HERE I AM HOME

So I'm beginning. I share digs with one mom, one slightly used (and increasingly exasperating
IMac) and two cats. Inside there are enough books to stock a small library. Outside there is
lavender, black-eyed susans, blueberries, assorted shrubs and no grass. (more on how that
decision was made later.)

The rest of the immediate family includes two sisters, two wonderful brothers by marriage and
five nephews. One family lives in Portland, the others in the Umatilla area. Gee, one sister  lives near a  dormant volcano and the other lives in the Devil’s half acre; north of the Umatilla Arms depot and south of the Hanford Reach. The dormant volcano is Mt. Hood. But, now that I think about it the old SimCity 2000 game included a scenario that gave you the opportunity to rebuild Portland after Mt. Tabor threw a temper tantrum

That is a slightly revised version of the first entry in my original journal Pixels...... A few things have changed since July of 2004. Anonther journal was added and I found myself moving away from the politics. The passion didn't leave, it just moved closer to home.

Mom is a little older, a little grayer, and would still rather work in the garden than be anywhere else. The Imac still sits on the desk, between it and the PC laptop I have one good computer. One of these days I’ll upgrade the mac. One of these days. There are three cats now and more books. There’s a little bit of everything, but mostly history. Goddess I do love Alibris.

The yard evolves year by yearand mom has an apprentice; me. There’s a peculiar satisfaction in watching it change and grow. I’m beginning to believe that anyone who wants to go into politics should have to spend a few years working in the dirt. Maybe they’d be less eager to destroy when they know how hard it is to nurture and protect what’s growing.

Along the way I learned that knitting, baking, buying local produce and ripping out the grass coul be considered radical if not revolutionary actions. I wonder what would happen if we bombed them with loaves of bread instead of explosives? So I'm a dreamer, sue me. Although, I've pinched a few artisan loaves that would be almost as lethal as dynamite if they were dropped with enough altitude. :-)

I’ve learned a lot about myself since I made that first journal entry. I’ve come to realize how much of my identity is tied to the land. Not the place on the map that carries the label “Oregon.” It wouldn’t matter what it was called. I wish I could post the pictures that are in my mind right now. But, I did try to put it into words.

This is my take on living in a part of the world caught between the hammer of Oregon’s volcanic heritage and the anvil of that great western ocean. That wonderful, wild not so Pacific Ocean.

 

I am fire from the heart of the earth;

I am the sun, caught in flowing stone;

I am a pillar of steam, born when glowing stone met foaming breakers;

I am a cloud, gray white and heavy with rain;

I am a drop of rain, fresh water become salt;

I am a wave breaking on wind whipped cliffs;

I am a grain of sand caught in the ebb and flow of the tides:

I am the wind;

I am the land;

I am the sea;

 

Here I am home.

 

 

Tags: OREGON, GARDENS, BLOGGING