Tomatoes

My numbness dissipated as we pulled out of the Columbia Gorge, heading east. The rain gave way to patches of blue sky, the misty hills to the ocher shelves sliding down towards the river. All of a sudden I felt alive and excited. I was in the car with two kindred spirits, the conversation was lively and the ride to Antelope, to Desert Conference XXV, seemed very quick. Once we reached the Columbia Plateau, we were treated to the sharply contrasting light of the late afternoon over the wheat fields, and later the hilly John Day country. Then I remembered why I am so enamored with Oregon. The big city, its parking lots, noise and craziness are the price to pay for having access to wilderness and these breathtaking landscapes.

The welcome I got from friends, former foundation colleagues and fellow desert rats was overwhelming. Each of the greetings and hugs made me feel increasingly welcome, part of the community, as if I had come home. Activists with whom I had been working since the late 80s, former grantees, and the younger generation of bright, fun, kind, hard working conservation staff - all treating me as still one of them. Being gone for just nine months is not a big deal and I could now take up my life and activities as I have left them. For how much longer can I be gone before becoming a stranger?


The day after I returned from the conference I went to the beach for 3 days with Marianne - and was under the same spell. The weather was the best, perfect September days, a last stretch of summer. The ocean was wild; huge waves crashing and splashing. Nevertheless, on two days we saw whales, and on the third a group of some 40 (a pride?) of California Sea Lions foraging in the impressive surf. It was all so easy, so familiar. At times I would forget that I am visiting from so far away, from another life. Being here, staying at Marianne's house, I know that I am not at home. But on the go, like on so many trips I have taken with Marianne, it seems like just one more. Since we speak exclusively French with each other and were playing old French songs in the car, and since our conversations often were about Switzerland, at times I no longer knew who was visiting whom, or on which continent we were.

Yesterday someone asked me how I was feeling about having to travel back to Switzerland in 2 weeks (Oct. 14). I honestly had not yet given it any thought. The Lemonade Project has definitely taught me to live in the moment. Slowly, though, I am starting to distill out of the many experiences and encounters I am having during this stay in the US a feeling that I hope I can keep for the next several months: it doesn't matter where I live, I am comfortable on both continents, I am loved and supported here and there. There will not be a perfect solution, wherever I live I will miss components of the other life, but it's ok, I can be ok and happy either way. Perhaps my anxieties are at long last yielding to a sort of surrender to whatever opportunity life will offer.

This blog post will never do justice to the excitement and experiences of the last few days: the farewell bear hug of a friend who has terminal cancer - he gave me a piece of obsidian he picked up on Glass Butte just a few days before, which I will keep forever; the heron and the egret in front of the condo window on Siletz Bay; picking chanterelles in the coastal rainforest and feasting on them; the setting sun on the colorful limestone cliffs on Cape Kiwanda; watching a kingfisher flutter along the Deschutes River; a friend's soul food serving as the basis of a soulful evening with parents of the French-American School days; fish and chips and a microbrew in Newport while listening to the barking of the sea lions. And let us not forget the less pleasant hours at the dentist (a root canal coming up on Monday!) and the trips between the optometrist and the glasses store because of a bad prescription; getting on the wrong bus, the impossibility of figuring out how to get where by bus because neither the routes, nor the schedules are posted at the stops and I don't have a smart phone and my cell phone is out of battery... And this being Portland, I can't help but notice that the most common subject of conversations among locals is not the state budget deficit, or the upcoming elections, or who won the game. No, it's all about tomatoes: the fact that this year's summer was so pathetic that they didn't ripen, which makes for a lot of frustrated gourmets!

Special thanks to the folks who have generously housed, driven or fed me: Gilly, Marianne, Rosine, Randy, Beth and Tony, John and Teri, Ron and Ria, Wendy. My apologies to the many unanswered email messages - I am either out of town and without a computer, or madly running around in Portland until I crash late at night.

Pictures:

1. The bounty ready to become dinner.
2. Shaniko Post Office. Sheepmen would bring the wool to the railroad station for shipping. Shaniko is on the way to the Big Muddy Ranch, formerly Rajneeshpuram, now the Washington Family Ranch, AKA Young Life Ranch - site of the Desert Conference.
3. The John Day river and surrounding country, either designated wilderness, or proposed wilderness.
4. Pacific City, Cape Kiwanda Beach.