I was standing inside a historic stone structure that looks like a castle made of lava rock, built upon vast, black lava flows. Elevation 5,187 feet. I was the only person there, which actually happens to me more often than not.
I wasn’t prepared for the twenty degree drop in temperature when I started walking the tiny pathway to the top. All I could hear and feel was the wind whipping past me like a giant was breathing on me from one of the distant mountains. He would hide after every exhale. The clouds moving fast above me, giving me only moments of warmth on my skin.
It took me a minute to realize what was missing.
I rented a car to twist and turn through the Cascades again. There is something about a highway opening up before me that just sets my soul at ease. The way the steering wheel feels in my hands navigating hairpin curves excites me and terrifies me all at the same time. The feeling of being scared to look down is a reminder of just how fragile life is.
I was on my way back from visiting my friend who just had her first baby. How something so tiny and delicate can survive a life is nothing short of amazing to me.
Oregon has a pulse I couldn’t put my finger on until now. It’s just so quiet and paced here. There is no urgency like there is back home. First I thought it was just Corvallis, but the undertone pulse of the entire state is regulated. It feels regulated. It makes my body calm down too.
When I go into stores here, people look at me and I know why now. I move fast. I talk fast. I’m fast. And I ask questions fast.
The first time I noticed it was in a brewery. I asked the bartender about the beers. She started giving me the rundown of the hops and I had already decided what I was going to get, so I stopped her.
Only it didn’t work. She just simply said, if you give me a moment I can answer your first question. Even though I didn’t have another question.
The other time I became aware of it was walking into the grocery store. I whizzed past the lady in front of me. Another customer looked at me, then looked behind me, almost curious as to what the fire was.
My father survived Vietnam but brought the war home with him. I learned early to move fast in a house, and to read a room before I could see it. Fast was correct there.
Survival of the fittest never meant the strongest. It meant the best match — the animal that fit its environment. I fit mine. I was very good at it.
Standing on a lava field at 5,187 feet, this ground moved fast once too, and then it stopped, and now it's the quietest place I've ever stood. I’m the wrong animal entirely here. I am missing the emergency of the fire that came before.
The calmness followed me from Corvallis to Bend and now here. I am staring at 360-degree views of the Three Sisters, Mount Washington, Mount Jefferson, and distant peaks like Mount Hood.
It does strike me odd that I live on Mount Washington in Pittsburgh, and here I am staring at another Mount Washington in the distance. Is this the me I needed to get space from to write my memoir?
On top of an observatory made of rock that looks like a medieval castle, the wind whipping my hair, a bronze peak-finder compass set into the top of the Dee Wright Observatory.
The needle spins. The quiet doesn’t.
