In Portland the Trees Are Your Friends

That walk I took up into the hills---like I said, the houses up there are like treehouses. They cling to the slopes on beams. The driveways go right into carports that are suspended as well from the cliffside. The other treehouses are visible under the forest canopy on the hillside nearby.

The houses are largely in a modern style, but are now aging themselves, the wood having accumulated many years of dripping rainfall. Some of them look as if they could tumble down in a good earthquake. Others were as small as apartments, as if someone built a standard American duplex clear up there in the trees, and made it stick out from the hillside. In a more upscale city, someone would have torn it down and built a bigger house there by now.

After making my way up the maze of residential streets, I found myself on Fairmount Boulevard, which circles the entire top of the ridge. I was right under the shadow of the Stonehenge Tower.  I could have gotten closer, but I didn't feel like it that day.

Instead I decided to follow Fairmount around eastward to the river side of the hill. Soon I found myself on a overlook. It was a chilly sunny day, with blue sky and clouds for good shading. I could see across the Willamette straight at Mount Hood. The contours of the mountain were in stark relief like a map. I estimated its prominence against the surrounding horizon---about one thumb width held at arm's length.

Here at the overlook on Fairmount, the houses had become standard old-style mansions, with manicured grass and a tennis court visible just below on the hill. I could see right into people's front windows. It felt odd, but there was nobody in any of them.

As Fairmount began descending the hill, the hedges at times were planted in a dastardly way to force pedestrians and bicycles right out into the flow of traffic on a blind curve. It seemed obnoxious to have left the hedges that way, almost leaning over the road.

Portland, despite its image, is actually one of the most foot-unfriendly cities around, if you count the actual city boundaries. Stay in the contiguous grid and you're fine, but much of the city (not to mention the whole Metro Area) is actually outside of it). It makes it quite hard to get from one section of the city to another on foot.

By the way, it shares this foot-unfriendly distinction with Austin (where they perversely throw you in jail for jaywalking).

Fortunately for me, the road was empty. Moreover a contractor doing work at one of the mansions had parked his van in the road, forming a natural traffic block augmented by the placement of several orange cones in front of it.

I wanted to walk onward, down past the mansions towards Downtown, but I feared I was going to have to go down Fairmount looking over my shoulder and leaping out of the way if a car came by.

Fortunately, only a hundred feet later there appeared on the side of the road a trail head, leading into the thick woods below.