{"id":8053,"date":"2022-09-30T06:39:28","date_gmt":"2022-09-30T13:39:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/?p=8053"},"modified":"2022-09-30T06:39:29","modified_gmt":"2022-09-30T13:39:29","slug":"port-a-let-part-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/meditations\/port-a-let-part-3\/","title":{"rendered":"Port-a-let (Part 3)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\n <\/div>\n\n\n\n

The next morning, Jones woke up at 4:30 a.m. and walked along the river until the light came. He couldn\u2019t remember feeling this excited to see anyone in his life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He met Michael at the school parking lot. It was foggy near the ground and three shades of stacked gray in the sky when she showed up in a black t-shirt, baggy tan cords, and a 70s-styled tan trench coat. She wore a red baseball cap adorned with a yellow rooster and a black leather backpack cinched up tight. The sight of her instantly brought to mind someone Harrison had written about but Jones had never met: \u201cA master spy for an uncreated government.\u201d Michael also clutched a small cooler with her left hand and a dented red thermos that looked 50 years old.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jones spread out a map on the hood of his Subaru wagon and outlined his plan. Overhead, gulls cackled in the gray. Their first stop would be Fort Clatsop and then Fort Stevens, where in the early days of WW II, a Japanese submarine\u2019s puny deck guns lobbed a few shells in what constituted the only attack on the American mainland during the war. Michael said that was all fine and suggested after visiting those \u201cpale face\u201d places they climb Mount Neahkahnie, known as Fire Mountain to the Native Americans. From what she had heard, the panorama from the summit might provide tremendous vistas for her students to draw and photograph. Jones was all for it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From the high school they took old Highway 101 out of Astoria. It occurred to Jones that he\u2019d never visited Fort Clatsop before, or for that matter Timberline Lodge, Bend, Burns, Bandon, Newport, the Pendleton Round-Up, the Snake River, Rogue River, Crater Lake, Bonneville Dam, the Oregon Caves National Monument, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, or the Wallowa Mountains.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jones had driven past Multnomah Falls in the Columbia Gorge about a dozen times in his life but never bothered to stop at the state\u2019s number one tourist destination. He wasn\u2019t even sure the state flower, the Oregon grape, wasn\u2019t some sort of exotic fruit used to make an illicit wine. To think he hailed from Oregon City, once lived overlooking the Willamette River, one of the great salmon rivers in the world, and knew nothing of the life cycle of the salmon, was truly indicative of how disconnected he was from his place, his home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He was a tourist in Oregon who taught history and never traveled anywhere. Did he really know where he lived? Years ago, he\u2019d read a line in an essay by either Wendell Berry or Gary Snyder that went, \u201cIf you don\u2019t know where you are, you don\u2019t know who you are.\u201d He hadn\u2019t been anywhere in Oregon and all he\u2019d done as an adult was drink, read, and teach, a dubious fusion of accomplishments that was as corporeal as a photograph stored in a phone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Do people need to know where they live? Does this knowledge imbue a person to perform more meaningful work?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jones caught a quick glance of Saddle Mountain looming to the south. He\u2019d never climbed it and thought maybe it was part of a state park. Would he explore the peak now that he could see it out his classroom window? Was he going to educate himself? He felt he should since his internal contradiction of teaching but not learning had to end. It begs the ultimate questions for adults: 1) When do you stop learning? ; 2) Why did you stop learning? ; 3) How do you start learning again?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Perhaps this field trip with Michael was the beginning of his education or maybe he just wanted to sleep with her. He didn\u2019t know at this point. He didn\u2019t know anything about her and was intuiting nothing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They curved around some forlorn apartments and approached the old Youngs Bay Bridge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSlow down,\u201d Michael said. \u201cWhat are those?\u201d She pointed to the two green and gray obelisks that flanked the north entrance of the bridge. Atop each obelisk was a smallish green and white metal lantern.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know,\u201d said Jones, \u201cI\u2019ve never seen anything like them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhen we get across, pull over and let\u2019s walk back over the bridge. I want to check these things out.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOkay.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jones had never walked across a bridge in his life. He\u2019d also never collaborated in an artistic venture with anyone. In fact, Jones had never collaborated with anyone in his life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Two more obelisks marked the south entrance to the bridge and Michael rolled down the window and stuck her head outside for a better look.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThese are so wonderfully weird,\u201d she said. \u201cWho does anything like this anymore?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jones eased the Subaru into the shoulder and turned off the engine. Michael retrieved a Polaroid camera from her backpack and led the way to the bridge. She saw no traffic coming from either direction, ran into the middle of the road, shot a couple of photographs of the obelisks, and then jogged over to the shoulder to inspect them. Jones joined her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The gray was concrete and beveled; the green was treated wood bolted to the deck of the bridge. In combination they formed perhaps the most bizarre example of Art Deco architecture in the world. The camera swung from Michael\u2019s neck like a pendulum as she placed her hands on the concrete and traced the bevels. Next, she felt the wood and then jumped up on one of the obelisk\u2019s edges and stared at the lanterns.