Mini-adventures, ready go!

Here are some small adventures that I have been experiencing in Oregon lately. I am going to write one paragraph about each one, an exercise in brevity if nothing else. Some of these might be full-length blog posts in the future, but here we go!

This week I went to the Oregon coast. It was sprinkling rain as I got in my car to leave Eugene, and the moment I was fully out of town on Highway 126 heading west, it began to rain without mercy. This continued for my entire drive to Florence; the only change was when it began raining harder. I drove idly around Florence for a bit, curving through residential streets to find the North Jetty, where the Siuslaw River meets the Pacific. By this point, it was pouring rain, and wind whipped every which way. I zipped up my jacket, changed into old jeans & running shoes, and dashed onto the beach, where I spent a merry fifteen minutes cavorting on the beach. I ran into the wind; I ran with the gales, and allowed them to carry me in a dance across the deserted, swept-clean beach. Then I raced back to my adventure-mobile and changed into dry clothes after a brief wander through old-town Florence before driving the hour-plus back to Eugene, a drive where I was again escorted by torrential rain.

====

Sam Bond's Garage used to be a garage, but now it is a bar in Eugene's Whiteaker neighborhood. The neighborhood gets a bad rap, a mishmash of old hippies long-wandering bums, dirty punk rockers, and an emerging artsy youth. My dad turned up his nose when I told him where I was going; I too in my decades of living in Eugene had never once been to this bar, iconic for serving drinks in Mason jars. The exterior was framed in cheery lights, sparkling through the dark, past several much more decrepit buildings. The hipster bouncer looked up from his reading to peruse my ID. The bar, a long room, hummed with energy. A stage lay at the far end of the room. Men with various instruments had assembled upon it, quietly plucking bluegrass tunes. A brightly colored chalkboard listed the brews on tap - an assemblage of local micros, house-made mead and hard cider, the usual litany of wine, spirits, bottled beer. A colorful sign hung over the bar, touting late-night appetizers, organic salad greens, fancy pizza by the slice. The bartender poured me up a double-red ale (brewed just blocks away) and people crowded in, elbow to elbow at rough-hewn round tables around the room. Everywhere people were chattering away, sharing thoughts, creating connections, clutching their Mason jars.

====

It seems trite to call it an adventure, but for the past two weeks we have been full into my mother's chemotherapy adventure. The cancer center sits right off the river; sun beams in through wide-open windows. It may be the most welcoming doctor's office I've been to, populated with friendly staff, rooms filled with jigsaw puzzles, brewed coffee, and the like. The chemo infusion takes four hours, as they fill my mom's IV with a variety-pack of drugs to pre-empt certain effects of the chemo before the chemo, too, runs through the line into her arm. Liz, the nurse, is loving and patient, but matter-of-fact. She describes each drug to us as she adds it to the olio. My mother dozes. We eat the lunch we brought along. My dad leaves to run an errand. The staff eat their lunches, and remind us to take advantage of the assorted tea and dried soups in the nurses' corner. I go for a jog along the river, feeling the rushing rapids, dodging a sprinkle of rain, cutting back through the mall parking lot to return to the cancer center. When the last chemo drug finishes its slow drip into her vein, Liz wraps my mom's arm in a hot pink bandage, and ten minutes later we're in the car. Day one of chemo, and done.

====

One of my favorite Christmas gifts this year was not under the tree. The chemo put my mom out of commission for several days, so my youngest sister Laura and I wound up with most of the holiday shopping. We didn't mind this in the slightest, and easily spent a few days running this errand or that, coming up with action plans to find the best presents at the best places. It was fun to imagine what Mom and Dad might want, and to buy presents for one at the behest of the other. We had a great time browsing bargain bins, laughing wildly at silly fun facts (FUN FACT!) in childrens' books. Here's a joke we learned: What do polar bears eat? Iceburgers! Ha ha ha! Laura and I also brainstormed the same present for Mom that Mom wanted to buy for Laura, so I surreptitiously bought both. We stayed up late one night assembling a scrapbook binder for Mom, filled with get-well cards she's received, including a darling set of photos from the third-grade class she teaches. One day we made fudge to get in the holiday spirit; another, we listened to campy Christmas songs on the radio while wrapping presents. Laura lives in Illinois now and is six years younger than me; the greatest gift of all were these days we spent together preparing for the holiday.

