I Love Portland.

I Love Portland (and Hillsboro).

It’s true.

Just a short journey to so many gorgeous, gorgeous hikes.  A forest behind my apartment.  Sparse city, and trees happily taking over any space left to them.

No traffic.

No smog.

The drive to McMinnville is amazing.  Wide-open fields with hills behind.  The fields are so green they’re almost Dominican level, and the hills behind are faintly bluish.  I find myself humming “Beautiful Fields” from Last Exile almost every time.  Completely relaxing, what with so few people on the roads.  Glorious.  A place to be happy.

My ideal terrain: hilly and forested.

My favorite color palette: dark green and brown and, on foggy or icy days, white, and on clear days, light blue.

Oh, the Willamette River.  Cresting the river on those bridges and seeing the city of Portland there (and forest on the hills behind) is simply stunningly beautiful.  I love it at night with the lights gleaming off the river.  I love it in the daytime when the sun shines and the colors are spectacular.  And I love it in the much more common cloudy days when the colors are deep and rich.

I haven’t noticed any graffiti.  I haven’t heard people yelling.  I haven’t heard any gunshots.  I haven’t been kept awake by helicopters circling overhead and policemen calling over the radio to “Come out with your hands up!” 

People walk and bike.  I wouldn’t know there was any obesity epidemic in America from Portland.

If you pass people on a hike or an everyday walk, most of the time you will exchange a greeting.  You normally talk to the checker at the grocery store.

Frost sparkling on evergreen trees and cars and all the rest is dreadfully incovenient, but so wonderful nonetheless.  It reminds me of the part in The Silmarillion where Morgoth brought bitter cold and Manwë made snow out of it – the clear implication there that the world was even better afterward.

With layers and help from REI, I even find myself thinking, as I walk out in the 30-some degree weather, that it’s a lovely brisk day and the air is wonderfully refreshing.  Heh.  If I let it, it can make me feel so alive.  (That or like I need to curl into a ball and shiver or I will very soon stop being alive.)

The air is so fresh.  It’s always like the day after a rain.  Sweet, clear, clean.

This would be a good place to grow up.  I used to wish, as I stared out the window onto the dirty alley and the vacant field with its walls covered in graffiti, for a place where people didn’t have to be so suspicious of each other.  For a place where kids could just go outside and play without their parents feeling anxious.  For a place with little fear.

This might not really be a place without grounds for fear, but at least it’s much closer to it.  Everything about it feels freeing.  Expansive.  Friendly.  Safe.

It probably makes it feel even more free that I am spreading my own wings, of course.  That I’m living on my own and making my own decisions.

My new church is friendly and welcoming and full of kind, helpful people.  English country dance class and hiking events and people who let me crash their houses and other miscellaneous adventures have made for a life that’s got just the right level of happy fullness.  I can hardly believe how quickly I’ve made good friends.

It’s a good place.  I would not be sad to keep living here for the rest of my life.  No, not sad at all.  Wanderlust may come, but this makes a good home.

I love Portland, my home.

I Miss Los Angeles.

It’s true.

I miss the warmth,

I miss the sun,

I miss the ocean,

I miss everyone.

Tonight

It seems like ages ago.

The bright, bright colors, so bright it literally hurts.  I never wanted to wear sunglasses, though, even when the tears started flowing from my wounded eyes.  I loved those bright colors too much.

The clear, blue sky.

Only one short-sleeved shirt and a wrap necessary, ever.  And you can often dispense with the wrap.

Hardly any rain, but when it comes, oh, the delightful, drenching downpour!  How the world changes!

Seasons which I recognize instinctively.

Jacaranda trees with their lavendar flowers and lacy leaves.

Camphor trees spreading long graceful limbs over the streets.

The swingset under the best of jacaranda trees, rickety and delightful.

The smell of salt on the air and the cries of the gulls.

Cheerful birdsong continuously.  (And some not so cheerful.  Crows and peacocks have really ugly cries.)

Hustle and bustle of people.  You know that there is life around.

Always comfortable to be outside.  Only very rarely any seasonal reason not to plop outside with a good book.  No need to think twice before running outside.  No need to grab layers.

So much art.  So many concerts.  So many plays.  The Getty.  The Hollywood Bowl.  The Walt Disney Concert Hall. 

The beach.

The church in which I grew up.

Biola.

The Dead Kitty Party.  Torrey Music.  The church choir’s extravaganza.

The vast majority of my friends and family.

I miss Los Angeles, my home.