Oregon Love Letter

One time when I was fourteen or fifteen I took a mixture of drugs: marijuana, acid, mushrooms, morning glory seeds, some other herbal “legal” seed, and a disc of mescaline. I was out late, probably snuck out of my house, and was smoking cigarettes with some friends at Dunkin Donuts which is now a Starbucks. We decided to go see what a friend of ours was up to and we scurried across the freeway and were walking under the freeway exit when I threw up huge chunks of donuts. I then sunk into the earth and floated through the entire universe.

I remember a lot of space and stars, a macro look at the universe as a whole, and I do remember being on a roof of an elementary school talking about how we are everything and everything is us, but the important part of this trip was the part where I was reborn.

I had been reversed-decomposed out of the moss, ferns, and mushrooms. I was lying in the wet moss in the woods in Gabriel Park in SW Portland and reborn. Wet from Oregon’s womb and walking across the street where a church had a skate park. 

I had loved Oregon before that day, but this was the day that I had died and shot through the universal heavens and found myself reborn made of fungi spores and birthed through moss and ferns and fell in love with Oregon. 

That day also convinced me that when I finally die, I would die in Oregon. I never thought I’d leave the state and live anywhere else. It was hard to leave. My family lives there. A lot of my dearest friends live there too. I felt an anchor stuck into Oregon’s bedrock keeping me there. 

It isn’t just Portland, it is the entire state of Oregon. There are parts of Oregon that my heart swoons for: the entire coastline, the Steen mountains, the gorge, the high desert, and the dripping wet fir forests on the west side of Mt. Hood. There are so many secrets and Edens all over Oregon. 

Not that long ago I fell in love with a woman who came from somewhere else and she helped me fall even more in love with Oregon. We explored the rivers, lakes, mountains, deserts, and coastline. We turned over rocks looking for snakes and newts. We watched streams rush by. We drove aimlessly on little logging roads all over the mountains and into the plains. We have watched deer bound into the mist. I wanted her to love where I was born – twice.

She does love it. We still go aimlessly into the mountains and hoping we see a bear or an owl or an undiscovered swimming hole. We still are getting out of the car and looking for bones and feathers. We look for rocks and minerals. We look for beauty where we can find it, and it is in Oregon in spades. 

She also comes from a place that she loves. She comes from a place that is in her bones and in her heart. New England. She is taking back to her home, where she was born. She will whisk me away to places that she thinks will make me fall in love with her love, her home.

So I wanted to write a love letter to Oregon before I leave for New England. Without you, I would not be the man I am today. Without your rains and hot Augusts and late summers, that made it so I could swim on my October birthday. 

I grew up in Oregon. I skied her mountains and swam in the Pacific. I hiked into small gorges that ended at a waterfall. I have almost died from poison oak, and now when I get it it is but a small bump. I have watched the entire sky fall while watching a meteor shower in Bend. I have seen desert spirits twirl while sitting in a hot spring in the shadow of the Steen mountains. I have looked up and saw a bighorn sheep balance on a cliffside hundreds of feet up from the Snake. I have seen whales sing right off the beach. 

I have even died in Oregon.

It is time to fall in love with somewhere else. I have always looked for a place to call home and now I know that home is a state of mind. I am growing and going to New England. I am scared of everything about it, but I know that I will be alright. I will be there with my wife and her family. 

I am sure I will miss Oregon. I know I will. It is where I rose up from the moss and went skateboarding. I grew up with Oregon almost like a family member. 

Ever since we decided to move east I have been very nostalgic for my grandparents’ farm: Snowberry Farm. It was several acres of apple trees, forest, and after a few years with sheep and an asshole pony named Applejack, a golf course. I ran barefoot across pine needles and pinecones. I was stung by bees, wasps, and hornets. I got poison oak every summer. We built a cabin under an oak tree that was older than when Columbus ran into the Americas. 

Luckily I have already grieved the farm and now I am ready to get out of the orchard I am in now and live in a city by the sea. There is a lot I am looking forward to. City life, museums, baseball, live music, public art, history, and just having everything around me be new and exciting. 

I love you Oregon. Maybe someday I will have to live here again.