Portland: Full circle

Ever since I stopped having a job and a home, I've been taking surface streets around Portland instead of the expedient interstate highways. My perigrinations keep bringing me a little closer to full circle to the first journey I made to Portland last may.

Last May, I met Daniel and Colae Couch after travelling north on Greeley Avenue by bicycle. Yesterday, on the day their son was born, I travelled back down that street to meet some friends in St. Johns and toasted little Julien with a bottle of his father's homebrew.

This evening, after dropping Kassiane, the genius triplet, off at her house on the east side, I skipped I-84 and drove home, past the Crystal Springs Rhododendron Gardens I visited twice last May and into Sellwood where I passed within calling distance of the above-bakery apartment I shared with a passel of Lewis and Clark English majors for two weeks. Over the Sellwood bridge I went, to my friend Neil's couch where I now sit typing this.

Yes, I'm free at last, too exhausted to think terribly straight about things and hoping that will change soon. I've met some amazing friends here and have had enough support in being me that I'm actually starting to believe that I and my path are ok. I have the high-quality problem of loving people here and in Arizona which means my heart will break no matter where I end up.

My experience in Portland is wrapping itself up with a neat little circle of ribbon, which begs the question, what's to unfold now that Portland's putting itself away?

The 'What's up in writerland' official report

I'm a newspaper reporter now. I've been to the county jail and sat with murderers, to the county fair to celebrate kids and animals. To a hip-hop festival filled with musicians, children and members of Portland's gang task force.

Getting a decent reporting job was my goal when I left my friends and family in Prescott, but I took a circuitous route to get there - months as a de facto au pair (am I mixing language metaphors?), months pitching magazines and selling almost nothing. Months turned inward, learning about my mental equpment. Necessary months, in other words.

In June, three weeks before my job offer, it was totally unclear what was going to happen. I'd slacked off on looking for a reporter job because I wanted to focus on freelancing. But that was going only so-so because I needed more structure. I was at the point where I was looking forward to travelling in August as a vacation from the entirety of my flagging life. It was then I wrote the following in my journal.

So what now? Now that I'm 34, now that the negative space is revealing the form of a life, for better or worse? The most elegant choice is to continue. Failed or succeeded, it will be a life with form, a life resolute. And clearly a life fully lived.

Here's what I know, I'll be at this job for as long as it takes to get my kitchen chops, the reinforcement of journalism basics. I'll keep writing a bunch of stories every week and I'll get stronger as a non-fiction writer. And, six years into a writing career, I'll respect the sculpted form my life has taken and from there, I'll pretty much continue writing till I'm worm food.

My Sunday bike ride and the zombie squirrel

I went to see my friend Rob in north Portland last Sunday. It required a 10-mile slog on a comfort bike but it was worth it. My plans later that afternoon fell through and so I decided to meander home at whatever pace pleased me. Was trying to decide whether to go left or right when my gut feeling told me to stick with straight ahead.

“Erg,” I thought. “I've already seen Denver Avenue.”

But I'm a good monkey when it comes to my pesky gut feelings, so I did it.

The yards were cool and flower-filled and the sun was hot and I was riding slowly south happy for my Sunday freedom — it being the only day I take entirely off. It was impossible for me not to be in a good mood; in my expansiveness I was saying hello to the trees, to the flowers, to the kitties, to the baby squirrel hanging from the wire...

I did a double take. What the hell was up with the squirrel hanging from the wire? He looked a little dead, but the then I realized if he were dead, he must be a zombie squirrel, because he was tracking my movements with his beady little eyes, moving his head just enough to maintain a creepy recriminating aura.

Aw crap, I thought. This guy needs help. But he was 20 feet up in the air. And I'm only 5'6" with my shoes on.

I'd seen a man park a kayak- and bike-festooned 4Runner up the block, so I went to see if he would help.

“I just now pulled in from Texas,” he said.

I offered to help him unload his truck so we could use it as a platform. He made it clear he was not my guy.

