Meditations on Portland from the Fremont Bridge

From the river, taken in one glance, the city betrays little hint of being such a sprawling metropolis. Each segment of its port could be an isolated town, another Longview, a solitary grouping of such ports, interspersed being small quiet rural bits of bank. Only when they are imagined in one glance, up and down the river, do they form the holographic framework of giant city stretching away on both sides.