How to get a Christmas tree

In Oregon, we are well-known (or at least we think we are) for our luscious, green Christmas trees. I know for a fact that at least one year we provided the lofty fir for the White House Christmas. And, I mean, our forested mountains are jam-packed with trees, just waiting to be cut down! Right? Where's that ol' pioneering spirit?

At any rate, the harvesting of Christmas trees is something we Oregonians hold near and dear to us. Growing up, there were always kids at school who lived on Christmas tree farms, and come Thanksgiving, every spare parking lot was packed with one group or another hawking trees. Of course, a slightly more intrepid Christmas tree-hunter could wander just a few miles outside of town to one of the aforementioned Christmas tree farms. If you were feeling especially hardy, you could toss a few bucks the way of the Forest Service, get yourself a permit, and drive up into the mountains to fell the tree yourself, just like your frontiersman forefathers.

For several years while growing up, we did the latter. We'd make a day of it, take an old BLM road high in the mountains as the snowdrifts got higher and higher around us. Eventually we'd park, drink some hot cocoa, and play in the snow for awhile before selecting the perfect Christmas pine.

In recent years, we have become fond of Porter's Christmas tree farm, a few miles' drive west of town on Highway 126, heading toward the coast. So, Dad, Laura, and I got set to go find a Christmas tree, Oregon-style.

I feel the need to explain how this process works, because since moving to Ohio I have been very surprised to see that Christmas tree lots are not nearly as prolific (I recall one in all of Athens last year, with trees going for twice what you'd pay in Oregon) and not a tree farm in sight. In fact, my friends were appalled when I mentioned the very idea of chopping down a tree just to have for Christmas, whipping out their artificial trees as easy as you please. I'll admit that it does seem a tad un-environmentally-conscious, but tell that the the mountain men who first logged their way through the Cascades.

First, you make gingerbread cookies shaped like trees, and bring them with you. For hearty snacks. After working up a rustic appetite.

Then you get in the truck and drive to the Christmas tree farm. Everyone in Oregon owns a truck. Everyone in Oregon also owns a Subaru, and a bicycle. It's pretty much a requirement to live here. Now that you know the transportation laws, you can plan accordingly.

It was an absolutely beautiful day. The sun shone through white puffy clouds, the sky was crisp and blue overhead as we picked our way through row upon row of trees in various stages of growth.

You have to look at every single one to make sure it's perfect. This is a process that can take hours (gotta work up that appetite somehow!), but today our pace, like the air, was brisk.

It's hard to decide; they're all so similar.

After you select the perfect tree to grace your Yuletide mantle, the instinctive Oregonian in us all comes out, and it's time to fell the tree. Mrs. Porter (she of the Porter's Christmas Tree Farm moniker) greets us as we pull up the long drive. She's washing her car; Monday is a slow day for Christmas tree farms. We tell her what we want, and she hands us a handheld saw, which Dad has carried at the ready during our hike through piney farmland.
This is how you do it in Oregon.

The tree is removed from its berth in the ground in a matter of minutes, and we wend our way back out of the endless rows of trees. Dad carts it back up the hill to the truck, where he secures it in the bed. We trek through the muddy walk (it is Oregon in December, after all) to pay Mrs. Porter. She is all out of mistletoe, but she gives us a nice spray of juniper, with the blue berries attached, that I will bring to my grandmother later that afternoon. Dad chitchats with her about the selling season, regular customers and whatnot. We go back to the truck and have a snack (good thing we brought cookies shaped like trees!).

