INTRODUCTION
Conjure up an image of Oregon and it will most likely be colored with all hues of green and gray, brimming with firs and ferns, and dampened by drizzle. This would be a fairly accurate picture of western Oregon, the area between the Pacific Ocean and the Cascade Range, but that's just one face of the state.
East of the Cascades, where volcanic peaks block Pacific rain clouds, the colors turn to gold and blue, and the horizon expands for miles. Rivers dissect northeastern Oregon; the southeast's topography is marked by fault blocks and dry basins. Psychically, eastern Oregon is The West, and western Oregon is the Northwest.
Every Oregonian, and nearly every visitor to the state, pays heed to the environment. It's unavoidable. In southeastern Oregon, you're little more than a speck in space; in the Columbia Gorge or the low, wet western Cascades, you feel like a mass of carbon and oxygen, absolutely destined to nourish a fern, with only force of will and movement keeping you from becoming green and rooted.
Oregon's giant trees and abundant fish, once taken for granted, are decreasing in number, and perhaps paradoxically, the people harvesting these resources often have the deepest connections to them. Oregonians share a concern about natural resources. Not everyone agrees on what should be done, but most everybody cares. Hikers wandering through old-growth forests may pry open a nurse log with a boot toe and suddenly experience a tidal wave of feeling for nature's cycles of decay and rebirth. Campers wandering near Frenchglen during bird migration will hear coyotes howling in the night and the wing-beats of birds thundering in the dawn, and perhaps be overwhelmed by the enormity and continuity of nature's gifts. Oregon's storytellers have long taken cues from their surroundings. Indian legends have some of the same landmarks that show up in Ursula K. LeGuin's futuristic novel, The Lathe of Heaven. The damp chill infusing Lewis and Clark's journal entries during their winter near the Oregon coast is so pervas
ive that one can only imagine the actual pages becoming water-stained and wavy from moisture. Readers enveloped by moss in Barry Lopez's River Notes and caught up in the rising, rushing river water in Ken Kesey's Sometimes a Great Notion, may decide it's time to head to the dry east side of the Cascades with a copy of C. E. S. Wood's epic, "The Poet in the Desert."
Wood, a prominent Portland lawyer in the early 1900s, also reminds readers that Oregonians, however well-bred, " . . . think that it is the right of every American to go to hell and be damned if he wants to. That is not humor -- it is the truth." In contemporary Oregon culture, filmmaker Gus van Sant shows a conventions-be-damned pluck and depicts urban Portland in a light that some find a little rough-edged and unpleasant, and others find dead accurate.
No matter where an Oregonian is from, no matter what his or her livelihood, Oregonians love Oregon. Eastern Oregonians may be a little suspicious of Portlanders, and vice versa, but people are firmly rooted, with a deep sense of place and a pride in where they live. It's rare to find an Oregonian who really wants to move anywhere else. Some do it out of desperation, then immediately begin to plot their return.
While doing the research for this book, I've asked myself a number of unexpected questions, such as: Is it possible to reach perfect enlightenment while downshifting on hairpin turns on the McKenzie Pass Road, as empty Diet Coke cans clank back and forth on the backseat floor? I've begun to think so.
I also got a sense of being in the right place at the right time when, shortly after contracting to write this book, I took off for Steens Mountain, knowing the road would soon be closed by snow. As I dodged boulders on the final haul up Steens Summit, a battered van approached on its way down. We both slowed for the obligatory backroad wave, and I recognized the driver as Greg Vaughn, the photographer for this book, also racing the weather and chasing the perfect light at Kiger Gorge. Hopefully, this book will set readers on their own path toward special moments and realizations, yet be as well a useful, practical guide to the state of Oregon.
