How the Flowers Grow!

Knut Hamsun wrote a book named, Growth of the Soil.
Or, at least, that is the English translation of the book.
Hamsun lived on a rock, the name of which, in English, is Norway.

In Portland, Oregon, the name of which in English is Portland, Oregon, the evidence for burgeoning growth is everywhere.  Portland is not Seattle or San Francisco, but neither is it Los Angeles or Las Vegas.  It is lovely, and fecund.

Unlike Tucson, where we live now, where water is scarce and even the plants are hard and defensive, Portland (and the Pacific Northwest) is crowded with enthusiasm for growth.  The colors are kinder; almost muted.  Even the people seem less inclined to burst with color.  When the sun does come, as many people believe it will, they reach for it.

It had been our intention to drive to a vineyard

somewhere up the Columbia Gorge, but the sun was out and finding a place for lunch along the river was precisely what everyone else was doing, too, so we settled in and satisfied ourselves with a long, lovely lunch just there.

We do sometimes show unseemly pride in our grandchildren, but honesty compels us to admit that even at eight months, Elliot is not yet talking in a language we understand, but that may be our problem, not hers.  She communicates, defecates, bellyaches, belches and flourishes like a flower.

Having recently had a second hip replacement, I am especially jealous of her ability to examine the bottom of her feet, up close, parking them somewhere near her shoulder for easy retrieval when something else catches her interest.

Across the street from the patio where we had lunch, the Columbia River, ruffled by kite surfers and calmed by sports fishermen, was almost sedate.  It has not always been sedate, nor is it a house pet even today.  But it is the case that almost every mile of the River today is managed by dams and locks all the way to Canada.

The salmon that have migrated up river to spawn for longer than there have been nets and hooks and generators have had to do what they could to maintain themselves:  too many dams, too few fish ladders, maybe even too much nuclear waste edging toward the River.

In 1805, Lewis and Clark and their band of trudgers reached the mouth of the Columbia near Ilwaco, on the Washington side, and spent the winter in a fort they built near Seaside, Oregon.  As I recall, not only the account of their expedition, but my own years near Tacoma, they must have been happy to break camp and return to St. Louis.

There are no sun tans in winter where the Columbia meets the Pacific Ocean.  There were tan skins, but they were genetic--the heritage of the first explorers to the Pacific Northwest, and they had walked and paddled an even longer way, from Asia, across what is now the Bering Strait, and down the coast of Alaska and Canada.  We can be quite certain those first peoples did not call those places Alaska and Canada:  that honor was reserved for Sarah Palin.

It is so odd, so self-mutilatingly odd, that every time we lose our way, or fear the worst rather than choose the best, we savage those who have done exactly what we are doing:  we blame the most recent immigrants.

That's us.

The richest native peoples in America were quite likely those who  lived in the Pacific Northwest.  Life by the sea, where life began, is often a good life, maybe even because it rains too much.  Still today, the gems of the West Coast are those coastal cities.

Elliot is a gem, even hanging upside down, as gems often do.  She has a tooth, now.  Just one, but one has to start somewhere.

Portland is a good place to start.