I considered my options. I could: A. Ride away and have an über-crappy rest of my day because I'd left some poor animal behind to die in distress. ~or~ I could B. plant myself in the middle of the street and heckle people until someone helped me rescue the squirrel.

Obviously, I wouldn't be writing this and exposing my shame if I'd chosen option A.

Option B was in full swing when two more bikers rolled up. I pointed up and they stopped and regarded the squirrel. Once I convinced them that the squirrel was still alive, they joined me in my rodent vigil.

The squirrel was just a little guy, clearly not injured, but just sort of ... stuck up there. Like he'd scampered halfway out on the wire and then lost his nerve.

A brunette in her late 40's came walking by, saw us studying the squirrel and said, “He's not going anywhere – he's been there since 11 this morning.”

Oh my god. It was 2 pm. “We're going to rescue him,” I told her.

She offered no encouragement. Actually she offered the dour opposite and went inside her house.

“Whatevs,” I thought. I ain't leaving until this squirrel has a happy ending.

Not that kind of happy ending.

For god's sake.

In any case, a much nicer lady came by and said she'd go get something to rescue the squirrel with. She didn't offer any specifics and disappeared around the corner.

The squirrel, meanwhile, grabbed hold of his own tail. I surmised that he was trying to mix things up a little. Only so much you can do when you're stuck on a wire.

At the end of the block there was some free furniture that could elevate one of us five feet in the air. On a nearby porch were some broomsticks that I felt I could briefly liberate for the cause. That would get one of us up about 15 feet, but that was still 5 feet shy of the squirrel.

I was feeling more and more sick about the whole thing. We needed something better.

Something better appeared in the form of a dude in his 60's with a bare chest and a 20-foot-long bamboo pole.

Because don't we all have 20-foot bamboo poles laying around for when we need to rescue acrophobic squirrels?

The old guy proffered the pole. The little squirrel didn't know quite what to do, and in his confusion, did a full 360 around the wire. The girl and I grabbed my fleece and held it rescue trampoline-style underneath our confused little buddy. But our squirrel champion was savvy and teased the squirrel onto the pole. Once the squirrel had a good grip, he gently lowered the little guy to the ground. Without so much as a backward glance, the squirrel took off running.

We, meanwhile, went wild with applause (muffled by bike gloves, but still).

“Did my good deed for the day,” said the old dude. “Guess it's time for another beer.”

And with that, he disappeared into the glare of sunny Sunday Portland.

---

The couple lingered and the man, whose name was Daniel, helped me return the bookshelf to the corner. As we dragged, I explained that I was from Arizona and wasn't sure where I was going to land.

I'll admit, when he said, “I hope you stay — Portland could use more squirrel rescuers," I got a little choked up.

The life and business of writing - thoughts on place and patronage

I had a late coffee on a recent Wednesday with a woman named Sara Gray. Sara is a 25-year-old magazine writer turned wedding photographer who lives in west Portland with her IT consultant husband.

My reason for meeting her was to talk to her about her techniques for acquiring magazine clips. She shared stories of endless 10 hour days sending out 5 proposals per day and earning less than $4,000 over the course of an entire year. But through her stories she revealed herself as an entrepreneurially-driven woman who runs on grit, enthusiasm and determination — a woman who let nothing stand between her and her goals.

Nothing did until she grew tired. And still.

She wrote front-of-book magazine pieces to gain the trust of the magazines she targeted. She obtained the occasional feature assignment. Her husband kept them going while she chased her writing dreams.

She turned to photography as a form of respite and likewise threw herself into that. Studying and developing her skills were central --- her passion drove her to absorb 300 hours of conference classes over the course of 9 days in Las Vegas.

She thought she'd have to struggle as a photographer as well, but the clients came willingly and things started looking up for her. She still writes but doesn't have to burn herself out seeking assignments. She has, for the moment at least, found the right balance for herself and says she is as happy as she has ever been.

