Lately I've been thinking a lot about my environment, and what makes me happiest. At my age, it seems to make sense to live in an urban area, where I can meet up with friends and go out to eat on a whim. The quality of life in relation to the expense is a big draw to living in Portland. I've said for a long while that my ideal would be to have a home in the city, and also somewhere I could escape to in the country. But that may not ever be possible for me -- it certainly isn't right now.
I spent the first eleven years of my life in the foothills of the Coast Range mountains of Western Oregon. I climbed high in trees and caught crawdads in the creek that wrapped around our modest home. My childhood was rich in experience, having grown up outdoors and not in front of the television.
In my family, I've always been the adventurer. The moment I graduated from college, I moved to New York because 'why not?' I thought. As anyone who has ever moved there can attest, it was one of the best and hardest things I've ever done. In the end, it wasn't the right time in my life for me to live there, and I ended up moving back west to Portland just a year later.
Now I'm finding myself drawn to both extremes: bigger cities and rural escapes. The goal of this blog is to explore both worlds, and the details of my fascination with these vastly different environments.
____________________ I took this photo on Larch Mountain in the Columbia River Gorge while cutting down my Christmas tree.