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Although I have officially spent more of my life in New York, Oregon holds a place dear in my heart. Oregon. Ken Kesey, lumberjacks and wet evergreen forests, mossy with raindrops on ferns and hemlock, red cedars and rolling hills. Lewis and Clark camped at Astoria for the winter when they reached the Pacific; by the time they left in the spring most of their party had seasonal depression. But what a land of plenty—when the Willamette curled into view, I recalled the taste of fresh blackberries and blueberries, the right balance of sweet and tart, Old Boone’s Ferry Landing on perfecthot summer days. Cumuli stampede over big proportions, pines and firs rise in sharp clean air, and if you see sun in January you’re blessed.
You can go home again, I sighed as I took the Terwilliger curves on I-5 into the heart of that little city of Portland. Under a gray and rainy sky, usual for that time of year, I wished for summer’s long neon pink sunsets. But distracting me from any dissatisfaction were the squares of glass and steel, results of a building boom that sprawled north along the oily-looking Willamette river. Thinking of all the new restaurants and third-wave cafes and cortados I’d have to try got my heart palpitating,
The Columbia is one of few rivers with a tri-hydrological divide, that is, water falling in Triple Peak, Montana or Snow Dome, British Columbia can flow into one of three oceans: north into Hudson Bay and the Arctic, east into the Mississippi and the Atlantic, or west to the Columbia and the Pacific, and this made me wonder about the recent metaphysical equivalent in my life.
Daniel the Writer 
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