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jones thought she was going to climb to the top.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis is totally insane,\u201d said Michael. \u201cThere is an aesthetic at work with the landscape here that I\u2019ve never seen or read about it. Who designed this thing? How old is it?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI have no idea.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWell, you\u2019re the history teacher so you better find out.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI will.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019m not sure why, but this bridge is flat out sexy. The kids are definitely going to sketch it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cLet\u2019s walk,\u201d said Jones.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Michael hopped down to the sidewalk and headed across the bridge, where she stopped every 20 feet and shot a photograph until she ran out of film.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thirty minutes later, Jones turned into the parking lot of Fort Clatsop and found it completely jammed with tour buses and RVs. Hundreds of tourists milled about.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cLet\u2019s blow this off,\u201d Michael said, \u201cand come back in the winter when no one is here.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI was going to suggest the same thing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As they left the Fort\u2019s parking lot, Michael said, \u201cYou know, it probably would have been better for everyone if Lewis and Clark had died on their journey and no one heard from them again. They\u2019re so overrated anyway. Didn\u2019t Lewis commit suicide in some awful way?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHe was drunk and shot himself multiple times, including the head. Then he repeatedly stabbed himself,\u201d said Jones. \u201cAfter he was dead and buried, hogs dug up the body and stripped him to the bone.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cJesus! Like I said, better for everyone. He should have gone out when he peaked, like when he saw the Pacific and knew he\u2019d made it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhy do you think that was his peak?\u201d said Jones.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat else was there to do? He had to return to civilization and he probably Jonesd the primitive life.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jones thought about Meriwether Lewis and his journals, the misspelled and illustrated journals that the Lewis and Clark priesthood naively thought contained the whole story, not understanding the obvious tenet that no one keeping a journal ever tells the whole story, or even bothers telling the truth all the time. Jones knew this better than anyone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou know, he pretty much stopped writing after he reached the Oregon Coast,\u201d said Jones. \u201cIt might be the most famous case of writer\u2019s block in American history.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Michael didn\u2019t seem to hear him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After Fort Clatsop, Jones headed toward Fort Stevens and got stuck behind an endless motorcade of mammoth recreational vehicles towing six-cylinder pickup trucks. Michael loathed the RVs but loved calling out the various absurd names for the vehicles, such as X-TREME Adventurer<\/em> and Vortex Wanderer<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At some point she pulled a fraying journal bound in twine and dashed off little sketches of each vehicle\u2019s garish logo and typography. They conversed about the ocean, birds, teaching, always teaching amongst teachers, and clearcuts, all the endless elevated massacres in the Coast Range that marred and scarred the landscape from practically every scenic vantage point and gave off the appearance of an invading army\u2019s scorched earth policy. Clearcuts particularly incensed Michael, she couldn\u2019t believe they were actually legal. She couldn\u2019t believe that\u2019s all she could see from her classroom window, but she sketched them, too, and as her hand moved back and forth across the pages, Jones caught glimpses of her work, but didn\u2019t remark. Once at stoplight, Michael shot him a little smile and he thought about a line from a short story he\u2019d come across recently, written by James Cain: \u201cA smile is nature\u2019s freeway: it has lanes, and you can go any speed you like, except you can\u2019t go back.\u201d<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The next morning, Jones woke up at 4:30 a.m. and walked along the river until the light came. He couldn\u2019t remember feeling this excited to see anyone in his life. He met Michael at the school parking lot. It was foggy near the ground and three shades of stacked gray in the sky when she […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8054,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8053","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fiction","category-meditations","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author",""],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8053","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8053"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8053\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8056,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8053\/revisions\/8056"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8054"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8053"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8053"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8053"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}