To market, to market…to buy a fuzzy hat

Let’s wrap up the trip to Portland. No trip to Portland is complete without a visit to the Saturday Market! Actually, this was my very first Saturday Market, but it was so freaking awesome that I will never be able to resist it again. It’s a semipermanent craft fair–the largest in the US, with nearly 300 vendors all selling amazing handmade crafts and original art and photography every weekend for something like 2/3 of the year. *WOW* It’s overwhelming, inspiring, stunning, and exhilirating all at once. The entire market has this wonderful Neil Gaiman feel to it; even the lightrail stop before the market proper feels like some mysterious, shadowy portal to a world not quite like our own. I kept expecting to run across something truly Neil Gaiman, like the Marquis de Carabas slipping surreptitiously through a door in a wall…and somewhere between the street musicians and strangely dressed downtowners it became pretty clear that this is about as Neverwhere as I am likely to experience in my lifetime. Kind of surreal. Although maybe that’s only because my life is generally so quiet and uneventful, and I haven’t been to many craft shows/markets/miscellaneous strange and artsy events other than this. Maybe after I go another to another few dozen of said events, I will feel like I live in the same universe as Saturday Market. Then again, Spokane craft fairs are very tame in comparison, so maybe not. And let me I say that I really admire all these people–the vendors who come out every weekend and brave the wet weather to sell things that were created with such skill and passion; the street musicians who are really quite good but will never get a record deal; all the people who sell incredibly yummy food from all over the world (when was the last time you saw Himalayan food anywhere?!); and all the people who wander through the market in dreadlocks and improbable outfits. This is the kind of place where you can lose yourself indefinitely, rather like a Renaissance Faire. And like a Ren Faire, you want to come prepared with expendable cash, because it’s just about guaranteed that you will find more than one irresistible item along the way. Like a fuzzy hat, for instance. These things are fabulous–made out of lovely soft wool and very cute, kind of pixie-like, and they are marvelously warm and keep out snow and rain. And you can turn them into other things, like a spiffy satchel and a scarf and a cute hoody. I had to buy one, and it is absolutely fantastic. You can find out more about them here!

A few other things we did while in the Portland area…well, we took a couple of drives–one out Highway 14, where we discovered the apple orchard in addition to many scenic viewpoints that were absolutely breathtaking; and another drive out to the Pacific coast to Seaside and Astoria. Unfortunately, it was pouring when we got there, so we didn’t do much before heading back, but the drive itself was lovely, and I’m so glad we went. I could spend months doing nothing more than exploring all those backroads, hidden creeks, craggy cliffs, and silver waterfalls. I want to fling myself into all that luscious, incredible green, burrow into the soft moss beside a meandering creek and let the rain come down. I want to find a secret path on a mountainside and follow it over a carpet of fallen pine needles to a valley of birch and aspen and evergreens hidden away  from reality. Right now, I am missing my father so much because he would have loved all these discoveries as much as I do–but at the same time, I feel so lucky (again) that he taught me to appreciate these things and that I married a man who shares that love. My whole life, I have loved going on long drives–even when I was little, I wasn’t much trouble for my parents on vacations. My brother and I would stockpile books, games, and puzzles to entertain ourselves on the 9 hour trip between Austin and Amarillo, and then another 7 or more hours from Amarillo to Pueblo, but I rarely touched them. I spent most of the drive staring out the window watching everything go by, even the boring farms and oil fields, daydreaming or simply being content in the quiet of my mind. And now, I have someone to share that quiet joy with…

