Less is More

3 November, 2012

Petaluma, California

 Goin’ where the weather suits my clothes.  I Know You Rider, traditional.

Crossing Oregon was like crossing a continent.

From the rolling desert hills and dunes with the prairie grass waving in the wind, across the dry Mountains of the Malheur National Forest, the morning light ascended to midday.  As light rain or heavy dew in the evening had brought the piney aroma of the conifers, I was reminded of the rain our first night camping on the banks of the Colorado, and how the fragrance of the sage and junipers had seemed to clear the head of the night’s sleepy dreams.

From the western foothills of the Malheur, through Old Mining towns, the landscape revealed blossoms and oases of river bottoms amid the desert tundra.  We stopped in Mitchell, a small town with a large colorful history, and had a lively conversation with a shopkeeper.  At one point, a young girl entered the store, and overhearing, “floods and fires…” stated, ”Daddy started that fire.” Her mother conceded, “Yes, your father and brother started the last fire, but…”

I regained cell service around Redmond, and checked in with my cousin, Alan, whom I was planning to meet that night.  I was reminded of a nice woman in Baker City, who had offered me the use of her phone, after our dogs had trashed the layout of café tables at the Corner Brick, when she found out mine wouldn’t work.  Barbara Stanley had maintained a conversation on the phone with her mother while carrying on one with me as we righted the tables, and asked if I was related to the Baker City Hunsakers.

From Redmond, where we walked a circuit in the center of town, I managed to slip to the Northern of two routes over the Cascades, which resulted in my being late for a dinner invitation from Alan, and driving an extra 50 miles after dark, enduring the oncoming glare of lights, as we neared Corvallis and Albany unintentionally.  After righting course into Eugene, I enjoyed a drink and the pleasurable company of Alan and his friends, who had carried a discussion of Napoleon into one of Modern Turkey and Libya.

Waking at Alan’s after an evening of reminiscence and Japanese beer, Eugene was a new world.   The clouds were massed in the Southern Sky, and I first mistook them for mountains, in the long light of early morning.  It was a godsend to be in a room instead of a tent or hotel, and Alan’s house features some fine woodworking from the Arts and Crafts movement, well-considered details wrought with excellent materials.

After coffee and a breakfast of granola/muesli/ hazlenuts all borne on a dollop of yoghurt from (Ken Kesey’s) Springfield Dairy, Alan began recounting Kimball family history, and I began recording and filming.  He periodically paused to put a log on the fire, and I relaxed into the state of security that can only come with family and a fire in the stove. Not being Fellini or Tarantino, I critiqued my efforts through my filmmaker brother Eric’s eyes, and occasionally changed the scenery in the lens, filming artifacts around Alan’s home, including artwork by his late wife, Martha. 

Alan took Kaya and me for a driving and walking tour of Eugene, where I discovered a building by Morphosis, a new Federal Courthouse, and guessed it was Richard Meier’s work.  I’m caught on tape speculating that it might be a knockoff, possibly Morphosis, and recounting Morphosis’ founder, Thom Mayne admitting to being a “Piece Thief.”  I had seen Mayne state in a lecture at the National Building Museum, c. 1991, that he stole ideas from colleagues, and turned them into buildings.

We toured Springfield after Eugene, and an unincorporated town in between, which was becoming part of Springfield, expanding Springfield’s tax base and legislative power beyond that of Eugene.  It was an interesting juxtaposition from the unspeakably courageous Oregon Trail pioneers to modern cities quibbling over dominion. An odd tangent was that Springfield is considered by many to be the setting of the Simpsons.

The Willamette River runs split through Eugene, with the Middle Branch running near the Market District and the Northern Branch near the Northern edge of the city.  Alan and I discussed local pronunciations of more generally ethnocentric names and Willamette was clarified as having the accent on the “a.”  Alan’s father, Les, had expressed it as, “It’s Willamette, dammit.”