Tag: Travel | Pacific Northwest

last day in portland, oregon. it’s a gorgeous place… i will miss it wildly. which got me thinking…

i’ve been trying to move to get out of DC pretty steadily since 1998. i tried very hard to move to Oregon early in my failed marriage (she would have none of it) when I worked for a company out of Eugene. closer to the end of my tenure there, i was a week away from relocating when it turned out that a position I was jonesing for — in Eugene — wasn’t actually available.

not that oregon has a monopoly on my desires to get out of DC. i almost pulled the trigger twice on Vermont, once while working for Bernie Sanders — Vermont’s Representative in the U.S. Congress — and once shortly after my divorce.

being on vacation outside of the political, type-“A” rat-race that is DC has reminded me how much i still want to get out of here before I start firebombing politicians.

I don’t remember anything more than fleeting before i was a teenager — not world events, not personal experiences … nothing. Well, except for thinking that a volcano erupting in the Pacific Northwest was pretty dern cool.

Obviously, I was a little young to understand or appreciate the tragedy associated with a natural disaster (I had just turned 5 the monthe before the eruption) but I was about 2 classes away from being a Geology majory, so it must have done something for me.

Mount St. Helens is only about 2 hours from Portland, and half of that was on the mountain access road itself. The trip was devistatingly gorgeous, though it was one of those days (that I can never explain) where the photos just don’t do the day or the subject justice.