I’ve always been the sort that gets a little homesick when I’m on the road. I take a big breath when my car bursts out of the trees after sailing over Mt. Hood from Portland and beyond. And as I draw closer to Powell Butte and the friendly communities that surround us, my heart rate slows and I delight in remembering how I ended up here in the first place.
Growing up in Newberg, Oregon, I spent hours with my horse, tried to raise rabbits (that refused to mate) and paraded my FFA pig around the show ring a few times. I dreamed of becoming a veterinarian, so my high school community service project entailed working at a local clinic. Where, I quickly learned that I enjoyed the operating room way more than walking dogs or cleaning kennels. Problem was I didn’t much care for science classes, so there ended my brief veterinary career. Instead, I was the sort who’d rather make sure all the birds in the county had enough seed to last all winter. Ask my parents! They used to call me “the bird lady.” And even though they both grew up in the cement jungle, also known as California, they somehow planted a seed, or twenty, into my bones that would germinate into an all-out passion for country living.
Speaking of passion, it wouldn’t be long until I would meet my husband; at where else but, an agricultural college? He grew up in Condon, Oregon; working wheat and hay fields back when a kid could play three sports a year with still enough time for hunting with Dad and Saturday morning cartoons. (Man, I miss the 80’s.)
The year was 1986 and I’d just finished a 365-day stint traveling all over Oregon as the State FFA President. As embarrassing as it is to admit, until that year, I truly behaved as if the state ended just west of the Cascade Mountain range. It was humbling and eye-opening to learn just how wrong I was! Not only did I have the privilege of staying with families all over the state, but the hours upon hours of driving to every nook and cranny of Oregon was an education that no amount of college would ever give me.
And then to realize, my first actual week of college, that the amazingly broad-shouldered man, who would one day become my husband, was also corn-fed to near perfection on the wrong side of the mountains? It was almost too much for my State-of-Portland frame of mind to handle.
But handle it I did. Because nothing ever felt more right than dreaming with him about how we’d one day like to raise our children in the sticks where people in passing cars wave a friendly hello and the mail is still delivered to an un-locked box at the end of the gravel driveway.
Fast forward a couple years, and you might have asked, is there something wrong with this picture? Sure, we got married and all, but we spent the first 15 years of marital bliss living the fast life as city-slickers with a capital “C.” Law School for him, Business and Marketing for me and before we knew it we were living latte’ and light-rail lives far from our country roots. His tan shoulders slaved away in a suit at the Oregon Supreme Court followed by the biggest law firm in the state. And my days were spent organizing Vera Katz’ insanely busy schedule followed by a stint at hawking Oregon film locations to movie-makers from (gulp) Hollywood, of all places.
What were we thinking? Apparently, we weren’t because once those children we’d dreamed of came along, the wheels of change began to turn. And the wide open spaces began to call us back home. (…to be continued.)
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