The Opposite of East

Oregon is a strange place.

Eugene Oregon is a very difficult place to describe.  Heidi, who had lived here before, had tried and failed.  It is in a valley, wide and flat.  One could picture cattle being herded through here generations ago.  It is surrounded by mountains called Buttes.  Not really sure what a Butte is.  Kind of a rolling hill, kind of not.  Eugene is kind of like a giant green bowl.  I cannot describe it further than that.

The architecture in our neighborhood (as well as many others) is made up mostly of small, one story houses that I would describe as bungalows.  Imagine northern California in the 40’s.  Many painted either red or green. 

Our neighbors are a mix of people.  Physicians, academics, students.  We have plum trees in the front and back, as well as pear, apple, and peach trees.  Our back yard is so large that four different families are growing vegetables. In the back half of it.  The yards are so large and long that many have a second house on the property that faces the alleyway.  The house next to ours is owned by two students from Washington State.  The yard behind them has chicken wire along the top of it.  The owner has 14 cats. He is also growing medical marijuana (legally) in his back yard, and is known to have many firearms and a tendency to be paranoid. I have yet to meet him.

The lawns in the Summer were brown.  As Fall descended, it became cold and rainy, and everything turned green   Gardens flourish year round.  You walk by houses that are engulfed with colorful flowering bushes, fruit trees, sunflowers, vegetables.  Front or back it doesn’t matter.  Everyone seems to garden here.  When people ask you what you are going to plant in your “Winter garden”, they are not joking.    

Many people keep bees to make honey and help pollenate their gardens.  There are many backyard chicken coops.  It is not unusual to hear roosters crowing.  Strange, since this is Oregon’s second largest city.

Everyone is friendly.  Everyone smiles and says hello.  The East Coaster in me keeps thinking that they want something from me, but no one has asked for anything yet. 

We are dining nightly on vegetables from the garden:  String beans, squash, zucchini.  Broccoli, peppers, kale, and many other things to come soon.  The cherry tomatoes are so sweet that they actually taste like cherries. There are mint plants growing by the garage door.  The garage smells great!  Thinking of planting them under all the windows. 

The vegetarian option at most restaurants?  About half the menu.  Everything is local.  Everything is organic.  The land is very fertile. 

People stop at stop signs.  They wait for you to walk.  Pretty sure that this will end up being my demise, when I go back East and forget that they don’t do that there.  

I took a drive to the mountains the other day. (took about 15 minutes to get to them.)  I drove through two national forests on the way. It was ridiculously beautiful.  It was so beautiful, I started to get angry. Not sure why.  Perhaps it is the East Coast in me starting to leach out.  Strange being this friendly all the time.  Not sure, but actually may be starting to relax. 

Fresh fruit from the garden

The plums we will bring you tomorrow.....

Fresh veggies from the garden.

Yes, that is a watermelon helmet!  

Dave's first blog post (Sorry! It's a long one!)

Every adventure has a beginning.  A salient moment or event, that sets the tone for the events to come.  For me, it was my first trip to Oregon. 

Heidi was offered her dream job at a university in the Pacific Northwest and we were both very excited. For me, of course, the move would be a considerable sacrifice.  A noble and selfless act on my part, I thought to myself, as I packed the skis. The snowshoes. The bikes. The hiking gear. The kayaking gear. The camping gear.  And the pile of outdoor guidebooks that I had started collecting almost from the moment I heard we were moving there.  What a modern husband wouldn’t do to support his wife’s career!

It all happened very quickly.  She had two weeks to accept the job, but I could not take time off of work to see Oregon before she would have to accept or reject it.   She accepted it, of course.  While thrilled about the upcoming move, Oregon still remained a mystery to me.  Not having ever seen it, I had no image that I could use to start imagining what our life would be like.  It was a complete blank. 

My first time to Oregon was for an interview.  A flight to San Francisco with a connection to Eugene.  But with the infamous San Francisco fog, and an Asiana Airlines jet still sitting on the runway, things did not go so smoothly.

This is where the adventure began.  We left on a Thursday.  My interview day was Friday.  I was to meet and interview with 7 different people before lunch, lunch with my potential colleagues, then interview with 3 people after lunch.  Afterwards a tour with a real estate agent, and then dinner in the evening.  Quite a schedule!  Shouldn’t be a problem.  Our flight would get us into town in the afternoon.  Plenty of time to relax, prepare for the interview and get a good night’s sleep.   Or so we thought.

Between the fog and the runway being down, we made it to San Francisco very late, and all but one of the connecting flights to Eugene were cancelled, except the 5PM which was to leave at 9PM, if at all..

Taking the train turned out not to be an option.  We had two choices:  Either cancel the interview and reschedule (not even sure that was a real possibility), or drive.  Theoretically, it is an eight hour drive from San Francisco.  That would get us to the hotel at around 1 AM.  No problem.  As a physician, I have worked long shifts with little sleep and functioned well.  I could even get 6  hours of sleep before the interview.  Piece of cake! 

