I think I have said before that my brain seems to categorize words by sound and rhythm. If I am searching for a particular word, I will almost always think of two or three other words—not right in meaning, but right in syllable and rhythm—as I feel toward the correct one. I can hear in my head the outlines of the word I want, sometimes well before I can see its details.
Today before I sat down to write, I had two verses running together in my head, and it took me some time to realize what they were because all I had was the rhythm and shape of them (no words):
It was many and many a year ago,
in a kingdom by the sea
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of Annabel Lee;…
I was a child and she was a child
In the kingdom by the sea,
But we loved with a love that was more than love—
I and my Annabel Lee—
……
'Twas all so pretty a sail, it seemed
As if it could not be;
And some folk thought 'twas a dream they'd dreamed
Of sailing that beautiful sea
But I will name you the fisherman three,
Wynken, Blyken, and Nod…
Why both those poems? Why together? (Google tells me, helpfully, that they "were written by different authors and have very different tones." Gee, thanks.) Only my subconscious knows for sure, but that doesn't stop my conscious self having a go at it…
We've been traveling to Oregon together since the children were small, when it was a sort of fairyland to us. We could contentedly go back every year. It's not quite like revisiting one's childhood home—it's just foreign enough to be interesting, but familiar enough to be comfortable—and the more often we go the more we love it. We don't do quite the same trip every time, but we revisit our favorite activities and places, even as our family composition changes.
It carries very distinct feelings, this layering of time and space, full of nostalgia and almost dreamlike in experience. I sometimes feel like I'm a double-self, experiencing the past and present simultaneously. Hard to capture in words, but those lines from the poems aren't a bad start, those galloping rhythms that feel like the race of time—from "many and many a year ago" when "I was a child" and so were my now-adult children—to now when the names and faces are different, but the experiences are somehow the same. Which one is reality and which the echo?
Those are the questions my brain is dredging up for me (accompanied by poetry soundtrack) as I look at these pictures and sort through the layers of memory that go with them.
The first day of the trip is always long, but since driving to Quebec, nothing seems quite as long! The kids have their Trip Bags and we have our gas/bathroom/meal stops down to a science. Also, we have no screaming babies these days, which helps the hours pass much more pleasantly!
We stopped at this weird two-tree park in Idaho somewhere for breakfast
Zig sat on the tipped-over table
Lacing gnome (made by Daisy for Clementine), successfully laced
Snuggling with the doggy she got from Grandma Nielson
Handstand contest, somewhere in Oregon
We're always so happy when we finally reach the Columbia River and everything keeps getting greener and greener and prettier and prettier.
We got off the highway for a little while to visit a fruit stand and buy some PIE. Marionberry. Yum! (It made us miss Quebec, where we could get SUCH good pie from a farm stand on Ile d'Orleans.) Great views of Mt. Hood…or Mt. Adams…whichever this one is. I think it's Mount Hood. The pointy one.
I will intersperse Sebastian's photos throughout these posts, and anytime you see a picture that is artfully framed or interestingly colored or extra beautiful in some other way—you can count on it being one of his! I didn't even bring my nice camera and counted on Seb to take the pictures I would wish I had. He always captures (and artistically edits) such great shots!
After we veer away from the river we just go down through Portland on the 5, and then…
… we are "home" to our Hazelnut House! Gus was SO happy to find his old bear friend still there! Of course he probably doesn't even remember the actual experience of having that bear…but he has seen these pictures and constructed a memory of it based on all of us teling him how much he loved it!
And Ziggy definitely remembered "Baby Ikea" (his name for this dog in Oregon that matched his own dog brought from home)
That's what I mean by "layering of time and space." Memories on memories on memories. So many of them:
A baby Goldie in the backyard in 2014…and a grown-up Goldie now!
Daisy in the tiny rocker in two different years…and Clementine in it now!
