Oregon Coast to Vancouver, B.C.

I spent last weekend with Tom Harvey and Jean Spraker in Manzanita, on the Oregon coast. Tom was my first grad student, and is now the Chair at Portland State University. He and Jean live in a small condo in the (now) very upscale Pearl District in Portland. When they moved in years ago, they were urban pioneers – most of the Pearl was still industrial, and the infrastructure for upscale, cosmopolitan living for which the area is now known had not yet been developed. Today the Pearl is one of the premier neighborhoods of Portland, and boasts amenities such as the Performing Arts Center (the repurposed Armory where we saw Crazy Enough – see earlier blog) and Powell’s Books, not to mention lots of eateries, boutiques, and the like.

As nice as living downtown is, one of the reasons people reside in Portland is to enjoy the spectacular natural environment that extends in all directions, from the Columbia Gorge to Mount Hood to the Oregon Coast. As the economy has boomed, so has the development of the second home market, and the coast is a particularly desirable area. Tom and Jean managed to find a lot in Manzanita, and recently built a house there with views of beautiful trees, and a bit of the Pacific. Manzanita is interesting – unlike most of the coastal towns, it seems to have vehemently eschewed anything smacking of touristic kitsch. There are almost no tourist-oriented establishments in the small community. Instead, it’s nearly all homes – mostly deserted during the week, and bustling on the weekends. Only an hour and a half from Portland, it’s a reachable (if not necessarily affordable) location for coast houses and cottages. And it’s within reach of some stunning beaches, state parks, and trails.

My GPS serendipitously routed me to the coast via Oregon 53, a narrow, twisty road that ends up following the Nehalum River down to the bay of the same name, just south of Manzanita. The temperatures dropped as I approached the coast – it’s often extremely windy here, making this stretch a destination for kite flyers and kite-surfers (they surf while being pulled along by kites that look more like parasails). At Tom and Jean’s, after unloading the bike, we immediately went down to the beach, and saw firsthand why the trees in the area are leaning at rather alarming angles (blowdowns are common, and there have been some rather spectacular wind storms that have devastated large areas of forest). The next morning we got to explore even more. We spent the morning on the beach at Oswald West State Park – named after a visionary governor of Oregon (1911-1915) who declared the coastal intertidal zone a navigable waterway, thereby permanently preserving public access to the entire Oregon coast. We had timed our visit for low tide, and we got to explore wonderful tide pools, filled with clams, mussels, starfish, sea anemones, and the like. There were also some spectacular uplifted and tilted sedimentary bedding planes, graphically illustrating the processes of subduction and metamorphosis that have shaped the geology of the area.

After spending the morning on the beach, we headed north to Cannon Beach (named after a ship’s cannon found there – there are a lot of shipwrecks on this stretch of the coast, thanks in large measure to Neahkahnie Mountain, a basalt feature that is the highest point on the Oregon coast. We ate lunch at Moe’s – specializing in seafood, of course. After lunch we explored the galleries and boutiques of Cannon Falls (of which there are far too many – this is major tourista-land. However, one place – NW by NW Gallery – actually was worth a visit. They represent a small but very select group of artists – Christopher Burkett (photographer – google him to see some stunning work), Lillian Pitt (native American sculpture), Ruth Brockman (glass) and others. (The gallery’s website is nwbynwgallery.com) Tom is a serious and very good photographer, and he particularly wanted me to see Burkett’s work. I hadn’t heard of him, but was very, very impressed.

On Monday, after saying goodbye to Tom and Jean, I headed north on US 101, the Pacific Highway. I stopped for an hour at Fort Clatsop, where Lewis and Clark overwintered in 1804/1805. A plan of the fort survived in the notes from the expedition, and it has been reconstructed and is now one of the two major interpretive centers associated with the set of parks commemorating the Expedition of Discovery at the mouth of the Columbia. After crossing the Columbia, I headed up through Washington. I had decided not to travel on I-5, but instead to enjoy the scenery on the Washington Coast and the Olympic Peninsula. Much of the Washington Coast consists of giant sloughs – tidal wetlands and low-lying meadows. I motored up the west side of the Hood Canal, the southern extension of Puget Sound, sandwiched between the Olympic range and the Cascades. Here, too, huge sloughs are home to some of the best oyster beds in the country. I stopped at the Hama Hama Oyster Company, where I purchased a half-pint of oysters and some cocktail sauce for ten bucks. My late lunch was a 17-oyster cocktail -- absolutely delicious.

I got to Port Townsend around 4:15, and purchased a ticket for the ferry to Whidbey Island. With 45 minutes before boarding, I took a quick trip through Port Townsend, which has been very heavily developed with tourists in mind. It’s reminiscent of Stillwater – but with ocean views instead of the St. Croix. Oddly, the ferry I took across was the Pierce County. Cotton Mather, formerly of our department and one of the founders of the Pierce County Geographical Society, would have cocked an eyebrow.

Whidbey Island is beautiful and windswept. The blasts from the Strait of Juan de Fuca made for challenging motorcycling. The agriculture of the southern part of the island was soon replaced by the heavy industry of the oil refinery in the north, at Anacortes, and the roar of the jets from the naval air training facility. It was a bit disconcerting to have low-flying bombers buzz the highway, especially because their din usually preceded seeing them. Past Whidbey Island, I headed north through Bellingham on I-5, crossing the border around 8:30 p.m. I finally pulled up to the street next to Jim Glassman and Thitiya’s new condo in North Vancouver around 9:00 – just as they were driving by. I heard a yell – “Is that Roger?” – and followed their car into the garage.