I had envisioned a mad caffeine-fueled dash through the night, kind of a middle-aged Hunter Thompson-esque journey.  We gathered the luggage, got the rental car, and drove out of the airport at 5 PM, straight into rush hour traffic. At 7 PM, we finally cleared San Francisco and stopped for dinner.  No problem.  We could still get there by 3 AM.  4 hours of sleep would be plenty.  More than I ever got on call! 

I slept for an hour and a half while Heidi drove, and then took over the driving.  Around midnight, Heidi cried uncle.  We would have to stop and get some sleep.  My wife is one of those odd people who eats well, exercises, and gets a full night’s sleep every night. She is, in other words, sane.  We decided to stop for a nap.  We pulled off the highway and found a gas station that had a large dirt lot next to it filled with large trucks.  We drove down to the end of the row of trucks, and slept.  Our first night in our new home state.  We woke up around 3AM and started again.  We made it to the hotel at 7:30 sharp. A representative from the hospital was going to meet me at 8:45 in the lobby.  I jumped into the shower while Heidi called room service for breakfast.  I made it to the lobby with two minutes to spare with my clothes ironed, beard trimmed, fully caffeinated, and looking respectable (which is a feat even on a good day!)  I managed to keep myself pleasant and professional throughout the day.  The caffeine started to wear off around mid-morning.  By noon I was offered the job, which was great!  But by that time, I was struggling to stay focused.  Human resources went over a lot of numbers that refused to sink in.  We met with a real estate agent and I fell asleep in the car while being driven around the town with Heidi.  We made it back to the hotel by 4:30, got an hour of sleep, and awoke to get ready for the dinner with future colleagues.  By that time, word had started to get around about our driving all night to get there.  None of my interviewers had realized that I hadn’t slept.  They were impressed with my stamina. 

It may not be the kind of story that legends are made of, but it’s a great way to start a new narrative.  A funny twist on a new beginning. 

You have to see it to believe it

Yesterday my neighbors stopped by to say, "The swifts are circling.  It's not time yet.  But we'll be back tomorrow!"  Now, this sort of thing doesn't happen very often--even in Oregon--so we were a little curious.  After a long walk with Potter and an early dinner we waited by the window for the return of our neighbors.  When they arrived we walked to the ice cream parlor two blocks away, circled around to the empty lot behind the store, and watched a swarm of swifts fly over head. This is a picture of our neighbors: Bob, Ginger, and their grandson James (in case you hadn't noticed, James is wearing most of his ice cream cone on his face):

 It took about half an hour of circling, flocking, waving, and swaying:

In time, when they were ready, the swifts ushered themselves gracefully into the chimney of an old school.  It was really kind of amazing-- like something out of a scene from Harry Potter or a Hitchcock movie.  The birds just showed up, seemingly out of nowhere, danced in the sky while calling out to their friends to join them.  Without an angry fist, a collision, or a gesture of jealousy they escorted themselves into a funnel and then into the opening of the chimney.  I thought about train stations and airports where we humans need ropes and signs to keep us in an orderly line to wait our turn for a cab. The birds seemed to have an internal sense of order, or maybe they were just a lot more mature than humans.

. 

 
This ritual is part of their migration pattern.  Every fall, once the band starts practicing at the U of O, the birds show up for about three weeks.  They make a nightly ritual of circling and then settling down in the chimney to rest for the evening. They stay until they're ready to move on to the next place on their journey south.  

Dave did an amazing job of taking these pictures. It wasn't easy to capture the moving birds on a still camera--especially once the sun set.  If you want to see this process with moving images (by a far less accomplished photographer) check out this video:
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xVhDuleP6o
(you might have to copy and paste the above link into your browser)

The other very important part of this ritual is that after the community watches this spectacle, we walk to the other side of the ice cream shop to indulge in splendors of another kind.  Tonight they had my favorite: chocolate chip.  James got another chocolate cone, most of which--in the spirit of great rituals--ended up on his face.  

A New Friend

This will be a quickie post because I've got a deadline (already, I know...) and I should stay focused.  I just wanted to say that a neighbor stopped by today to introduce herself and to ask if she could pick some of the plums from our garden. "Sure" I offered, "take what you like."  I couldn't help but notice with sheer joy that my new friend was wearing a purple shirt and asking for plums.  Maybe one of you mentioned our blog to her? Otherwise, that's just an amazing coincidence.

We talked for a long time.  Sabrina works at the hospital where Dave will work and her husband works at the U of O--another amazing coincidence.  They're from Ashland (about three hours south) and Sabrina knows about the best yarn shop on the planet, also in Ashland.  So between the plums and the knitting I suspect we'll be good friends in no time.  We've already made plans to go to Erev Rosh Hashanah services together. 

And yes, we have plums a plenty in our gorgeous yard.  More on that in the next blog. 

Finally...tomorrow was here.

Tomorrow turned out to be further away than we'd planned.  We had high hopes of blogging but exhaustion set in.  So I will now give you two weeks of tomorrows from the perspective of yesterday...

