You know how they say everyone in Oregon is a hippy? You'd be a hippy too, if you lived here. The land is so beautiful; it's hard to be apathetic. It would be like watching someone carve up Helen of Troy's face. If you notice the beauty at all, you're compelled to do something about it. It makes you sad and sorry for the ones who can only see the beauty of dollar signs. It's a handicap they have to live with, a mental illness, frustrating and saddening.
It's more beautiful than Helen, really. I always imagined her to be that Greek ideal, thin and waspish. The land here is ample and giving, the gentle curves of hills more like the body of one of Rubens or Titian's women, overflowing with flowers or sweet, juicy blackberries wherever it's left to run wild. There are scars, yes, left by logging, and the burning of fields that seems to happen a lot at this time of year. The beauty just stands out more. I imagine the land as a woman like Harriet Tubman, scarred, and not what society would call beautiful, but with that burning underneath, a fierce glory not everyone can see. A rarer, wilder beauty that comes from the knowledge that no matter what chains are used to hold you, you'll never really be anyone's captive. I think that's what compels some people to try and beat the land down with fire and chainsaws, that defiance. If humans ever succeed in wiping it out completely, grace will have left this planet. It won't be worth living on.
People grow bamboo in their yards here, and eucalyptus, huge sunflowers taller than most men, riots of flowers. Many of the trees on the mountains are Douglas fir, but there are three different kinds of maple trees here, some birch, and the neighbors around the curve toward Yoncalla have three trees I have yet to identify, where the bottoms of the leaves flash white-silver in the sun, when the wind blows them.
There's a huge peace sign made of lights, halfway up the mountain. You can see it when you're on the highway. The people here are passionate, most of them. They believe strongly, they are tied to their land. There's a dichotomy between the hippies and the loggers or cattlemen, yes, but there's little apathy.
I have yet to meet someone here who thought they needed to fight with me based on the way I look. Civil servants smile at me. A middle aged man in a business suit and a tie gave me a thumbs up as I was loudly listening to Social Distortion in a parking lot a few days ago. Women in their forties have their hair dyed a crayola color or dredded. The status quo has been forced to accept or leave. Largely they've decided to accept, checkout girls at Safeway have facial piercings. There's a Starfucks, but why would I go when there are ten other coffee shops? Yes, there are some mainstream places. For the most part, though, the small, individually owned places are far more common.
I could be at home here, given time. There's room for me, in a way there was never going to be in Brockton. I'm not the odd man out because odd isn't shunned here. I saw a woman watering a dandelion that had grown up between the cracks in the sidewalk. I said that most people would pull it up, and she told me that if it was willing to work that hard to be alive, she was going to help it all she could.
I've been smiling about that all day.
completely weirded out
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