Planet Portland

We all have heard, I imagine, that after death the second most stressful life event is moving (my guess is that the stress of death is that felt by the survivors). Divorce comes third, job loss next. Connie and I are still blissfully married; no comment about jobs.

Moving to Portland has been an almost unalloyed pleasure. Looking out the window I see the varigated greens of a park; below our (small) terrace along Jefferson the trees obliterate the road. Beyond, Mt. Hood goes through its daily changes: a silhouette in the morning, a floating snowcap at noon, fading at dusk, and then fully revealed against dark clouds. It is like Mt. Fuji in so many ways, coming and going. Far to the north this morning I saw the outline of Mt. Adams. Both Adams and Hood are inactive volcanoes; somewhere out there is Mt. St. Helens, visible from the western hills on a very clear day.

A crow alights on the top and thinnest twig of a swaying conifer (not sure yet what kind) at eye level with my terrace. The twig is an improbable landing site. His broad wings extended balance him, his body adjusts, teeters, head still. Then the wings tilt. He settles, stops moving. The wings fold as carefully as origami. He looks around, satisfied with his perch, with the world.

We are like that, satisfied with our perch. Sunday morning, reading the New York Times, we could see twenty blocks down 3rd Avenue toward the Pearl District, which is where the art galleries mostly are--Portland's Greenwich Village--and not a single car was moving. Not one. We are located in the middle of downtown next to the federal building, across from the Wells Fargo Tower, and the nights are so quiet we wake to see if the city is still out there.

The first three days were hot and sunny, not typical but welcome. This morning was rainy, heavy clouds moving in from the Pacific. (The ocean is to the west, remember that.) The dramatic sky is always performing: right now there are heavy white cotton clouds above an eastward tending layer of gray, bordering a west-side wedgewood blue. To the south rain-laden dark gray hovers over Oregon State Health University's elevated tramway. But no rain at the moment. Here, there are people who don't believe in umbrellas. They walk out in the rain and the notrain.

Sunday evening we walked down to the Willamette River (rhymes with DamnIt), bought some sorbet, and sat on a bench overlooking the marina. Because this is Rose Festival Week here (the one hundredth anniversary no less) there is a lot of merriment, high-school girls hoping to be elected queen standing around in evening gowns. Two square-riggers are maneuvering into battle positions before us and begin to fire blanks, the explosions echoing along the city as the night before fireworks announced the beginning of the week's celebrations. On the river is a carnival with rides and music. Walkers and cyclists mosey around, making way for one another. We stop in astonishment at a slingshot ride that catapaults two people strapped into a kind of carnival loveseat straight up into the sky at least a hundred feet, maybe more. They crash earthward on bungy cords and are again flung up into Sunday's clear blue and for a moment it appears they will keep going, set free.

We are terrified by the daring of it.

But it's also how we feel this week. Slingshot into space, landing on this other planet: the holodeck of the Enterprise? Exhilerated by the daring of it.

More about Planet Portland to come as we explore the wonders of this distant colony in a galaxy far away.