Wild Life and Wildlife in Portland

December 2, 2011

I love this town. Portland is bustling and sophisticated and beautiful. Charlie’s apartment is downtown and we can hop on the streetcar right outside his door, ride free anywhere in the downtown blocks. This came in very handy after a long night of traipsing between art galleries and drinking wine, which would have been more fun if we’d actually liked any of the art we found. Well, there were a couple of Dali’s that I fell in love with, but we couldn’t fit them on the street car so had to leave them in the gallery.

The downtown here feels like a young people’s town. It’s full of hippies and yuppies and who knows who else tucked into restaurants and coffee shops and wine bars and wandering among the brightly lit trees. A happening place. Completely forgetting how old we are, I think we just blend in. I am reminded of my mother looking at the assisted living place she was moving into and saying, “I don’t want to live with all these old people!”

The Park blocks make up the central corridor downtown—a broad walking mall of grass and trees for about ten blocks—a perfect echo of all the wild wooded parks that are tucked within the city limits outside the edge of downtown--every bit as beautiful and lush as the Olympic peninsula. The Willamette runs through town like the Mississippi runs through the Twin Cities. Outside the city center, there are many lovely neighborhoods with core shopping areas.

We went walking on the Oak Bottoms Wildlife Refuge along the Willamette. There we found an old steam engine pulling a holiday train for kids and their grown ups. Bob struck up a conversation with the volunteer engineer whose father had been the engineer on this very locomotive when it was operated by the Spokane, Portland and Seattle Railway hauling freight along the Columbia River.

When we came across this imposing mural rising above the wildlife refuge path we thought it must be a park building. Turns out it's a mausoleum. There were a lot of real live ducks lazing in the wetlands. One mallard in particular flashed iridescent in the sun. Felt like home.