October SPC2, and a frolic in some orchards & farms

Returning again to my trip to Portland…We took a drive on Highway 14 out of Vancouver one afternoon and accidentally discovered this old abandoned apple orchard. The orchard used to be part of a large estate along the river, but the land has been donated to the state. It was such a beautiful and peaceful place–so quiet and secluded. We discovered a colony of tiny brown bunnies living in the vines at the far edge of the orchard. I have never seen so many apples all at once in my life! Apples littered the ground–hundreds, if not thousands of them, and their fresh, delicious scent filled the air, until we were practically breathing in the essence of apples. We wanted to stay for hours, exploring all the old, overgrown paths and strolling beneath the arched boughs listening to the river. Discoveries like this always reinforce my longing to own property of my own where I can plant rambling orchards of my own and spend the majority of my days simply being among the trees, birds, flowers, clouds, and of course, wild bunnies. It’s the sort of thing that, if you stand still long enough and let the sound of leaves in the breeze soak in long enough, you can come out healed. I am so full of ideas these days that I don’t know how to contain them all, but most of them center around finding a place like this to claim as my own, and all the things I can do, can dream of doing and creating in that kind of peace. Which is not to say that I can’t dream and create here in the city–I do love ugly old buildings and brick so very much, and with the way Wendell Rue rips things out of the downtown landscape, there’s a neverending bounty of fascinating city photos to take around here. And I love that–I love finding something ugly or mundane and figuring out a way to look at it differently until it’s wonderful and new. But there are some dreams that just don’t work when you’re hemmed in with powerlines, commercialism, and city lights. Like owning a dairy, for instance.

Which brings me to the next spotlight in the pictures-of-Amy-holding-fruits-&-veggies tour: Green Bluff. I’m sure I’ve mentioned it before–it’s one of my favorite things about autumn, and alot closer to home than Portland. Green Bluff is a farming community just north of Spokane. Mt. Spokane is visible from most, if not all, of the farms, and it’s just an absolutely gorgeous area. We’ve been going there every October for 4 or 5 years now to pick our own carving pumpkins, and just last year we began to discover that there is more stuff to do out there than you can possibly pack into one day! There will be more about Green Bluff in an upcoming post (sorry, I’m a little behind–I haven’t even finished my trip to Portland!), but Sean & I went up there Tuesday, and will be going again this Sunday to fit in everything. The thing is, neither of us like crowds, so we like to go during the week and take our time exploring everything at a nice, quiet pace. But there’s alot of stuff that happens only on the weekends, so we do the circuit twice to catch everything. Which is more than okay with us, since we love it so much. This is where the dairy idea came from–spending all day at Green Bluff on Tuesday, among all the farms that sell fresh produce, homemade jelly and jam and local honey and wine. It would be so wonderful to be a part of that community…For now, we’ll just settle for visiting as often as possible. And buying dozens of pumpkin donuts on the weekends.

Elegance & Decay

More from my trip to Portland… There’s so much to share, we will have to take it one event at a time. Vancouver, WA is just across the river from Portland; Sean lived in Vancouver for quite a while before moving back to Spokane, so he knew exactly where to take me. In downtown Vancouver there is an old building called The Academy that currently houses a wedding chapel, a beautiful little cafe (in the hidden courtyard no less!), and a number of other businesses. The Academy was originally commissioned by a nun, Sister Mary Joseph, as a girls’ school. She actually designed the school and chapel herself, and even helped with the bricklaying. She eventually sold it to the bricklayer’s family, who still own it today. The school is four stories, although the fourth is no longer used, and it is absolutely gorgeous, a treasury of random antiquities like the old-fashioned sink in the girls’ bathroom, ancient heaters, antique lamps, and rusty once-elegant locks. The architecture is beautiful…I love brick, and The Academy has both a beautiful, well-cared for brick exterior and several shabbier sections of brickwork inside that appeal to my love of vintage things. And of course, I just adore the doors and windows, many of which are very Gothic. Sean and I poked around in there for a long time, up and down all the beautiful spiraling staircases and the whitewashed corridors, squeezing into odd little nooks and crannies just to get the perfect shot of some detail or oddment that captured our attention. It’s too bad we couldn’t sneak up to the fourth floor… We were, however, able to talk the manager of the wedding business into showing us the chapel. It was absolutely breathtaking. I could have stayed in there for hours taking pictures of every little detail–all the sculpted columns and balconies, the gorgeous altar, the galleries above the main chapel floor. It was so amazing. Unfortunately, there was a wedding party coming through in a few minutes, so we didn’t get to stay as long as I would have liked, but I know I’ll be back. It’s one of those places that is just so wonderful you can’t go there just once, or even several times. You have to go there every chance you get to take in the beauty and awe anew.