We take the long way home, driving through the countryside around Eugene, soaking up our Christmas tree adventure just a few minutes more.

Being here.

I have been getting quite used to my life of funemployment in Eugene, also known as unemployment where you have fun. I've been finding little ways to continue to have adventures, and, importantly, doing a lot of re-connecting with friends, old old friends, the city itself - this concept of home, of roots. At least once a day something happens that reminds me in a new way of why I need to be here right now!

Babies are one really good reason! I will write an entire post later about this particular bundle of joy. I have had the delight of spending the past few days visiting with a number of people I have known off and on for the majority of my life.

Ian Awesome is a real-life fellow adventurer who I have known since early high school. You should definitely go check out his blog, because he updates it more than I do mine, and actually writes about current news items! He is currently on an adventure trajectory of his own that has brought him back to Eugene at the same time I am lackadaisically Here.

I spent a delightful afternoon visiting with Ian and the aforementioned bundle(s) of joy, and it amazes me how effortlessly our friendships rekindle. Hours and hours were spent at our respective parents' houses, discussing matters serious and lighthearted. At one point, Ian and I were beside ourselves with laughter. Connections and friends that exist in your life continuously from the time you are very young - that is the definition of family. It's wonderful. I'm finding more meaning in my being in Eugene. I needed to be here right now, for instance, because of my fellow wanderer. To have him, and Katie & Steve & Aislin, reinvigorate my life, my Sarah-Nelson-ness, and to hopefully give him a glimmer of sunshine or who knows what.

This week I realized that I needed to create new adventures in Eugene. Don't get me wrong, it is beyond delightful to revisit old stomping grounds, check in with former employers, meet college friends for coffee up by campus. But I've been gone for over two years, and I'll find sparse excitement in re-treading old ground in this town. This is a unique period in my life that finds me here, and so it shall be different from any other time I've spent living here - so who knows what it will bring!

Here is one adventure I have had.

Last night I rescued Ian from a date gone south, and we had an adventure. We tried to go to the Ninkasi tasting room, but it was closed, but we drove around the Whiteaker neighborhood trying to find it. The brewery arises out of the deserted street, lined otherwise with beat-up cars and abandoned shopping carts, a beacon of modern microbrew magic, all chrome and light and bright bold colors, promising delicious beer dripping from the taps inside. But, alas, tonight they were closed. So we moved our adventure northward.

Ian and I both have a very firm policy about which bars we will frequent in Eugene. I am slightly more staunch as to this policy, and it focuses rather on bars I will not frequent. Pretty much everything bearing the zip code 97404 or 97402 is out, and generally everything in Springfield. We have, however, had a great deal of fun over the past 36 hours at the expense of one bar called Shooters. Shooters is, thankfully, out of the attendance area of our high school. Located on River Road, it is the closest bar to my parents' house and Peggy's house, where he has been staying. Peggy and her husband frequent Shooters, and quite enjoy it. At this point we realized our error in writing off Shooters - it's the closest bar! And it has the Jillson seal of approval! If nothing else, it will be an adventure that we can have while laughing to ourselves.

And an adventure it was, much as we had expected. Monday night, football game blaring on several TVs. Regulars crowded around the bar or pool table, a few already slurring their words. We walked through the smoking platform on the staircase before entering the bar, greeted by a list of daily specials. Shooters was the last bar in Eugene to give up smoking after the indoor smoking ban, and you could certainly envision smoke wafting through the open room. The fry cook conversed freely with customers, greeting even us, the outsiders.

I should add that, since we are in Eugene, we had our choice of eight or nine taps, half of which were west coast-produced microbrews. Ian had a pint of the sought-after Ninkasi. I had Moose Drool from a brewing company in Missoula, because I was born there, and wished I'd chosen the Ninkasi.

A young man to the right of us across the bar eyed us (me). A guy to our left down the bar, in response to something on the television, began ranting about the Phillies. Ian and I decided it was time to leave.

