Proximity to MOM and POPA dozen rational reasons to enjoy living in Portland, Oregon: number one
Mountains, Ocean, Meadows, & Parks, Orchards, Playgrounds—the outdoors is really the main reason to love it here.
• Mount Hood, OR and Mount St. Helens, WA: Both are visible on clear days, both are 90 minutes away, and although both offer hiking and outdoor exploration, Mt Hood offers wonderful winter recreation areas (the Timberline Ski area on Mt. Hood has the only year-round ski resort in the continental US).
• The Pacific Ocean is two hours away. The Oregon coast is 363 miles long and the entire coast, by law, is public land. Because there are no private beaches, it’s possible to drive your car onto every beach with an access point. The longest driveable beach in Oregon is 17 miles long (110 miles away, in Washington, there is a longer one).
• With many hundreds of city, county, and state parks you are never more than a half-mile from a public green-space. The largest urban forest reserve in the US (51,000+ acres), is Forest Park—it is 8 miles long and contains 70 miles of trails. Once you begin hiking in this densely forested area, it’s impossible to remember you’re inside a large metropolitan city.
• Within a fifty-mile radius of Portland, there are hundreds of orchards and fruit/vegetable farms (U-pick seems to be available for everything) as well as dozens of city fountains that are not only for watching (in warm weather everyone climbs in, dips their feet, or splashes through).
• The Oregon outdoors is a playground for everyone. Add to this list two major rivers (Columbia and Willamette), waterfalls, gorges, an uncountable number of streams, creeks, lakes, ponds, marshes, dune areas, a dormant volcano in the center of the city, as well as quite a few nature preserves scattered everywhere and there are thousands of answers to the question, "where do you want to go-do this weekend?"
[NOTE: There is a unkept secret that 'it rains all the time' here. When people ask about the amount of precipitation (and how we deal with it) I've heard others foolishly try to quantify the 'all the time' portion. What I've learned, however, is qualification of: 'it rains' is more informative. If you've experienced the monsoons of the American southwest, the thunderstorms in the midwest, or the torrential downpours in the eastern or southern states, you know rain. Real rain—for those who have no understanding of the term (native Portlanders)—is a large quantity of water falling hard enough to soak your clothing all-the-way-to-the-underwear if you're stupid enough to dash to your mailbox without an umbrella. That is rain. Here? It drizzels some. It sprinkles other times. Some days it can be misty-foggy for hours and hours. Mostly, it never rains. When the weather forecast says 'rain,' I no longer bring a raincoat or umbrella. If I walk two miles 'in the rain'—the roots of my hair will be dry. It can be dismally grey here for many daze. It can be chilly and windy and damp-moist for weeks. There may be precipitation slowly drifting downward and accumulating on the ground a lot of the time. But. It. Rarely. Really. Rains.]
The secret of realizing the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment of existence is: to live dangerously! Build your cities on the slopes of Vesuvius! Send your ships out into uncharted seas! Live in conflict with your equals and with yourselves! Be robbers and ravagers as long as you cannot be rulers and owners, you men of knowledge! The time will soon be past when you could be content to live concealed in the woods like timid deer! — Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)
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