Jim and Thitiya are selling their place in Minneapolis, and Thitiya was leaving the next morning to take care of some of the business associated with that. Jim, one of a number of former grad students from our department who now make Vancouver their home, is on the faculty at UBC. Thitiya has just finished working for the Minneapolis School District, and after a number of years of living in two locations, they are back together in the same place. They just bought the condo in North Vancouver three months ago – it has views across to downtown Vancouver, and up to the Lion’s Gate Bridge and beyond.

Vancouver is one of the most beautiful cities in North America – and also one of the most culturally interesting and diverse. The culture is Pacific Pan-Asian – the mix of restaurants, ethnicities, and lifeways is astounding. What’s odd about Vancouver is that it manages to be absolutely beautiful despite the fact that its architecture is unremarkable at best, and often downright ugly. Like Hong Kong (which it emulates to some extent), there isn’t a lot of developable land in comparison with the number of people who want to live here, and the result is a proliferation of high-rise residential towers, not too dissimilar to what one sees in the iconic views of Hong Kong. Many of these are unlovely concrete constructions – and yet the overall effect is quite fine. Vancouver conveys a sense of cosmopolitanism mixed with an almost nervous energy and a sensitivity to the environment that I haven’t really seen anywhere else. It’s not that there aren’t issues – gang activity is a real problem, poverty and substance abuse are quite evident, and congestion is omnipresent – but the overall impression is of vibrance and healthy activity, and a really booming economy. There is a huge amount of building associated with the development of the facilities for the upcoming Winter Olympics in 2010 – a gigantic area of what eventually will be condos east of Granville Island is being constructed for the Olympic Village, and new heavy rail public transportation systems are nearing completion. As Jim pointed out, although the economic recession has slowed the frenzied increase in property values in Vancouver, development continues apace, and the housing market is still very tight.

Years ago, back in the earIy 1970s, Heidi Oxford and I had driven from our home in Kirkland, WA, and gone up to Simon Fraser University, then a brand-spanking-new institution built on the top of a mountain in Burnaby, surrounded by even taller mountains. I think we camped in a parking lot up there. I used to think SFU was one of the most amazing and beautiful bits of architecture in the world. I visited it again, and was surprised to find that my opinion had changed dramatically. I suddenly realized that it was built in a style that I now know as Brutalist architecture, that its immense, formalistic open spaces and quadrangles are not human scaled but instead are neo-baroque (the architecture of power!), and that it is a rabbit-warren of un-navigable passages and stairways that make it extremely hard to find anything. Jim told me that when the X Files folks wanted a setting that conveyed menacing bureaucratic activity, they usually filmed at Simon Fraser University.

In the afternoon, once Jim had taken Thitiya to the airport, we went to Gastown and then down to Granville Island, where we visited a couple of very high end First Peoples art galleries. The objects are stunningly beautiful -- museum quality (and with prices that put them well outside of my range)-- but I'm content just to look, anyway. In the evening we headed over to the east side, to Commercial Ave, where we ate at Café Kathmandu, a really wonderful Nepali restaurant. I haven’t been a big fan of this cuisine in the past – it seemed like a somewhat bland version of Indian food when I’ve had it before – but Jim told me that this would be different, and he was right. The food was much lighter, with great spice combinations, and a freshness that is more reminiscent of Thai or Vietnamese food than Indian. We started with Bhatmaas, a salad of toasted soybeans, quick-fried with fresh ginger, garlic and chili and garnished with fresh coriander, and served with hot chili paste sauce and powdered rice flakes. Then we had Bhende Chili “ savory marinated chicken cubes sautéed with onions and green peppers.” Our last course was Khasiko Maasu, goat meat in curry sauce. All of this was washed down with endless cups of Nepali chai. The owner, Abi, was amazingly friendly – he’s a friend of Jim’s, and an activist from Nepal. All in all, a great evening out.

Yesterday I also had a chance to use the much vaunted Canadian health system. I’ve been having a problem with a swollen calf and persistent pain in my lower leg, the result of a fall in the garden in San Anselmo a week and a half ago. I decided that since things weren’t getting better on their own, I’d see a doctor. The whole process was disarmingly simple and easy, even for an "out of system" American! $68 for a 45-minute office visit at a walk-in clinic, and $25 for a week's course of antibiotics. And I'm now in the system, so even if I need to see a doctor in Prince George or Dease Lake, they'll have my info. Total waiting time from getting to the clinic to seeing the doctor (no nurse) -- about 15 minutes. We’ve heard for years about how inefficient the Canadian system is, but it’s pretty clear that this is just American insurance companies protecting their own interests. Jim told me that the monthly cost for health insurance for himself and Thitiya is $32 (and that’s Canadian dollars – even less in US currency).

Tomorrow I head north, and may be out of contact for a bit, at least until I get back into areas where cell phones and the internet are available. (Or perhaps I’m making assumptions here – I have no idea what things will be like north of Vancouver.) In any event, I’m going to be riding several thousand miles through very sparsely settled areas. Stay tuned!