A Sunday Drive
Last Sunday, after spending the weekend in Portland, we headed back home, driving south down I-5 to our home less than 50 miles from the California border. Interstates aren’t generally my primary choice for scenic drives, but exceptions are certainly out there (for instance, I-84 through the Columbia Gorge — which I described in a couple of blogs late last fall), and weather and the time of year can certainly add to the visual interest and drama of what might otherwise be a — forgive the pun — rather pedestrian excursion. That afternoon journey was such a case in point as we traveled through the Willamette Valley in all its lush spring loveliness.
Between the capital city of Salem and the college town of Eugene, Interstate 5 stretches in a nearly straight line across the tabletop-flat flood plain of the Willamette River. Geologists say that the great Ice Age floods (a series of cataclysmic events resulting from repeated ice dams giving way before the waters of prehistoric Lake Missoula in what is now Montana), swept all this way, depositing thick sediment beds which are the basis for this fertile farmland. To the east rise the foothills of the Cascade Mountains, with snowy peaks like Hood and Jefferson floating in the distance, and even lesser crests still dusted with white. The lower rise of the Coast Range brackets the valley to the west, the dark evergreen forests in each direction hemming in the predominately deciduous growth down below.
The foliage at this time of year offers up the most amazing range of greens, everything from a nearly neon chartreuse to the deepest green-black of firs. It seems that each different variety of tree and shrub presents its own unique sliver on the color wheel, and yet all of it blends together in the most beautiful display of rebirth. Here and there the white blooms of wild plum and native dogwood add a bit of contrast, and far across the valley the bright yellow of a fallow field overrun with wild mustard gleams like the pot of gold at the end of a rainbow.
All of this vivid life contrasts sharply with my recollection of this same area just a month or so ago. Then, muddy pastures pocked with huge puddles hibernated under dark, dreary, low-lying clouds. Now, flocks of white-fleeced sheep graze belly-deep in thick grass, mirrored overhead by small, light clouds in a soft blue sky. Up there large red-tailed hawks wheel, floating on the currents, searching for some small creature to bring back to sustain their nestlings.
I hope you will take the time this season to get out and drink in some of the beauty and promise of spring. These days when there is so much that can distress and dismay, there is comfort to be found in the continuation of life unfurling just down the road.
Patty Vanikiotis, proofreader
