The locals say that the Northwestern summer (i.e. the end of the rainy season) never starts until folks are back from the July 4th holiday. Well, today's that day. Scene above from a quick walk this morning in Washington Park's Hoyt Arboretum, where all those confusing conifers are labeled.
Eden is that old-fashioned House—M.E.
We dwell in every day
Without suspecting our abode
Until we drive away— Emily Dickinson
We've now been living in Portland, with a roof over our head, exactly as long as we were traveling in the van. The five months in the city have gone by much faster than the five on the road.
We call our place the Leaning Porch Ranch for obvious reasons. I measure it at 625 square feet; real estate records put it around 670. Suffice to say it's cozy.
When friends visited recently, we put them in the bedroom, and we slept in Hanz the vanz. Pulled up to the kitchen door with the top popped, it was a fine guesthouse.
We found being inside it was like old home week. We may not be out roaming quite as much, but it's where our hearts remain. So, even as we redefine our lives and this blog, we'll keep calling it Back2theVan.
—Nolan“Money is like gasoline during a road trip. You don’t want to run out of gas on your trip, but you’re not doing a tour of gas stations. You have to pay attention to money, but it shouldn’t be about the money.” —Tim O’Reilly
O’Reilly is a highly regarded publisher of tech books. His quote comes from a current profile on his business in Inc. magazine. In it, he talks about how his business plan from the beginning was simply creating "interesting work for interesting people."
It perfectly describes our current sorta-upside-down life/journey. We definitely need to make the rent—and have been. But what's interesting about this trip isn't the money.
—NolanA new story/photo package from Mary and me now up at ZesterDaily.com highlighting an inaugural pub crawl in beer-loving Portland. That's our host Angelo De Ieso II, head blogger for Brewpublic, hoisting one at the Victory Bar.
Portland's famous for having the most craft breweries—small, independent beer producers—of any city in the world. At last count, 39 of them operated within the metro area. Supposedly more than Munich, though without the big troughs you see in beer halls there. Here in Beervana, as Portland's sometimes called, the beer seems to go hand-in-hand with all the java joints in town: craft coffee in the morning, craft beer in the evening. Good food all the time.
—NolanSpring is well underway here in Portland, and it is dazzling: Deep blue crocuses, blazing yellow daffodils, pink cherry and white pear trees, willows dangling strands of spring-green leaves. A walk down the street brings perfumed waves from an exceptionally sweet-scented flowering bush, name unknown even to the son of horticulturists.
Plus we've had a week—a week!—of blue skies. I've had to dig out my sunglasses. The snowy peak of Mt. Hood (invisible on grey days) rises like a giant ice cream cone on the eastern horizon, a site that never fails to startle and delight.
It occurs to me lately that I've been cheating on Portland. Just after we arrived here in December, I got the teeniest of email responses to an inquiry about a job opening in Santa Fe. In this job market, that passes for encouragement. Immediately, my imagination seized on living there, not here.
When perusing real estate listings here (a favorite time-sink), I succumb to an urge to compare them with housing prices there. Craiglist rental listings, ditto. Is it my imagination, or do prices seem lower in Santa Fe than here?
Walking among tall firs and cedars, I think of cottonwoods and the scent of sage. Here in the land of deep green, I dream of deserts.
Long ago I realized I was about places the way some folks are about relationships: always curious about what else is out there. Love the limerence, the new, the discovery, the first flush of romance.
But I do commit while I'm wherever I am. A serial geographist, Nolan once called me. So it's unusual to be in one new place dreaming of another.
I suppose it has to do with our general up-in-the-airness. Even aside from wondering whether we can hack the rain (and the muddy dog), will we find work in Portland? Or anywhere? If gigs are the new jobs, is this the best place to hunker down, or should we look for someplace cheaper?
Although Hanz is parked for now, we're still more or less camping here in our month-to-month house, with all the stuff that makes home home still stored in L.A. Not, I hasten to add, that home isn't where Nolan and the pooch and, for that matter, Hanz are, but living with essentially what we could fit in a VW van isn't exactly…settled.
Anyway, three months later, all quiet on the Santa Fe front. I suspect that the money for the position—it was a newspaper job after all (what was I thinking??)—has disappeared. Newspapers these days will break your heart.
But what's not to like about Portland in the springtime? We may not yet know if this is The Place, but I'm here now.
—M.E.