This blog was started about ten months ago to chronicle a journey to Oregon. I assume that most everyone who reads this blog knows by now that the journey ended some time ago. I left Oregon in the aftermath of a 30-year storm not knowing exactly what I was doing. I returned a few weeks later to drive my truck and some clothing home not really taking the time to consider what might wait around the corner. It's very hard to talk about the whole experience because I'm only, now, truly starting to think about everything that has happened. For the the first third of 2009, I was back in Orange County going through familiar motions. I was in a routine that started four years ago. Two weekends ago, I returned to Portland for the first time since I'd left.
I don't know why I'm writing this now. It's difficult to take a measure of the time I spent in the Pacific Northwest. On the one hand, the joys of living in a new city which I loved and bonding with my brother as our relationship moved from mere familial to a much deeper friendship. Throw meeting a wonderful woman into the equation and things were really starting to look like the start of something better beginning. Then everything ended so abruptly. It was hard to go back because, at first, I didn't know what to expect and then, I realized that nothing was going to be the same as it had been last fall. While it was wonderful to return home to friends and family, it's been heartbreaking in its own way to realize that I stumbled into such an amazing period of life and then fell out of it so abruptly. I can't get my head around it all.
