It makes me incredibly happy to map this unfolding life in relationships: people and memories rooted in places and adventures and shared celebrations.
When Ted and I married, we honeymooned in Cascadia. (I like that title. It sounds even more romantic than “Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia,” doesn’t it?) Continue Reading…
The internet brings me many tidbits, connections, and inspirations. It’s a time-waste and a treasure-trove.
I found this recent read thanks to Sarah Peck. (Side note: Sarah, too, trained and worked in landscape architecture. A definite kindred spirit.)
David Cain’s article, Your Lifestyle Has Already Been Designed, resonates soundly with the season I’m in right now: the musings over New Zealand’s flat whites and the ease of dropping dollars on coffees here at home, the loss of space for life-giving things that cost more time than money, and the real price of our current system of economics.
"Here in the West, a lifestyle of unnecessary spending has been deliberately cultivated and nurtured in the… http://t.co/NAhLQcVxle
— Sarah Kathleen Peck (@sarahkpeck) June 24, 2014
I started to share the article as a Facebook post but then thought better of it Continue Reading…
Fellows on this journey who really get it make my heart feel at home, both in literal and metaphorical foreign territory. Have you met people like that? People who make you feel open with your story and at ease in your own skin? Continue Reading…
Yes, I’ve been singing the praises of my home state, but I’m not above an honest jab at Oregon.
By some great fate, I am an Oregonian. I grew up with Pacific Northwest air in my lungs, Oregon dirt between my toes and under my fingernails, and a vantage point to watch the world start new each day with the sun rising over the Cascade Mountains.
The place is in my blood. While living adventures on pinpoints of foreign maps, Oregon hovers behind my shoulder or calls from the far horizon, an instinctive true north on my internal compass.
Three Sisters Wilderness Area: 1999 (Yep, that’s a pre-Instagram, scanned film photo, people.)
I grew my appreciation of the world’s beauty right here in my native patch of earth: triumphantly summitting Oregon mountains, learning to fish in Oregon lakes, hiking caverns behind Oregon waterfalls, poking my finger into ice green anemones of Oregon coast tidepools, following wagon trail wheel ruts carved in Oregon stone, and learning my identity in the web of Oregon ancestry in the midst of deeply nurturing friends and family.
And now, six(ish) continents later, as I shared in a recent comment to a reader, I’ve come home and fallen even more in love with this place; I know without doubt how special of a spot Oregon actually is. Like anywhere, it has its faults and blemishes, but for locals and visitors with a curious heart and an appetite for nature’s beauty, delicious foods, and friendships with genuine people, this land is absolutely rife with riches to be discovered and treasured.
For all these reasons and more, I’m in this midst of a mad, mad crush on our state Tourism Board’s current campaign: The Seven Wonders of Oregon.
This place on the planet stamped its mark on me from the very beginning, and I’m more proud than ever to see Oregon showcased with such class and style.
Here we are, on the far side of the sun.
At that half-way point between birth-day and birthday.
Closer to one than zero.
babyOregonian turned six months old this week, and planet earth’s orbit is headed back toward that place in space where we hung in the skies last September 17th.
Our January days are flowing calm and quiet, one into the next. A bit like the Willamette River ambles through winter landscape when there isn’t excess Oregon rainwater to manage or riverbanks to break.
I’ll take it.
This rhythm.
It’s different than travel: the go-go-go of new scenes and cities each day.
Different than work: tasks and client meetings dotted through familiar Portland and surrounds.
It’s a new sort of productive meander Continue Reading…
It’s an odd New Year’s Eve. I’d planned to post this collection of memories from our 2013 travels, but I woke up to two glitches: first, my web host’s servers were down and I couldn’t access my site, and second, the black and silver analog clock that hangs in the middle of my house was stuck all day at 6:45am.
It’s funny how time passes and how we choose to keep track.
We’ve had our little babyOregonian for the span of time it took Jules Verne’s character Phileas Fogg to circumnavigate the world. It’s Lucie’s 80-day birthday!
Eight Week old Lucie at her first Oregon Ducks Game
We haven’t made a second trip around the globe, but we’ve now been around the block a time or two these past few months when it comes to diapers, baby baths, and try-it-and-see bedtime routines.
Speaking of, we’re not racing time for the sake of a wager, but we’ve certainly spent weeks up around the clock, desperate to get Lucie to shut her eyes and go to bed so we could have just a little time to ourselves. (Lesson learned: Sleep? Don’t bet on it.)
We’re not carrying carpet-bags or trundling along in steamer ships or railroad cars, but we’ve swapped our trusty backpacks for a classy diaper bag and we’re making our way just fine with a little baby carseat. Continue Reading…
Thanksgiving is tomorrow. Ted worked a half day and rode the MAX home from work, and as traffic stacked up on Portland freeways, we took Lucie a dozen blocks down the road for a holiday kick-off cup of coffee and slice of Bipartisan Cafe pie…
