You Can't Go Home Again

I was born in Oregon. I grew up in Oregon, and I lived more than twenty-five of my adult years in the valleys that lie nestled between the Cascade and Coastal Mountains. I have a son, sisters, nephews, nieces, and old friends who still call Oregon home. So when we crossed the Idaho-Oregon border, I experienced a mix of emotions… some of which I did not understand then and struggle to understand even now. Driving over the Santiam Pass under a sunny blue sky and with the fragrance of pine and juniper permeating the air, I found memories flooding back of summer vacations, wilderness backpacking jaunts, and quilting workshops attended in the small central Oregon town of Sisters. The McKenzie Highway brought tears to my eyes as we drove through lush fir forests past campgrounds with names I still remember and small towns from my earliest childhood. “I learned to fly fish here in the McKenzie River,” I told Bob, “My Uncle Hank taught me.”

But with all the good memories, there is also the sense of loss… My connection to Oregon is broken; with parents dead and a divorce that splintered my own family, there is little for me to return to… no homecoming. I am a visitor. That is the way of things, especially as the years go by and our circle of friends and family grows smaller. Some move on and others stay in place to become the touchstones that we cling to, wanting to believe there are some things that don’t change. But they do, and I find myself trying to reconcile the Oregon I remember with the Oregon that has evolved in my absence. Towns have exploded into cities, rural countryside turned into shopping malls, two-lane highways widened into four-lane motorways, and scenic corridors of evergreen trees are now clear-cut mountainsides rising behind an inadequate fringe of roadside trees. Like most of the states that we have crossed on this road trip, Oregon has fallen victim to the mantra of “Growing the economy.” I wonder if Oregonians realize how much they have lost.
... P. L. Morningstar