Wonder x Jungle: Eugene & Portland, OR (Part 1 of 2)
How many different shades of green can there be?
We have left California.
It had been a long stay — punctuated by side trips to Mexico and the “C” scare — but it was a large state after all.
From the Humboldt Redwoods State Park, we hopped on Interstate 101 and headed north by hugging the coast. (We even drove through the Redwoods National and State Parks, but by then, we were just a tad less impressionable, having imprinted on the trees by the Rockefeller Trail.) We had been looking forward to cross state lines and catch a glimpse of a very large and obnoxious “Welcome to Oregon” sign.
No such sign was glimpsed. What kind of governor does not insist on large welcome signs on major highways into a state as a thinly veiled excuse to have his or her name in large letters to satisfy one’s megalomaniacal inner demons?
Despite our sign-less entry into the Beaver State, our first impressions of the Oregon coast along I-101 were beautiful ones: green here, green there, green everywhere. We enjoyed stopping at vista points to soak up the scenery and spent one night at Bullards Beach State Park. (Kuddos to Oregon for their well-run, top-notch state park facilities. Camping fees were 25% more for out-of-state campers, which was a fair practice.)
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I’m not sure what expectations we had for Eugene. After having left San Francisco, we had spent a few days driving along the Pacific Coast, seeing mostly green things, so perhaps we had been subconsciously looking forward to being in a city again.
Eugene gave off vibes of precisely what it was — a small college town (Go Ducks!). The quaint downtown area centered around the school and the small businesses that catered to a young crowd — breweries, sandwich shops, coffee houses. And bike lanes. Lots and lots of bike lanes. So when in Rome.
N. and I decided to hop on the Ruth Bascom bike trail which skirted the Willamette River. We parked our van in the Alton Baker Park and rode most of the trail on both sides of the water. A few pleasantries exchanged with the locals in the shops indicated that it had been gray and rainy for days on end, right before our arrival, so everybody was out and about, enjoying the sunshine and warm temps. By the time we got about half way in the trail, our enthusiasm had evaporated in the heat and N. grumbled crankily about when we would reach the end of the blasted thing. There were sections that passed through quietly exclusive neighborhoods, sections along parks full of families, couples, friends, and dogs — so many dogs — and sections through the university sports fields with students celebrating the end of their semester.
By the time we made our way back where we started (14 miles), N. curmudgeon-ly declared that he would never believe my numbers again and would always add 30% to my declared trail lengths.
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On the road to Portland, a sign on I-5 announced, “45th Parallel: Halfway between the Equator and the North Pole”.
A quick search online for places to eat and things to do in Portland led to reviews that mentioned the sorry state of downtown because of the challenges of the homelessness crisis. One frustrated reviewer lamented that it was his “first and last visit to Portland.”
It was a beautiful sunny day when we arrived downtown on a late morning. The Saturday Market attracted lots of visitors; the park by the Willamette River welcomed picnickers; the restaurants and bakeries and coffee shops in the area seemed to be doing brisk business.
However, on every street and street corner, homeless people were also going about their day, begging for money, eating meals, taking naps, smoking what clearly were not cigarettes (I was no connoisseur, but I knew that one did not smoke cigarettes with a bong…). Some congregated with others for companionship and conversation; others seemed busy packing their belongings and moving to a different street, a different corner.
At one point, a man walked by me and spit in my direction, a thick and chunky wad. I couldn’t tell if he aiming at me or if I just happened to be standing in his way; I just froze and then felt a sense of relief that he had missed me. To escape the area, N. and I decided to walk to a store 20 minutes away to pick up some supplies — perhaps there would be fewer homeless people if we walked away from downtown, we thought. We quickly abandoned this scheme because the farther we went from the streets close to the Saturday market, the more homeless people we encountered.
An in-depth article on a local news site outlined the sad, seemingly intractable issue of homelessness in Portland through a confluence of factors — economic recession, public policy choices, housing crisis, pandemic woes, gentrification. How does one solve such a multi-dimensional puzzle?
It may sound self-serving, but we happen to subscribe to the idea that travel can be a force for good in the world. The more we open our eyes to others in the world — to the ways others live, work and play; to the ways others build communities and solve problems; to the ways others connect to their histories and cultures — the better we ourselves can be when we return to our own communities.
But we think it would be naive to be blind to some of the challenges that tourism and tourists can bring: stress on infrastructure, challenges to local businesses trying to cater to local customers (many Portland residents wrote resentful reviews about how businesses seemed to cater to tourists instead of to them), development choices skewed by the whims of temporary visitors. What was it that we personally were doing to exacerbate the problem in cities such as Portland?
I found it very difficult to enjoy the day. We had planned to spend the rest of the afternoon in the area, but I could not wait to leave for our campground far from downtown.
(And it was in the suburbs, at an outdoor store whose name begins with “R” and ends with “I” that we discovered that Oregon had no sales tax. Zero. Zip. Zilch. Let me repeat that: Oregon had no sales tax. Zero. Zip. Zilch.)
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To avoid downtown Portland, we drove to Washington Park to visit the Japanese Garden and the International Rose Test Garden.
After learning that the entry fee for the Japanese Garden was $21.95 per person, we decided we were not that curious about Japanese gardens. The International Rose Test Garden (entry fee: $ 00.00) was also not cooperating, although it was not really the fault of the roses themselves: the plants were just sprouting their new branches and leaves, so the whole garden looked still mostly green and brown. I had to search online to get a glimpse of what it would look like when the blooms finally got going in the summer. The pictures looked amazing; our real-life experience of the place, not so much.
Sigh.
It was difficult to avoid the thought that our stay in Portland was not jinxed. (One bright spot: here N. had the best cold brew coffee of this trip so far, and we enjoyed some terrific croissants.) So we left. As our little van made its way to the suburbs and then beyond, we felt better the farther it went. We set up camp at the Milo McIver State Park and breathed a sigh of relief.
Like that reviewer’s, this would probably be our “first and last visit to Portland.”
And this was the first time in which an entry for the category “Concrete Jungles” did not carry its usual positive connotations.
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