Seeing the forest through the trees
The Portland, Oregon I relocated to in 1992 is a very different place today, and I sometimes wax nostalgic for that long gone time. Portlanders back in the Nineties were indeed “weird,” walking about the city in shorts over tights, coffee mugs dangling from belts, flannel shirts hanging loose. Early adherents of the grunge look, many sported the earrings and tattoos that would reach other metropolitan areas a decade later. Eating organic, maintaining low environmental impact lifestyles the norm. I knew most of the shop owners up and down NW 23rd Avenue, the shopping district closest to our home. They lived in the neighborhood. Our kids went to the same schools. Played on the same sports teams. We all got wet together! And always, Mount Hood loomed as our backdrop, the mountain only an hour east of the city.
Portland’s streets were immaculately clean. People waited on sidewalks for lights to change. I was once caught in a downpour and the doorman at the Heathman Hotel called me over, handed me an umbrella. I told him I wasn’t a guest and it didn’t matter. Return it when I could. On any given weekend night my wife and I could decide at 7:30 pm to go downtown to see a play or ballet and be seated in a theatre before the curtains opened at 8. Weekend night parking $1.50! Jeans totally acceptable.
But change is as inevitable as death and taxes. Portland was “discovered” by the Portlandia TV show and burst onto the national scene. Everyone wanted in. Portland became the “next Brooklyn,” and most of those idiosyncratic, closely held businesses that gave the city its unique character gave way to Starbucks, Anthropologie, Pottery Barn, Williams Sonoma and the like, NW 23rd now littered with with corporate entities with no skin in the game of Portland life.
And then came Trump’s federal troops and the televised riots in the summer of 2020, Portland once again splashed across the screen (beautifully captured in Wendy Avra Gordon’s novel “It’s Always 9/11”). Buildings were boarded up. Restaurants that had given Portland a special place in culinary America failed. Citizens turned inward, demanding uniformity of thought, counter to the unique individuality that had heretofore been Portland’s strength. The downtown a ghost town but for the meth heads and fentanyl freaks who lay claim to the City’s parks and sidewalks, the streets now filthy. And I found myself giving way to despair. This was not the Portland of my dreams. Not why I risked all to journey west with my family. Perhaps it was time to leave.
Instead, we spent much of the summer walking the Oregon coastline. Enjoyed the fine sand beaches, the crystal clear, cold ocean water, waves crashing against cliff walls covered with Douglas fir and Spruce trees. We relished the ability to walk for miles without seeing another soul. We hiked many of the innumerable trails in the Mount Hood wilderness, often at 7-8000 feet, with Mount Hood still looming 5000 feet above. Immutable. Not subject to the vagaries of our human concerns, our fears and worries. It was thrilling, re-invigorating. An awesome reminder of why I was here. It renewed my faith that a new Portland would rise like Phoenix from its current ashes. I vowed to make a difference.
Namaste.