyncratic, iconoclastic, and really nice. I feel completely at home here. I'll stop writing for now, but expect more posts about other happenings in the chapter of my life I spend here in the Pacific Northwest. I'll tell you soon about my job (yes, I got a job!) and the other neat things happening around me.