Category: Portland

The Futility of Going Home

I had not been back for over four decades.

My childhood home along SW Sunrise Lane
My childhood home along SW Sunrise Lane

My parents sold my childhood home shortly after I joined the Air Force in the mid 1980’s. They abandoned the suburbs and bought a very nice home in the city, which they still own today. It is this home I stay in when visiting Portland. For four decades, this is now “home” in many ways, but not the house I grew up in.

My childhood house is still there, along Sunrise Lane in the far southwest of the Portland metro area. This is the home featured in childhood memories spent roaming deep forests and neglected orchards. A green childhood of trees, sheep and chickens, endless mowing, picking blackberries and plums, or wandering a wonderland created by another ice storm.

Continue reading “The Futility of Going Home”

Another Hop Across the Pond

Starting out on an adventure, a couple weeks on the mainland. A bit of visiting family, the annual tribal meeting, then off to Alaska for a little fishing with family. A lot of camera gear loaded, will be making time for some exploring along the way.

Yet another hop across the Pacific, leaving the island behind and headed to Portland.

Leaves

Leaves
Autumn colors in fallen leaves on a Portland street
There is something going on in Portland… For some reason the leaves on many of the trees are turning yellow or red and dropping from the trees. Fallen leaves litter the streets and lawns of the cities neighborhoods. Some trees already appear to be dead, skeletal and leafless.

Local residents seem to take little notice of this ongoing environmental disaster, going about their business. They even stop and take photos of the fallen leaves. The effect is admittedly quite pretty, with striking colors.

Oregon in 1986

Another pick from the slides I am busily digitizing. After basic training and tech school with the USAF and before deployment to England, I took a month’s leave. Much of this was spent visiting favorite places around Portland in the late fall of 1986…

Back Home

It is pretty. It is a view I have spent all too much time staring at lately. Four times from the islands to the mainland in a bit over a month. Four times I have run the route from Kona, to Seattle, to Portland. Six times I have bounced through SeaTac airport when I add the run from Portland to Juneau and back.

I am back home for a while. Still dealing with the slightly disconnected feeling I often get after a long vacation. Living in a totally different world for a few weeks changes the definition of normal. It is back to work tomorrow and a resumption of the normal routine of life.

Pacific Wing
Looking out from the window of Alaska flight 843 from Seattle to Kona, 8Sep2013