We returned to the mini-mall, descending the staircase over the mediocre Mexican restaurant. Slogging through Oregon December puddles between the two hair salons and the gas station, we returned to my car, where I piloted us safely back to suburbia.

P.S. Read Ian's blog: http://oneangryqueer.blogspot.com

On memory

Memory is a strange thing. Our brains work in mysterious ways, constantly sensing things without our even being aware of it. Every now and again, we're reminded of this; the cliched smell of freshly-baked cookies wafting through a warm house brings back childhood afternoons, though frequently these memories rush back in a less predictable manner.

Being back in Eugene has been a near-constant onrush of memory, the tiniest sensory perceptions I had never noticed that I was noticing. In my travels, I enjoy seeking out the familiar, creating comfort, carving out a new spot in the world that has meaning to me. For example, I now have a general map in my head of a half-dozen or more new cities across the country, where if needed, I could find a store, a drink, or a friend.

It's easy to forget, then, how long I stayed in one place prior to these adventures, and how deeply into my past these memories go. I lived in Eugene for nineteen years before moving to Ohio. It's not just that I can navigate the streets in most neighborhoods with ease, or that I am familiar with what the climate should look like this time of year. When walking down the street, I know which cracks in the sidewalk to avoid, the placement of the house on my left or right.

I walk into my parents' house, a place I haven't lived in eight years, and I know to pull the front door until it clicks. I know the way the couch will move beneath me as I curl up, the way the sun will stream in the front window. My parents' house has no smell that I would be able to describe to anyone, yet I can close my eyes, breathe in deeply, and know that I am there. Pretty much every day of his adult life, my father wears a button-up flannel-style shirt, and when I hug him and inhale, it feels right. I wish I knew how to describe this.

My brain and body have been constantly on alert since I've been here, as every move I make brings back the slightest hint of memory. Even a stray glance, a minute image out of the corner of my eye, is an image I have seen before, countless times. It's familiar beyond familiarity. I don't know if I like it, but it is comforting.

adventure-mode

Yesterday marked one month that I have been on this adventure. I realized that, although I have been resting in essentially the same location for much of this adventure, I have still been in adventure-mode. I hadn't realized how much time I spend by myself in Athens, and how accustomed I'd grown to having a huge chunk of Sarah-time each day. Even when I was on the road, my brain was often solely engaged with driving; it's crazy, but I think I had more time for peaceful introspection in the course of my daily life in Athens than I did on the days I spent alone on highways in the plains. In Eugene, I spend a lot of time in quiet repose around my parents' house. I have enjoyed creating a new three-person family unit with them, but I had forgotten what difference even having other people around in the same house makes. It's a warm, wonderful way to spend a winter, certainly! But my brain works in different ways than when I'm cozied up in my rooftop apartment in Athens with nothing but the trees to keep me company.

At any rate, I had a three-day adventure in Portland this weekend. By yesterday evening, as I prepared to head south, I found myself rather exhausted, buoyed by this realization that I have been in adventure-mode for a month straight. I am so silly sometimes! Thinking I'm resting when I'm actually not resting at all.

I headed out of Eugene Saturday morning. A local newswoman Friday night had unintentionally referred to Saturday as a holiday, and this was in some ways true. Saturday was the annual Civil War, the end-of-season matchup between the Oregon and Oregon State football teams! Naturally, the cross-state rivalry is at stake, and usually one team or the other's postseason hopes factor in, too. This was true this season especially! I watched the game at my friend Erin's house in southeast Portland. Filled with UO grads, we cheered and screamed and took it all in as our Ducks finished undefeated, #1 in the country. Pretty exciting stuff! Go ducks go!

