Daniel and Ellie invited Mari and me to visit them for several days, and we think we did.
The way to Portland, if you live in Tucson, sometimes goes through Salt Lake City, probably because Delta believes in full airplanes, or maybe because no one should too suddenly turn from desert to the bottom of the sea. On the first leg of the trip, we met the most beautiful dog in the world. He was an Akita, of amazing good humor, whose duties consisted of keeping his owner in good humor, too.
Ellie and Daniel live in Portland, Oregon, where the nights and days strive for equal light levels. I exaggerate, or course, else what is the point of telling the truth? As a person who orients himself by the position of the sun in the sky, I had to wait what I think was three nights and two days to catch sight of it, and then it was diffused beyond position.
My phone kept posting messages to me that as soon as it could distinguish up from down, it was going to send me my location. In the meantime, it said, I might try using i-Phone maps, because it had much more experience being lost than anyone: it positioned me at sea, sixty fathoms down.
Were the truth to be told, and there is not chance of that, I would have to admit that Portland is a great city. There is no way of knowing where you are in the city, because the east-west dividing line is a river, but so is the city. There is a north-south dividing line, but it is a street, or an avenue, or something, and what can that possibly mean, at sea?
It is impossible to think of Portland without thinking of food. We had a plate of oysters at a small corner restaurant that was possibly the best oysters I have ever had. And the rest of the meal was really good! I think it is the sea air that brines everything in Portland. Portland is not on the coast, at all--it is on the Willamette River--but it is easy to forget that. Water is an atmosphere in Portland, not a run-off. Brining a turkey in Portland means hanging the bird on a tree in the backyard, and tossing a little salt at it.
. . .
Several days have passed since I wrote the preceding paragraphs. In the while, both of us have been getting out of bed and getting back into it, punctuated by fits of coughing and saying, "Ugh", and "Goodgodumighty!", and "Ugh", again. Finally, after about a week, the medicines seem to have reduced the volume of our limited vocabulary, and we look forward to . . . to not ever coughing, again, more or less.
. . .
I believe I recall that one day Ellie and Dan drove us up the Columbia River to Multnomah Falls, where we saw the last ten salmon of Autumn spawning, either in the water from the Falls, or in the Oregon air, just above the water. Whatever frenzy drives the first salmon up the Columbia from the Pacific does not seem to last long enough to motivate the last few returning pilgrims. They made lazy tail wags at each other and the gravel bed. At the edge of the stream bed, an official sign ordered that people not poke the salmon with sticks. That makes sense. Who wants to reproduce while someone is poking you in the side with a stick?
We had lunch in the Lodge, not ten steps away from the stream bed, a lovely stone building reminiscent of medieval life, and--the poking season being over--returned to Portland where it was raining, too.
And, as I said, ever since then, we have been saying "Whoof!", and going back to bed, again. Perhaps tomorrow, one of us will look out the window to see whether it is raining here, too.
The way to Portland, if you live in Tucson, sometimes goes through Salt Lake City, probably because Delta believes in full airplanes, or maybe because no one should too suddenly turn from desert to the bottom of the sea. On the first leg of the trip, we met the most beautiful dog in the world. He was an Akita, of amazing good humor, whose duties consisted of keeping his owner in good humor, too. Ellie and Daniel live in Portland, Oregon, where the nights and days strive for equal light levels. I exaggerate, or course, else what is the point of telling the truth? As a person who orients himself by the position of the sun in the sky, I had to wait what I think was three nights and two days to catch sight of it, and then it was diffused beyond position.
My phone kept posting messages to me that as soon as it could distinguish up from down, it was going to send me my location. In the meantime, it said, I might try using i-Phone maps, because it had much more experience being lost than anyone: it positioned me at sea, sixty fathoms down.
Were the truth to be told, and there is not chance of that, I would have to admit that Portland is a great city. There is no way of knowing where you are in the city, because the east-west dividing line is a river, but so is the city. There is a north-south dividing line, but it is a street, or an avenue, or something, and what can that possibly mean, at sea?
It is impossible to think of Portland without thinking of food. We had a plate of oysters at a small corner restaurant that was possibly the best oysters I have ever had. And the rest of the meal was really good! I think it is the sea air that brines everything in Portland. Portland is not on the coast, at all--it is on the Willamette River--but it is easy to forget that. Water is an atmosphere in Portland, not a run-off. Brining a turkey in Portland means hanging the bird on a tree in the backyard, and tossing a little salt at it.
. . .
Several days have passed since I wrote the preceding paragraphs. In the while, both of us have been getting out of bed and getting back into it, punctuated by fits of coughing and saying, "Ugh", and "Goodgodumighty!", and "Ugh", again. Finally, after about a week, the medicines seem to have reduced the volume of our limited vocabulary, and we look forward to . . . to not ever coughing, again, more or less.
. . .
I believe I recall that one day Ellie and Dan drove us up the Columbia River to Multnomah Falls, where we saw the last ten salmon of Autumn spawning, either in the water from the Falls, or in the Oregon air, just above the water. Whatever frenzy drives the first salmon up the Columbia from the Pacific does not seem to last long enough to motivate the last few returning pilgrims. They made lazy tail wags at each other and the gravel bed. At the edge of the stream bed, an official sign ordered that people not poke the salmon with sticks. That makes sense. Who wants to reproduce while someone is poking you in the side with a stick?
And, as I said, ever since then, we have been saying "Whoof!", and going back to bed, again. Perhaps tomorrow, one of us will look out the window to see whether it is raining here, too.
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