Our journey began before it began on a visit to Eugene.  Dave had an interview in Eugene in July, and our connecting flight from San Francisco to Eugene was cancelled (of course!) so we had to drive all through the night to get him to his interview on time.  The California canyons were a welcome surprise.  I want to return to that color orange.  We arrived in Eugene the next morning with an hour to spare.  Somehow Dave managed to stay awake through most of the interview.  He got the offer on the spot, and we celebrated by visiting the famous Saturday market in Eugene where we ate peaches (no plums...they bloom later):

And then we explored the city and the river walk along Alton Baker Park.  Here we watched the sun set over the river. 

The next day we decided to check out the views from an hour west of Eugene. 

And later we assessed the views an hour east:

Because both views were so amazing we decided we should definitely move here. After chaotic packing, shipping, pacing, hand wringing, writing (to meet deadlines), applications filling out (to meet more deadlines), learning 5,000 new passcodes for new computer accounts, and millions of a trips to Staples and Petsmart, not to mention a haircut or three, we celebrated with a delicious family send-off/birthday dinner.

And the fun was only just beginning.  The next day the movers arrived.  I accidentally forgot to mention the overpass to the driver, so he got a little stuck on the way to our house with his semi.  Luckily Dave was able to rescue him.  After a day of packing in 1000% humidity (!), we headed out...all the way to King of Prussia (about 10 miles from home).  Potter discovered that he likes hotels:

Solomon, however, had other ideas. The mouse is a fake.  We stuffed it with cat nip hoping the drugs would calm Solomon.  You can see how successful we were.

The next stop was Richfield, Ohio which seemed to be fairly uninteresting...at least from the hotel.  But then we were off again to LeClaire, IA where we stayed in a hotel on the beautiful Mississippi River.  This was a great stop with a cool breeze.  I met a man on a motorcycle from Virginia.  We was taking his sixteen-year- old daughter on a ride across the country on his bike.  They were both lively and funny, and on their way back to Virginia.

Then on to Nebraska which was entirely too big and flat...but a necessary evil on our way to my favorite--Wyoming. Potter made himself right at home on a bed of his making (luckily there was a second bed for the humans). 

Solomon--ever the rebel--plotted his escape:

While Dave and I enjoyed the warm welcome we received on our way to Rawlins, Wyoming where we saw Pioneer Park:

A field of windmills:

We moved on to other discoveries: a place called "rattlesnake pass";  a farm with two lamas grazing amidst hundreds of cows; a field of marigolds; terrible thunderstorms that never came; and a wildfire that continued long after we left.  Wyoming, Wyoming, Wyoming--loves!!  We were greeted by a rainbow that reached from one end of the earth to the other.  And on my run I worked my way up a tall stone formation where I watched the sun set over the mountains as a train, ten miles long, passed me by.  I could see the snowy Rockies in the distance.  And we ate the best Thai food I've ever eaten in this tiny, remote pocket with a population of 5310 people, where they served something Philadelphia has yet to discover: tofu...prepared perfectly.

Later, while I dreamily lapped up the exotic (to me) and beautiful one turn after another, we stopped for lunch in a town in eastern Oregon.  The town has one diner and a mailbox for its 30-some residents--and that's all.  They carpool once a week to the grocery store 50 miles away.  They made me a mean taco salad...although they were bewildered by my request to remove the meat. Eastern Oregon was the biggest surprise of all.  The land is a place where I could imagine dinosaurs grumbling and wagons swaying in clouds of dust. 

Eventually we made our way here, to the other side where we've met new friends already.  Even Solomon agrees that this is a good place to stay.  See the vomit-colored green on the walls?  Dave took care of that while I scrubbed windows and floors and set up our kitchen.  Our first meal came from our amazing garden--more on that in a later blog ...once we finish unpacking.

I keep thinking about my new and old neighbors amidst the wild varieties of peoples and experiences I encountered along the way-- just a tiny sampling of the richness in this vast country.  What a gift and privilege to have made this trip. 

The source of the plums

    From Christina Rossetti's "Goblin Market"



         " Lizzie met her at the gate

Full of wise upbraidings:

“Dear, you should not stay so late,

Twilight is not good for maidens;

Should not loiter in the glen

In the haunts of goblin men.

Do you not remember Jeanie,

How she met them in the moonlight,

Took their gifts both choice and many,

Ate their fruits and wore their flowers

Pluck’d from bowers

Where summer ripens at all hours?

But ever in the noonlight

She pined and pined away;

Sought them by night and day,

Found them no more, but dwindled and grew grey;

Then fell with the first snow,

While to this day no grass will grow

Where she lies low:

I planted daisies there a year ago

That never blow.

You should not loiter so.”

“Nay, hush,” said Laura:

“Nay, hush, my sister:

I ate and ate my fill,

Yet my mouth waters still;

To-morrow night I will

Buy more;” and kiss’d her:

“Have done with sorrow;

I’ll bring you plums to-morrow

Fresh on their mother twigs,

Cherries worth getting;

You cannot think what figs

My teeth have met in,

What melons icy-cold

Piled on a dish of gold

Too huge for me to hold,

What peaches with a velvet nap,

Pellucid grapes without one seed:

Odorous indeed must be the mead

Whereon they grow, and pure the wave they drink

With lilies at the brink,

 And sugar-sweet their sap.”