Something sacred

I’ve returned to Oregon for the 50th reunion of my senior class in high school.

It’s six a.m. I’m standing on the deck of my brother’s house west of Portland, 800 feet above the Tualatin Valley, gazing out over its airbrushed khaki and green quilting.

There is not a puff of wind, no thrum of distant traffic, no barking dogs, no human voices. The only sounds that reach me are those that might have been there a century ago: the hum of bees on early morning reconnaissance flights; the flutter of birds’ wings in a nearby fig tree; the whinny of a horse–maybe a hundred yards away, maybe a mile. I don’t know. Sounds carry in silence.

A squirrel stands sentry duty on the stump of a fallen spruce; an owl, on the lookout for breakfast, stares at me from the branches of a cedar, then flies away; several deer wander into a field immediately below me, lift their heads, study me, then ignore my presence.

No coyotes, not today. But I know they’re out there. One of them snatched my brother’s last remaining pet, an old Tom cat named Beau, a few months ago. Beau has been replaced by a couple of whirling dervish kittens, but they’ll remain inside, at least until they can match the speed and craftiness of coyotes.

I lift a cup of steaming coffee to my lips, and consider all of this. I think: Atlanta is where I live and probably where I’ll die. But Oregon will always be my home. It’s best that way perhaps, living in Atlanta–a good place to live–but being able to return home and step, at least just after summer sunrises, into something sacred.

Perhaps had I homesteaded in the Northwest, it would have become all but invisible to me.

(For more on my Oregon trip, please see my Weather Channel blog.)

Photo: Oregon’s Tualatin Valley
(Photo by “Jason.”)