A Beginner's Guide to Taking the Long Way Home

Best Laid Plans...

On paper, my outing was simple: Grab my bicycle, Perseverance, visit Garden Home, then head down the Fanno Creek Trail to Derry-Dell Creek, explore a bit, and head home. I never made it, and ended up, by my own will, or perhaps stubbornness, in the distant suburbs of Portland. As I left home southbound on the Fanno creek Trail, I was still sticking to my original plan. 

A northbound WES crosses SW North
Dakota St. in Tigard, OR

In many ways, a trip on this path always has company of some sort: other people, vehicles on the highways, or perhaps the trains. The trail and the Portland and western Railroad both follow the creek, so the train is a near-constant companion. During rush hour, TriMet runs its WES commuter train south along the trail: you hear the WES cruise through town, digital bell clanging obnoxiously, distinctive horn blaring.

About a mile shy of Tigard, I noticed that the rim of Perseverance's rear tire hit bottom when I jumped a curb: a flat. I hadn’t carried a pump since mine had been lost in the woods on a beach trip. I was stuck.

I had managed to reach Derry Dell Creek, so I decided to explore as much as I could before heading home. I followed a well-blazed trail into the woods towards the creek, but I had only travelled about a hundred feet before I passed hedge clippers, bags of leaves and at least three tents. Someone had blazed this trail deliberately, and probably didn't want to be disturbed. So much for exploring.

I returned to Perseverance. I could patch her tire in the park but I had no way to refill it. My best bet was walking to Tigard Transit Center and catching any combination of transit, including a tempting ride on TriMet's commuter train, WES. In fact, why not ride it AWAY from home to Wilsonville? I had plenty of time. I checked my wallet for cash and started off with my wounded steed in the direction of Tigard. 

A Table of Heads

Another WES was departing Tigard northbound as I arrived in town. I got off and walked the remainder of the way to the fair machine, bought fare, and waited. WES stations are pretty barren save for the Interactivator, a series of unlabeled brass heads riding rails inside a steel table. They have them at every stop: words carved into the steel name the characters but don’t tell you which is which, along with a "transporter." The idea, of course, is to pit the characters against each other and form stories about how they interact, but with the train sharing a track with the characters “The sleeper narrowly avoids getting hit by a train while the laugher looks on” is a tempting story to use. Thrice I encountered quicker routes home: a Line 78,  Line 42, the new Beaverton bus I never rode, and even a northbound WES. In all three cases, it was a willful decision to stay on the train platform and wait for the train to take me even further from home.

The "Interactivator" at the
Tigard WES station. The
Historic Mask head is in the
foreground in front of the
train, the upside down head
is to the right.

When the WES finally arrived, I tied up Perseverance in the wheelchair area, and took a seat. There were faces on the train, but none of the extreme examples from the steel game board—and thankfully, no one I know of narrowly avoided getting hit.

WES is a unique experience. 

The line southbound to Salem and beyond last saw regular passenger trains in 1933, so prior to TriMet opening WES, the line side scenery had been seen only by railroad employees. It's a fairly quiet and peaceful ride. The powered railcar's engine chugs along as the train glides past neighborhoods, forests, and lakes full to the brim of pond lilies. The train reached Wilsonville, waited a half hour and turned around. As a passenger, you can travel no further. Looking southbound, the Passenger track ends, and the line stretches on into the distance, a set of signals guarding it, the tracks silent and dark. I rode north again, and got off at Hall and Nimbus, waving to a Few people I didn't realize I had befriended, and headed uphill to catch the 56.

Line 42 once more caught me waiting at the bus stop, but I couldn't recall where the 42 went. I needed to go uphill, down Scholls Ferry road. I held up fingers to sign 5-6. he nodded, and then the bus turned, and headed down Scholls Ferry road, in the direction I was hoping to travel. I swore and after waiting a few more minutes, came to the inevitable conclusion that the 42 had--for the second time that day-- tried to save me from my self-induced misadventure. After a twenty-minute walk, I passed the stop the 42 would have dropped me at, much closer to home than the stop I had for the second time refused its assistance.

My bike tire wasn't fixed until the next day, and as of writing this, I still don't have a pump. But I won't forget the coincidental kindness of the Line 42, and if one ever tries to offer me a ride again, I will forsake my stubbornness and hop on . -KP

Bibliography:
Oregon Electric Railway, in the Oregon Encyclopedia
https://oregonencyclopedia.org/articles/oregon_electric_railway/#.XQLSNNNKjm0

The Interactivators: Sculpture for TriMet WES Commuter Rail by MARY PRIESTER 
https://trimet.org/pdfs/store/Interactivators.pdf

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The Plum Tree Has fallen, Long Live The Tree!

Our own rose bushes, still
months from blooming, unlike
the rosebush at the streetlamp

It’s been over a year since I wrote my article lamenting the loss of the Plum Tree a block uphill from my family’s house. Since it was cut down, I located the stump--all that remained of it--then watched as this last remnant was dug up and hauled off. The tree, i later discovered, was a cherry plum, a relatively fast growing tree with a short lifespan, considered an invasive in Portland. In street-views, the plum tree appears very scraggly, and the stump was covered in fungi. Perhaps it was rotting, and had become a danger to the house, or its power lines: perhaps it was just time for it to go.