I ponder my own career and life on this rainy Portland afternoon. I'm in a sandwich shop called Kenny & Zukes whose walls are made out of glass. The rain outside keeps a steady cadence. I will bike in that rain before it gets dark, will stop on my bike and buy groceries to stock the flat I presently share with the Lewis and Clark English majors I found on Craigslist.

Earlier today, as I prepared to leave the apartment to meet Sara, I found myself posessed by a gut-deep, happy-dancing joy. I wasn't sure why it happend. This not knowing never happens; there's always some reason when I feel that happy. All I could pinpoint was how excited I was to get outside, to get on my bike and ride out into the rainy weather.

And so I ponder. Portland? Back to a car-free existence in a place I'm not ready to admit is probably my spiritual home?

In the model I've established for myself of late, the “where” is of little consequence. The “what” matters far more—that “what” being that I've thrown myself into a freelance writing career, have pared my life down to an almost capital-free existence. I've done this to buy some time. If I can work my way into a few magazine stables, get those editors calling me, then I have a chance at a sustainable magazine writing life. I have a shot at being that writer who gets to report the glossy 5,000 word microcredit article from Bangladesh.

The difficulty is that I am doing this bold thing and still there are details I haven't worked out. How long can I be on my own and living on nearly nothing?

Two and a half months is the current answer.

How much longer until the exhaustion from constant financial worry drives me back to a job?

Span of time: unknown.

But I'm not entirely on my own. The patron-artist model embodied by Sara and her husband is a hallowed one and the patrons I've had so far in my career have been many. There were the couches and trailers in that first year of serious writing. There was the three year relationship with the fellow writer; he was my patron and my lover and I still regard that time with a mixture of gratitude and guilt. Though perhaps I should upgrade that feeling to simply one of gratitude.

My latest patrons, the gentle, intelligent Coppick family, gave me space in their house in Washington, shared their hearth with me and generally opened up their lives to me. They gave me an office and quiet in the mornings and the necessary respite from quiet and solitude in the afternoons and evenings. It was an utterly elegant situation and within its confines, my writing thrived. I was useful to the twin girls while their parents ranged out of town for their careers. I was utterly isolated from the coffee houses and pubs where my friends might have forced my eyes upward and away from the page. It was, I felt, a life fueled by pure grace.

And then it ended. The invitation remained, but my usefulness waned. At the same time, I had a conference to attend in Portland and so I arranged to stay there for a few weeks thereafter to see friends and to get my bearings. I thought perhaps that I would go mountain biking in eastern Washington after that.

But the city of Portland is a green siren. She beckons with her art and her natural beauty, her urban trails and her cultured gardens. She opens up most days now that it's May with sunlight, raising warmth from the carpets of green and sprouting friendly people who are newly freed from their dour, gray bonds. I struggle to resist her call. I do not want to fall in love with a city like this, with any place so far removed from my beloved Arizona, but on days like today, my enthusiasm slips through the grate of my consciousness and I dance with joy without realizing why.

I'll decide soon whether to leave for Eastern Washington as I've planned or whether to linger for the summer here in the City of Roses. I once wrote that Portland was a good city, a place of green dreams, but don't think I sincerely meant it. I just had to pick a sustainable Northwestern city.

It wasn't going to be Boise, was it?

When I make it, it'll be an interesting choice. As always, the 'how' will be via instinct. The 'why' will be tougher to pin down, but there will assuredly be an intersection with my arch-purpose if I'm to say yes.

I left Prescott to seek my fortune and have found these several months later that its discovery is a daily unfurling.

That, at least, is unlikely to change anytime soon.

Travelog: In which Erica goes full feral in the Olympics

I've been traveling for more of this year than I have been home. I don't know where I'll end up and am deeply uncomfortable at the prospect of an open-ended itinerancy. But I see no other way.

That said, there are different grades of being on the road. For most of the last two months, my on the roadness was of the low grade variety, sleeping on the floor of a comfortable suburban cul-de-sac home. It's early May, and my travels have taken me closer to the heart of adventure, to a higher grade “Where the hell am I going to sleep tonight?” mode of travel.

