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Last week, I was on my bike stopped at a red light, and another person on a bike pulled up behind me. I’m never sure how much to engage with folks like that as we wait for the light to change; sometimes people just pretend like we’re all in our own disconnected bubbles, sometimes we make eye contact and smile, sometimes a brief nod of acknowledgement. But this older dude all exuberant-like looked me straight in the eye and was like “are you ready for a week of rain??” Ha. It was awesome. I was, indeed, ready for a week of rain, as was he. (And it ended up being not quite a week, and very lovely:)
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(just a lovely sunrise on the way to work the other day:)
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II
A few days ago, I was riding home from Mt Tabor, where I’d gone early in the morning to run before work. Though it was clear when I left, it had started raining by the time I was riding home; it was colder than it had been, though despite the fact that it’s downhill all the way home I was still feeling mostly warm from running. A faster guy came up behind me on his bike, and as he passed me called over “Ahha! Another member of the no-gloves club!” and then ruefully shook his own cold hands. And we shared a brief moment of commiseration as I realized that my hands actually were kinda cold, and then he rode off and I turned toward my house all smiley.
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(the Salmon Creek Greenway Trail in Vancouver, which I’d never been on until recently)
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III
On Monday it was the most gloriously perfect fall day ever, sunny but not too hot, leaves starting to turn colors, slight breeze, I had no hard obligations, just perfect, perfect, perfect in every way. And after I went to an open house for the Herbarium and Seed Library at Portland State, I sat in the Park Blocks and watched the leaves rain down in the breeze, loving life. And a woman sat down on a bench near me and smiled and said, “it’s just so beautiful, isn’t it?” and then pulled out a book, a real live book from the library, and started reading.
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(oh, also, it’s (sometimes-melting;) mushroom season!:)
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These kinds of things make me love Portland so much. The casual connection with a stranger, the acknowledgement that we’re all in this shared space together, the gentle noticing of something in common like cold hands — this only happens when people are in a place together, willing to notice that other people inhabit that space too, and willing to take a risk to voice something about that connection out loud. This is not something I take for granted. It’s something beautiful and pure and maybe it happens other places too — I’m sure it does in other cities where people venture out of their cars and their own little silos — but it feels so very Portland to me and I’m so grateful for my sweet home.