And yet despite this acceptance, I still think it is a shame, that my evening walk to the glowing tree can’t be repeated every spring. But of course, time has gone on: leaves grew, changed colors and fell, and then came our series of late snowstorms. The whole time, I paid no heed to the surrounding garden, choosing instead to focus on that stump each time I passed the site. But at some point, something changed. I was so focused on the remains of the plum tree, that I have no idea when they planted the rose bush. 

As with its predecessor, I only noticed it when I saw pink flowers out of the corner of my eye while driving by. I paid it no heed right away so I don’t know when this was: it could have been sometime in March, or maybe early April. But by the middle of April, when my curiosity finally got the better of me, the blossoms were gone.

I inspected our own roses, and noticing that they were nowhere near blooming, and figured I had missed another opportunity. To my surprise though, when I went to inspect the rosebush beneath the streetlight, I saw it was covered in dozens of buds, ready to break into full bloom again before the end of the month perhaps, it’s foliage that same shade of purple, and I distinctly remember the flowers being pink. Yet unlike it’s predecessor, the entire plant is in very good health, growing skyward. 

There may never be another plum tree, but I suppose that there doesn’t have to be. It was cut down for whatever reason, like a piano player canceling a show at the intermission, and I was too busy demanding a refund at the ticket counter to notice the child coming onstage with a violin to happily perform instead. Nearby, a series of plum trees grow from the bushes: typical of an invasive species. They are away from the streetlight. The rose bush though, was planted directly in the spotlight, amid a sea of grape hyacinth. A new purple tree with pink blossoms: a phoenix rising from the soil, as it were.

When I finished the last article I originally wanted to warn that good things should be enjoyed while they last, but changed it to “don’t take them for granted.” I didn’t want to advise anyone to dwell on the present. Both are good pieces of advice, but I realize now that while I had ignored my own advice. By continuing to ponder what remained of something special to me, I ignored the rest of the garden entirely, and overlooked something new and exciting literally taking root before my very eyes.

The Orange Trees of Titusville

Ever seen an orange tree?

Deceptively colorful oranges are
sliced and ready for juicing. Note
the difference in appearance from
their store-bought cousins. 

S. Kramer, Photo

I can’t speak for all Northwesterners, but for me, orange trees feel almost mythological. You know they must exist--oranges are a fruit after all and fruit grow on trees--but if you live in Portland, or Montana, or wherever, and never leave, you are almost certain to never see one in person. Our climate is not fit for growing citrus (yet palms survive here in small numbers, so go figure). The closest thing to an orange tree you ever see are the leaves still on the fruits when you buy them, or that line from CSN’s song Guiniverre, or romantic paintings of orchards in a museum. I guess what I’m getting at, is that unless you head south, you will never likely never walk up to a tree and pluck an orange. I admit that I tend to get excited about mundane things, but I was thrilled to see what I thought was an ordinary orange tree.

The trees are unavoidable around Titusville, Florida. I haven’t done extensive research as to why: perhaps they grew from seeds thrown over fences, perhaps the city is built on old orange groves. Whatever the reason, they’re everywhere, and they aren’t just restricted to gardens. That is, in fact, the place you are least likely to see them. If you want to find an Orange tree in Titusville, you need to look in the exact middle of a forest of live oaks, palms, and Spanish moss. Or try at the edge of a campground, or perimeter fences at airports. They are inescapable, popping up in what seem to be the most bizarre of places, holding out their delicious looking brilliant orange fruit like the tree in the Garden of Eden.

Of course the temptation to at least try one was great, but I am a nervous person, hesitant to eat fruit I am unfamiliar with. My Dad, however, was more confident, and it was he who suggested we juice a few of them. What could possibly go wrong? We rigged up an orange picker from a broomstick and spoon and managed to land about ten of them. Then came the moment of truth.

A few things should have tipped me off that something wasn’t quite right. The first clue was the local man walking his dog who warned us that they weren’t what they seemed. (We ignored him.) The second clue was the peculiar pale yellow center more like a grapefruit than an orange, and the third was the taste. 

It tasted...different. 

It still tasted like an orange to a certain degree: beneath the pucker-inducing bitterness, the flavor of orange juice could clearly be detected. The raw juice, however, made grapefruit taste like candy, and after adding enough sugar to keep a kindergartener awake for days, the juice was palatable... and tasty with rum, though friends say I should have tried Tequila. I may give that a shot next time. Either way, it made for a good cocktail, or without alcohol as some sort of strange lemonade. I would even tentatively recommend it, just be ready for the bellyaches.

All experimentation aside, the conclusion was inescapable: what we found were not the oranges of the store shelve: sweet and juicy, grafted clones of carefully bred to the tastes of their human masters. In Oregon, fruit grows wild too: pears, apples, cherries, plums. Most of these, however are quite palatable, or look vastly different from their grocery store cousins. The orange trees of Titusville are wild runaways, pungent and discolored. It’s bright rind masquerading to foolish visitors as the tree they think they knew. -KP

 28˚30' 11"N, 80˚46'57"W

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