I drive out of Puyallup and head through Tacoma to the Olympic peninsula. The Olympics have been calling me; they seem like an antidote to the conquered ruin that is Seattle and its suburbs. I sense healing there and its healing I need.

The last person I speak with before making my full descent into ferality is Billy, my ex-from-100-years-ago and my friend-since-15-years-ago. We share our recent love stories and he says some funny shit.

“I believe the technical term for the sort of romantic blind spot I suffer from is 'sucker,'” he tells me. I die laughing and tell him of my own latest misadventure. There's plenty to laugh at, but I'm still a little sore. Still, as I speak to Billy, I'm driving along a gorgeous shoreline and my soul is lighting up. Our call drops and I stop to eat an apple and peanut butter and put my feet in the clear and placid waters of the Hood Canal. My heart juggles both misery and joy, and then joy wins and I dance with it back to my car and drive a little further.

My friend, Geoffry Peak, told me about Dosewallips State Park and so when I see a sign for the park, I stop and go for a walk.

The trail starts in the woods and happiness joins me on my walk. After a while, the it drops near the Dosewallips River. I can see the rocks and water below, but the trail doesn't quite lead to them. The river calls me regardless. I ditch the trail and go down and from there, the walk gets fun.

The water's so cold it tortures my feet but I'm hopping giant dead trees, crossing the icy water on their backs and flirting with the river anyway. One log descends into an arm of the river and I hop off and wade to a bank. At its far end, I must cross again to continue on. I misjudge the water's depth and emerge with my jeans wet to the thighs.

I am happy that this is so.

I wander a dry side channel, tiled with river rocks, and rejoin the river up further on a lovely, isolated bank. The wind picks up. A storm from the west is blowing purple this way and wind whips the weather and river into a call and response. I watch the skies darken, my wet body far from the car.

Never better.

Regardless, I have three pieces of electronics on my person and only my fleece jacket to protect them. I enter the woods, with the intention of going back to the car, and come upon a set of signs facing the other way. Once I get beyond them say “stay the F out” (or some variation thereof – this coming from the back of the sign thing happens to me a lot). There's an arrow pointing back to the trail and emerge near a wetland bridge I've already crossed twice. I amble back to the park. All is well and I've made myself an appetite.

Inside the park, I run into Eric Hendricks and his side kick, Tracy. Park ranger folk. After a few moments of conversation, Tracy declares Eric and I siblings. We both have toured on bicycles the feral way, hiding ourselves at night and pushing forward without clear agendas by day. I ask him about camping and he says the dirt in the park costs $20. I ask him if there are other places and he tells me I can go to a spot high above the Dosewallips River's estuary. There I find the great grand-goddess of all stealth campsites. This campsite is so awesome that I decide it is possible to feel spoiled rotten by the gods.

It's a deep an narrow pad of developed land with a for sale sign out front. I drive the back of it and hide the car among the Scotch broom, those yellow flowered bushes so common to disturbed soil in western Washington. Beyond the bushes is a perfectly flat and concealed place to pitch my tent. From where I'll lay my head is a 20-mile view. I had tried to imagine goodness like this while I was driving, had worked to feel it in my gut as though it had already happened. Perhaps this has something to do with my good fortune. And perhaps Eric Hendricks is just good people.

I play guitar. Finish up an avocado that I'd started eating down on the Dosewallips tidelands where the flats went out half a mile at low tide. I had put my feet in the distant water canal down there and watched shellfish squirt water at my toes.

I snuggle into my tent, cozy and warm with the fly half-applied in case of rain. I leave the door wide open to the view, and read and journal and rest. I want to share how amazing this is and I want to be alone, too, and so I write. I awaken and it's raining and I partially drop the fly but leave the door open. The storm is to the back of my tent. I stay awake for a long while, long enough to watch the sky turn the electric blueberry of twilight and then the pink of day.

Green fuzz grows here and so do stories

Naturally, much has happened since I was in Reno. Ashland, Oregon, for example, happened. Synchronicity drove me there and wanted to keep me there. But I left and things fell apart all the way to Portland. Way far apart. And knowing I shouldn't have left Ashland poisoned me for awhile, because once I got to Portland, there was no turning back.