Partly because of the football game (tens of thousands of fans madly rushing north to Corvallis), and partly because of adventure rules (no interstates, no roads I've been on before), I headed east from my parents' house in northwest Eugene. I took OR-126 (the connecter to the I-105 connecter to the interstate) into Springfield, where I found Marcola Rd., following the Mohawk River. The McKenzie and Willamette rivers meet in Eugene, but there are many other beautiful drives and scenic rivers winding their way through the area. I followed Marcola Rd. through a few unincorporated communities along the river, but mostly I was surrounded by evergreen Oregon forests. I found OR-228 and continued east through Sweet Home, where I grabbed US-20 northwest, heading back in the direction of my intended destination. 20 takes you into downtown Albany and ultimately to the interstate. I had successfully avoided gameday traffic, and found a road I'd never been on in the Willamette Valley!

It is always strange to find myself on an adventure in a semi-familiar place. Over the years, I've spent a fair amount of time in Portland, and was able to get myself around town with ease. Every day that I am away from my small-town utopia in Athens, I get a little more certain that I prefer small towns. Nonetheless, Portland was less terrifying than some other big cities I've been in, and I have a pretty decent street map of the city sketched out in my head.

After watching the game in Erin's towering, 1920s-ish house in southeast (by all accounts, a fairly typical abode for SE Portland), I picked up the Ross Island Bridge, crossing the river to spend the rest of the evening with my friend April in southwest Portland. The Willamette River divides Portland east-west before meeting the Columbia at Oregon's border with Washington.

Sunday was spent catching up with a variety of friends in Portland, returning mostly to the southeast Portland neighborhood. Belmont, Stark, Hawthorne, Alberta - these are some major streets on the east side of the river that all seek to maintain their own unique character, and in fact do give one the impression of being in a smaller community. It's comforting.

That evening, I was whisked away to the holiday party for Barfly Magazine, a publication with which I was previously unfamiliar, but an enjoyable experience nonetheless. One of the most exciting parts of the night was a surprise performance by the Last Regiment of Syncopated Drummers - everywhere I go 'round here, I'm reminded of my history with marching music. They were definitely the best drum corps-style group I've ever seen perform in front of a bar!

In summer 2000, I went on a trip to Norway with Girl Scouts. Here's a hot tip for y'all: if you stay in Girl Scouts, even when it's extremely uncool, eventually you get to do really awesome things. Like travel abroad! I was part of a group of ten girls, from Oregon and around the country, and we spent a few weeks at an international Scout camp about an hour outside of Oslo. One of the most amazing things about the trip (which I'll surely write a book about someday, too) was the connections formed between all of us on the trip. Most of us had never met or heard of one another until we gathered that June, but the connections were instantaneous. A decade later, most of us are still in touch with one another. Yesterday I spent two delightful hours having coffee with one of these fine ladies! That feeling of knowing somebody for such a long time, and so deeply, is one that really can't be beat.

Also Monday, I indulged in a spicy breakfast treat at the Paradox, a great old-school hippie cafe on SE Belmont. Well, I don't know if it's old-school, but it's got the old-school-hippie feel to it: nutritional yeast gravy! vegan pancakes! salads with "solstice" in the name! The special that day was a cornbread waffle smothered in pesto, chipotle veggie sausage, avocado, and loosely chopped pico de gallo. Yes, please!

Later, Katie and I went on a small adventure, along US-30 as it shoots west out of Portland. (If we'd continued another hour or so, we'd have found ourselves on the northern Oregon coast - something we certainly considered). Katie had a book detailing twenty hikes a person could find in and around Portland. If this hike is any indication, the author just wrote down 20 places he was familiar with - further bolstering my confidence that I, too, can write a book. We wound up into the Tualatin Mountains, parking at the end of an old logging road. We were afforded some spectacular views of the city, the Willamette River below us, and mountain upon mountain of evergreen trees. We brought the book with us, needing to follow directions like "2.7 miles in, look for a clearing of brush to your left. Forge through the branches for .2 miles until you find another logging road." I am not making this up. We made it safely out of the woods, and it felt so great to spend a few hours reconnecting with nature.

At that point, I was full of adventuring, and headed back to Eugene, straight south on I-5, a drive I have done more times than I can count - but that's an adventure, too!