Friends, Food and Farewell to Familiar: the Pacific Northwest

The Coquille Lighthouse, at the mouth of the Coquille River in  Bandon, OR

In my personal history of road trips, the Pacific Northwest was the feature and the destination. Now, in the greater adventure, it is the first chapter. My time there last week was an odyssey of friendships that spanned nearly every decade of my life, meals that fed my stomach, heart and soul, and the last touchstone of the familiar before the road turned eastward and into the unknown. It felt every bit the prologue.

Entering Oregon was like stepping into a warm bath of memory. It was home for my reawakening as I passed from the last years of a failing marriage into the wonder years as a zoology undergrad at Oregon State in Corvallis. I chose Bandon from among the many alluring coastal towns of Oregon, a sentimental favorite due not only to its charm and exceptional beach, but its proximity to Wildlife Safari in Winston, a drive-through wild animal preserve where I was a ranger for 3 years back in the 90s. It was my good fortune, while working and living in the hot interior, to have Bandon as my nearest breath of cool ocean air.  The long drive out to the picturesque Coquille Lighthouse filled me with anticipation: I think now this was the first reunion with an old friend among many I would find during these travels. I would be utterly content to know that the end of my journey, upon returning west, would be a tiny house on the wild, driftwood tumbled spit where this lighthouse finds prominence. I believe Harry would also approve.

Harry contemplates Bullards Beach near Bandon, OR

The tides polish a treasure of shiny pebbles

The drive from Bandon to that night's destination in Corbett, just east of Portland along the Columbia Gorge, was when I first noticed the great discrepancy between predicted travel time (whether via a map or road trip app) and the actual pace of Pagoo. It seems I need a setting for "slow on hills" and "will stop frequently for signs promising butterfly pavilions and fresh cherries". So 11 days in, I now know to add two hours to the app-predicted travel time. I feel a bit proud of that.

Monarchs at the Butterfly Pavilion in Elkton, OR

In Corbett we arrive (two hours late) to a familiar home filled with the friends who have known me since before the days of otters, before the days of college, before the days of zoos and marriage, and even before the days of adolescence. Of all those chapters they have been a part or watchful, but of my youth, they were every bit the story. Harry and I are greeted at the door by a tumble of hugs--- friends, their husbands and children. An errant goat gives Harry an instant opportunity for utility before he enters the interior and the domain of Seamus the chihuahua mix and a giant grey cat named Shadow. Seamus is forgetful and rules the moment---Shadow remembers and rules all ("Rumor grew of a shadow in the north..."). Shadow stalked the spaces under tables and between legs, swelled to twice his normal size, in hopes of a good crack at this invader. Seamus merely launched the occasional surprise attack. Harry finds mercy under the protective watch of  my host and her daughters and the safety of my lap. It is his nature to submit to tyranny. This is not my nature, but I marvel at the peacefulness of this choice.

One final note on childhood friends--a quote from the end of the film Stand By Me, where the writer asks: 

 "[typing on computer] I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was twelve. Jesus, does anyone?"

Decades may pass when we don't see each other and are reduced to Christmas and birthday cards. But when we reunite, I am reminded that know one will ever know me as well as they do. And so by crossing the great Columbia, I leave behind the memories of childhood and coming of age and head for Seattle where family and and a new era friends await.

The view of the Columbia Gorge from the Vista House near Corbett, OR

                            

The road from Portland to Seattle was a whirlwind. I was quickly breaking one of my road trip rules to stay off of main highways and commuter corridors. But I had been so traumatized by the relentless traffic that mired my passage through Portland, and warned of similar between there and Seattle, I hurried up I-5 to beat the urban snarl to Puget Sound.

Under the Fremont Bridge looking toward Lake Union, Seattle, WA

It was with the broad and varied brushstrokes of the diversity of my Seattle connections that I would this time experience the city on the Sound. Through the eyes and hearts of a bright, single urbanite (my charming niece), a biologist and mother of young boys, and an impassioned graduate student the city sparkled in a thousand hues. I was treated to two memorable meals in Seattle as different as they were exceptional: The first with my biologist friend and her young boys, sitting cross-legged on the shore of Puget Sound at sunset, eating  paper-wrapped Caribbean fish sandwiches, dripping messily into the sand as her sons dug with mussel shells nearby; The second a sampler of the best of Seattle's seafood with my great friend, Kate at the Ballard Annex Oyster House where we met the perfect combination of lovingly prepared seafood, cold beer and good company---all during happy hour! Some meals embed themselves in memory in a way that transcends simple nourishment. "Eat to live, don't live to eat...?" Whomever uttered those words has not experienced such a pairing of food and spirit.

Selection of oysters at the Ballard Annex Oyster House

Friendship also afforded me the most suitable of lodging on a quiet street in Ballard complete with chickens and a perfectly tended garden, while kinship gained me a tour of the hipper neighborhoods by my niece who shared some of the experience of being young, recently relocated and single in Seattle. In this way I had a taste of a few of Seattle's flavors and a proper immersion into things urban to send me off into the lands of big sky and open spaces. As I drove eastward from the city and up and over the Cascades, I was filled to the brim with that sense of freedom and adventure I had so craved. So ends the prologue---perhaps what I needed to leave behind, was the familiarity and safety of the Pacific. 

My niece, the Seattle urbanite, poses with Harry and the Fremont Troll