I wanted to drop a resume in a suburban newspaper in Portland, but I had to wait until office hours Monday, and I'd pulled into Portland on a Friday.

That's not to say that Portland completely sucked. The hostel 90 percent sucked, and the mountain biking in Forest Park all the way sucked plus a little - the all the way being that there were plenty of mountain bikers but - get this - no singletrack. The plus a little came from 12 different modes of weather from driving snow to rain to just plain muddy and wet. It took a while to warm my body after coming back an icy ball of mud.

But I did meet a man named Brad in the park with a black and white Great Pyrenese. Maybe one day I'll write a story about him and his trek from spiritual guy to materialistic guy and back. And my friends Chris and Christine took me to eat Cajun food at a place called Montage. Where I left my favorite hat.

I escaped Portland and drove to my friend Joe Coppick's house in Puyallup, Washington. I sort of expected to kick off of Seattle like a swimming pool and head back south to the high desert. What I didn't realize at the time that I would effectively be making the Coppick family's house my home for more than a month.

It's not the most obvious choice I could make. Puyallup is a suburb and there's almost nothing I hate more than suburban planning, than cul de sacs, than the banishment of wildness that occurs in places like this.

On the other hand, there's nothing I value more than family and friends and this was a family of friends. Joe Coppick has been a friend since 1989 when he started hanging out with my nanny. He was a 19-year-old Embry Riddle student with a passion for quantum physics and motorcycles. Many days, he'd pick me up on the latter and spend hours teaching me about the former. To this day, there's a juniper Joe brought growing in my father's front yard. It was 8 inches tall in '89 and now it's 8 feet tall. Stuff doesn't grow very fast in my beloved homeland.

As opposed to here in Puyallup where stuff not only grows fast; it grows everywhere. On the sides of rocks, in pavement crannies, on fences, up stoops and over road signs. The green fuzz is something I can't relate to. While some people would be charmed by it, I feel indifferent, and that indifference - combined with being stationed in the suburban mire - has driven me inward. It's been a month of thinking and visioning and following the thread of my destiny (if such a thing exists). I imagine the best possible outcome, see it in my mind until it settles in my heart and I smile. I do this for the stories I am to publish, for the home I one day shall have, for the penguins I'll spy as I approach the Antartic coast.

Don't get me wrong. Apart from the fuzz and the raging arterial traffic, life here is very pleasant, actually. Apart from chasing my dreams by day, I pass time in the evenings with the twins, 12-year-old Cayley and Maddie, and their mother, Andrea, who is an airline pilot. There are also two large dogs who pile up at our feet and a guinea pig named Doodle who whistles from the kitchen for carrots (Snicker died last fall).

Late evenings, I roll out the bed I carried from Prescott and sleep on the living room floor. I love my bed. And I get good sleep in the living room, so it works.

Mornings, I get up and task out my day. I try to spend time writing as well as writing letters to sell my writing. With enough persistence, I figure optimal results are only a matter of time.

And I've got about three weeks left here before I go elsewhere. Where to is anyone's guess. In fact, if you want to guess, leave a comment below.

Reno does double duty as a white morass

Ok. I admit it. I'm writing this post to kill some time while I download some gypsy jazz given to me by a player in Reno. Dan left some iPod equipment behind and I told him he'd only get it back if he came armed with gypsy jazz.

Which I'm currently downloading at the Java Jungle in Reno.

The Java Jungle is a friendly damned coffee shop. It sits right in downtown Reno with mile-high casinos breathing down its neck on every side—a little refuge where I've already met a pile of nice people. I think it might even be a friendlier place than the shops in Prescott. I would have earlier claimed that's not possible, but there it is. Makes me wonder if I shouldn't be friendlier as well, and anyone who knows me knows I'm already pee-on-the-floor friendly.

