impending beauty.

Aug 25, 2010 23:38

jon and i have been having a little getting to know you period with the farther reaches of north portland, the bits that are now quite close to where we live.  sauvie island is now a mere 10 minute drive from our house which makes traveling there for things such as farm fresh eggs, farmer's markets and nature preserve blackberry picking adventures quite attainable.  said berry picking adventure happened about 3 days ago now and i wanted to write about it right away because it was so inspiring, but all that inspiration made me feeling weary of the body. 
it is evident to me that we all live in/on some of the earth's most beautiful land. i know this and yet it is hard to hide such a truth in my mind and heart at all times.  in the last couple of months i have experienced a few moments of unexpectedly overwhelming awe at the beauty surrounding me. 
at the oregon coast i had to stand still long enough to catch my breath, slow down enough to experience the entirety of each moment.  from the giant trees gripping at that soil for so long to the way the many different currents were lapping at one another and causing sandbars.  nothing was amiss and the emotion was not lacking in the least.  completely full.  nowhere more beautiful. 
i had a similar set of moments on sauvie island just the other day, entirely by surprise.  i am a lover of pastural settings, golden windblown fields, geometry gently forced upon nature.  i grew up in corn fields and they still feel just like home.  sauvie island is a little piece of bucks county pennsylvania with deciduous trees dominating, farmers fields and markets.  gorgeous. so it wasn't that i wasn't expecting beauty.  it was that the description of the nature walk we were doing was quite lackluster.  it was made to sound dull and like the highlight was the shear amount of blackberries.  i admit, we went for the blackberries, quite successfully.  but it was the towering oaks and huge golden fields that hooked me first.  surrounded by glistening water.  it was something of a birder's paradise.  a peregrine falcon spread its wings right above our heads as soon as we arrived. ospreys, swallows, wrens for days. 80 degrees and breezy.  but really the beauty hit me up side the head when we reached the shores of one of the surrounding lakes.  this is where the plump blackberries were hiding, down among the small oaks and reeds.  the day that we were there was one of the clearest in recent memory.  little mountain tops had been peeking at us here and there all day but from the shores of this lake.....it opened up between the grasses and trees into a 1/4 mile or so of mudflat until transitioning slowly and flatly into a wind rippled, shimmering expanse, surrounded in the distance, a mile or more away, by more wetlands and grasses.  the view was heart opening and uninterrupted for 180 degrees. there was no hint of city.  the water was obviously shallow as told by the water birds walking in about here and there and the gnarled logs resting upon the horizon. the lack of depth added to the drama for me. then, dotting the perimeter of this open wonderland were the peaks of 4 mountains that i love.  hood, ofcourse; st helens, clear enough to see here lava grooves; adam, wide and proud; and lastly the mountain that has my heart, raineer! all the way from portland.  that mountain is at least 100 miles away.
we walked down from the trail, mostly because maggie smelled water and ran for it, expecting beauty, of course, but not expecting to be treated to such a delicacy among views.  and this is where i live.  this place was maybe 15 minutes from my house.  it takes some repetition for me to really grasp that such grandiose and immense nature surrounds me every day.  it is at my fingertips.  i love that and i feel very lucky for it.
in olympia riding down those hills with nothing but sparkling salt water, sea smells and sea birds, that was enough for me to be in love.  seattle is an easy magical place where the beauty is so overpowering that i can just say "i love the feeling of seattle" and most of my lady friends will raise their hands to their hearts.  but here in portland, i have had more trouble grasping the impending beauty.  but it is there, so huge.  the columbia river gorge is among the stretches of this planet that can be matched but never beaten in raw, weather hewn, gorgeous, resplendent earth.

i grew up in a place whose beauty closes in upon you and tells you secrets of its past.  it is close, it is thick and near.  the green is dense and rolling.  i dream of that beauty always.  i have a taste for gorgeous land because of it.  the beauty here and the beauty there are of different sizes and distances though.  here one can be blown sideways by a vision of a something that is truly 100 miles away.  even to grasp the power of the trees out here is to look 100-500ft into the air, trying to trace a trunk all the way to the top in order to find it's canopy.  they make the beauty big out here.  at home it is more like blankets and drapes of beauty, mazes of hills and cliffs and corn.  the beauty is smaller and closer but it's power is no less potent.

tomorrow we take borrowed canoe on canoe adventure numero uno, deep into the heart of a local nature preserve right on the columbia river.  once again, this place is a mere 5 or so miles, as the crow flies, from our house but i have never been there.  i look forward to more adventuring and i hope to be caught off guard by the planet yet again.



dear jenga, this is where you live.
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