Although, I must admit, as much as I loved the main building, there were three other structures on the property that were even more captivating. Sean & I speculate that they were servant’s quarters; they have long been abandoned and boarded up. Ivy has completely overtaken them, draping itself over windows and doorways on nearly all sides of the two largest buildings, even smothering an old fire escape in their vines. Beneath the ivy is beautiful old brickwork, the colors faded and uneven, the victim of time’s passage. Every inch of these buildings is worthy of capturing the heart, from the spread of ivy roots across the walls to the barren, graffiti-marred alley on the side. There is a strange, compelling beauty in the sagging double doors at the back, something noble about the worn, lime-green paint fading slowly beneath an arch of dark red brick. A thin chimney tower of brick soars above the ruins, still proudly proclaiming the Academy’s name in letters so large you can see them from miles away. Through gaps in the boards and broken windows, there is evidence of fire damage inside two of the buildings. Peering more intently through those holes, we discovered ivy once again, growing eagerly under the remnants of a collapsed roof. Trapped behind those brick walls are endless mounds of fascinating rubble–it seems that no one ever bothered to clear out any of the items that survived the fire. Behind the broken glass and dangling chunks of wood, there are glimpses of a rusted old bathtub, strange twists of metal that are no longer identifiable–so many things that I felt tempted to find a way inside to get better pictures, even though I knew that would be ill-advised. I am endlessly fascinated by things like this–anything old and dilapidated, rusty and peeling, broken and abandoned. I’m not sure why…but to me, there is an undeniable wonder and joy in photographing them. Perhaps because it is a way to turn something that most people would find ugly or dull into something far more, something intriguing or even beautiful. And perhaps because I feel as ancient, lonely, and run down sometimes, and I am waiting–hoping–for some unusual person to walk by my jagged windows and fire-ravaged walls someday and see something beautiful in them.

October SPC1, and a drive through the Pacific Northwest

A week late again on SPC, this time because of a long overdue vacation to Oregon. Of course, if we hadn’t gone to Portland, this picture wouldn’t exist…This is my husband (the hand on the right) and I eating Ethiopian food in midtown Portland. In Austin, I grew up across the street from a wonderful Ethiopian family (come to think of it, I also grew up across from a family from Sri Lanka; my neighborhood was surprisingly multicultural) and their house always smelled fabulous. Occasionally, my brother and I would be at their house while Turu was making dinner, and she would feed us. This happened only 3 or 4 times in the twenty years that we were neighbors, but every time it was incredible. The food tasted like nothing else I had ever had, and I loved it. Those early experiences in Turu’s kitchen taught me to be brave enough to extend my foreign food experiments beyond Italian, Chinese, and Mexican, and I have actually been lamenting the fact that there seem to be no Ethiopian restuarants because I have missed her cooking so much. When I found out that Portland is home to no less than 3 Ethopian restaurants, there was absolutely no doubt in my mind that I was going to drag Sean into one. And it was every bit as delicious and unique as I remembered–I’m dying to get back to Portland and try more of their dishes!

Over the next week or so, I will be posting loads of pictures and commentary on our trip…It’s amazing how much you can pack into only 4 days when you go somehwere as spiffy as Portland. Also, you can take a lot of photos if you are willing to shoot practically anything cool, even from behind the bugsplattered windshield of a car going 70 mph down the freeway (which I am) and the driver is willing to stop way more often than is necessary to allow you to take pictures of exceptionally marvelous things while standing still outside the car (which my husband is). So I arrived home with 665 pictures, and I am still wading through them all, but I thought I should start getting them up. Not that I am going to post all 665…