In any case, Dan was saying that his friends are playing down at the Raven in April. Turned out to be the same band that my beautiful friend Candace wrote about at ReadItNews.com. And please know Dan and Candace both say you should go see 'em if you can.

Reno snowed me in and I'm still not sure I'll be seeing the other side of the Sierras anytime soon. I've sent out a dozen resumes to all corners of the country so far, but I think I'll have to belly up to a few publications to get the jobby of my dreams. Bellying up is, in fact, my dominant reason for being out here. I sort of wish I'd stayed home in Prescott for a few days to mountain bike in 70-degree weather rather than skulking in Reno coffee shops, but the fact is, only a deadline would have gotten my ass out of Prescott. And that deadline was last Saturday.

Still, I'm bummed with the stupid snow. Strong words for a devout snow lover, but there you are. And now, I'm off to buy chains and to call an award-winning editor of a Sedona pub.

Erica leaves Prescott and finds rain in Reno

“Pet friendly
Cookies
Free Internet”
- Hotel Sign in Tonapah, NV
Er sez: Cookies?”

In the last two weeks, following a not-unwelcome layoff, I packed, sold and stored my entire life.

Friday's yard sale was resplendent. I made a pile of money and the last truck pulled out at 1 pm with the last bit of my life loaded in the back. Incredible, or as my roommate Carol put it, auspicious. I'm in Reno now in a downtown cafe plotting my next move. I'll be a reporter somewhere, preferably at an award-winning publication with a strong, savvy editor.

Leaving Prescott was wrenching. I have to push through that pain to keep my eye on the future, but it's difficult. Like jumping into cold water. I had to do it and do it quick (life sorted, sold and put away within two weeks of being laid-off) and it's a deep shock to the system. Who in their right mind would leave everyone they love to seek their fortune? Me and every fairy tale hero, I suppose.

My mama always said, though, that nothing is written in stone or blood. I can always come back. That softens the pain a little, but not much.

The drive through Nevada was exotically weird. I crossed Hoover Dam away from my beloved Arizona saying the best prayer I could muster and crying my eyes out. But then I looked up and saw that Homeland Security is building a bridge up high across the gorge and well away from the dam and it was all lit up and little men (they looked little) in orange vests were crawling all over it—it being an incomplete arch suspended by wires—and I was like....whatzat? Like a little kid, I forgot to cry anymore. I'm guessing that's what this trip will be like. Struggling to let one season go, and then remembering that change is exciting, and that air that carries a new scent is always intoxicating.

When I passed through Vegas, it was Vegas, shiny and vulgar. My old schoolmate Lance lives there with his wife Natalie, and together they extolled the virtues of a place where possibility is the singular god, where anything can happen as long as it can turn a profit. A cool sentiment, but still, I gotta say Vegas is not for me. Too much hyper-stimulation for one thing.

The next day, I drove through an old mining town called Goldfield. It's in the middle of freakin' nowhere and the gas station there is also the diner. The creamer they serve is powdered. Goldfield is the kind of place that was absolutely kicking in the 1800's and the worn-out vestiges of gold rush largess remain. Goldfield is one of those worn-in spots, one of those places where the stakes are just not that high and so things are allowed to settle in. It has lots of tall, expensive brick and stone buildings and cute little cottages half-falling down – signs of life remaining just like alligator junipers whose normal growth aspect is one of healthy half-death. It's the kind of place I'd be happy to live.

I think of my last, fleeting boyfriend, the one who liked to find and sequester gold in the grand old tradition that sprouted places like Goldfield. There's nothing left from us but a polished, carved piece of jasper in my wallet and a chest full of doubt and relief, but the memories are fresh and they follow me across Nevada, a half-heeded whisper.

Forgive the digression, but it's my opinion that death is the most powerful and possibly the most positive force in our lives. We have to say no to far more than we're able to say yes to, and still everything ends. Those points of termination provide a preciousness and an urgency that will push me soon enough out of Nevada and into the Pacific Northwest. I've got my rain jacket donned, my résumés in hand and and a bellyfull of hoka hey – the sentiment that it's a good day to die.