I have always loved the drive between Spokane and Portland. There is so much to see, and the scenery is absolutely amazing, even in the desert of the Colombia Basin. The 6 hour drive takes you past a host of beautiful old bridges, train tunnels, and small towns. There are miles of towering cliffs overhead that block out the sun, while you can look across the river and watch the endless, barren gold folds of the mountains until you spot the wineries nestled in valleys near the water, or the Stonehenge monument at Mary Hill standing out stark against the sky. There are certain spots along the Colombia Gorge highway where, rounding a curve, you are suddenly face-to-face with Mt. Hood, looming so high and majestic that you can clearly see the craggy, snow-frosted peak in detail even though it is still 100 miles away. There are at least two canyons right off the freeway, one that you can actually see as you drive by. And all this is even before you reach my favorite part of the trip… After the Dalles, all those towering cliffs slowly get greener and greener, until you are surrounded by emerald mountains lush with trees and ivy, and there are more waterfalls than you can possibly count spilling gloriously toward the river. Unfortunately, we reached all this when it was too dark to really take in the scenery, but there was the most spectacular orange sunset glowing over the horizon–a huge chunk of the sky solid, autumn-bright orange. I’ve never seen anything quite like it. I took a gazillion pictures of it (this one is the best), but the highway was very bumpy at that point, and there was nowhere to turn off, so all the pictures ended up very blurry. Although this actually produced some surprisingly cool results when the camera decided it would prefer to focus on the head and brake lights of the other cars on the road. This also demonstrates just how much the road was jouncing me around–and you can still see a smudgy orange haze in the background. All in all, a fabulous day of driving and picture-taking, as it always is between Spokane and Portland. Good grief, I love Oregon.

Reinventing the Ordinary

It’s time to look at life with a new perspective, time to sit up and pay attention to all those mundane things that pass in and out of our lives on a daily basis and see how they can be something more than ordinary, something truly beautiful and enchanting. This goes beyond Everyday Beauty, although it is certainly part of that. I’m not talking about the flowers and sunsets and other beautiful things that surround us–those things are easy to find if you are looking. I’m talking about looking deeper, reinventing those things that are drab and seemingly uninteresting.

I went to Lowes to buy some sandpaper the other day… When I was little, my parents would take me everywhere with them, and I learned to dread trips to the hardware storesmost of all. It were just so boring–there was absolutely nothing there to interest a little girl. But slowly, over time, I began to develop a fascination, and then a deep and lingering love for certain items. I loved to explore the galleries of doors and windows, especially the doors with beautiful patterned and frosted glass. My brother and I would open and close all these doors until an employee got annoyed enough to stop us–somehow there was this feeling that, with that many gorgeous doors all together, we were in a magical kingdom, even though none of them ever opened into a world beyond the hardware store. Similarly, I liked to look through all the mirrors and fancy door knobs on display, anything pretty or shiny could keep me dazed for hours while my parents shopped for all the boring odds and ends. But one of my favorite sections was always the lamps. They were even more varied and beautiful than the doors, and walking beneath their warm glow was pure enchantment. I was fascinated by the old-fashioned lanterns that looked like they belonged in some foggy London street from the 1800s; I was dazzled by the chandeliers with crystal and gold draped along elegant curves; I loved the gentle breeze of the fans and the endless variety of patterns. So on my most recent trip to Lowes, I found I couldn’t resist revisting my old haunts, and I was astounded that I haven’t done this more in recent years. The wonder and fascination is still strong in me; I still find these things infinitely alluring. I strolled up and down every aisle with my head craned back, taking dozens of pictures while customers and employees alike stared at me. And it was beautiful.

I must throw in a good word for the paint section. Even more than the lamps, I simply adored the paint section–so much that visiting it every time I’m in a hardware store is a habit that I have never shaken. I am drawn like a moth to those fabulous racks of color samples, and it’s really very difficult to peel me away from them. It’s the first thing I seek out in any hardware store, no matter what I’m actually there for. I have been collecting paint samples since I was 7 or 8–yes, you heard right, collecting them, in all shades and hues. I have a huge box sitting somewhere in my mom’s house crammed full of them, and endless stacks scattered in random places here in Spokane. I love the names paint companies come up with for all their colors–they always seem so exotic and beautiful. Sweet Rosewood. Burnt Plum. Pompeii Orange. Incense. Mediterranean Sun. Azure Mist. The names alone have always sparked my imagination. So tomorrow, when you go to the hardware store, the grocery store, the drive-through coffee stand, look deeper. Somewhere, there is beauty in it all.