Drinking strawberry milkshakes on the back deck…
Three little girls in a bed…three little boys in the same bed…
Goldie the berry picker, then and now…
This one was the most incredible to me. The picture on the left hangs on the wall of our house so I see it every day. Way back in 2014 I had captured this moment of Abe and Seb running off to play hide and seek in the hazelnut orchard, and little Daisy running excitedly after them, her little legs straining to keep up with their longer ones. It makes me happy every time I look at it, remembering how happy we were and what a fun time the children always had playing in the hazelnut trees.
This year as we walked out into the orchard with the three littlest ones, suddenly I saw that picture come alive again in real life. This time it was Ziggy and Gus pelting off down the row of hazelnuts, and Clementine scrambling after them. It wasn't set up or planned, and they didn't even know they were repeating history, but I felt disoriented, almost dizzy, from the blurring of time.
Back to the present! (Except now that we're home, this is just memory too!) Eating at the little Mexican restaurant in Hubbard.
Seb's big burrito (he loved it)
And here we are the berry farm which is the whole reason we even come to stay in this place. Well, at least a big part of the reason. We gained some valuable information on this visit! Always before, we have made a point of visiting in May or June so as to be there for strawberry season. This time, we scheduled our trip for August and I was very nervous that the strawberries would no longer be bearing fruit! I looked at the facebook page of the farm from August of last year, and they said they had strawberries, but we just didn't know for sure, or (of great importance) if the berries would be as delicious!
I am happy to report, however, that they are still bearing in August and they are still as delicious! It seems almost too good to be true! Oregon strawberries are like no other berries in the world, They are in their own entire category of strawberry, not even really fit to be classified with the strawberries anywhere else. A higher, holier order of berry. So I'm amazed and delighted that such berries can grow all summer long in Oregon. Now we can be assured of having them whenever we visit.
We take our strawberry picking very seriously and everyone is expected to do his or her share! We work hard to get as many as we can, with everyone knowing that our next few days of the most heavenly, wonderful meals depend on getting LOTS OF BERRIES.
These pictures were taken over two different visits to the farm. There's Goldie way out there in the north forty.
Seb and Goldie
Oh, let's just throw a picture of young Abe in here for fun. Abe in 2014, Teddy in 2025.
Judging by that last picture the plants are definitely greener and bushier earlier in the year. In August they looked a little brown and toasty. But they still make delicious strawberries and that's what matters! Here are Clementine and Malachi this year.
You can tell just by looking at them how good they are going to be. So red and so shiny!
We did get a few raspberries too, since they are so fun to pick, and we love them. But the Oregon raspberries don't outshine other raspberries the way the strawberries do. We can get raspberries this good in Utah. (Though, I admit these are very nice specimens.)
Still, best to focus our time where it matters most.
Here is our—impressive, if I say so myself—haul. This is from only the first of our two visits. I think it is about 38 pounds of berries. (We only got about 24 pounds the second time.) "But what will you DO with all those berries?" you ask.
I will tell you. We will cut them up…
And cook millions of crêpes…
And whip buckets of cream…
And eat the best crêpes in the world!
Then and now
And for dessert (and second dinner, and breakfast, and lunch, and midmorning snack) we will make strawberry milkshakes. The food of the gods.
There are other fun things to do at our hazelnut house! There is a new splash pad and playground at the little park down the street. It was a hot day so we had fun there!
Pretending to be monkeys in the trees is also always fun
And then just enjoying the beautiful area!
Goldie dancing in the yard at sunset
We love going for walks and losing ourselves in the hazelnut orchard.
The thing the children were most excited to do was play night games in the orchard when it got dark! We did that last time when Abe was with us and it made such a lasting impression on them. They LOVED it. It is so dark in the orchard, and the only thing you can hear is the chirping of crickets and the rustling of leaves. When you're creeping around playing Fugitive and trying not to get caught, it is just the right mix of peaceful and terrifying! I feel like sticking close to Sam or whoever was by me!
Malachi brought his owl lamp outside to be our "home base," and you could see its little glowing light from way far away through the trees. (In the picture there's a ghostly little green owl hovering there too! Doesn't surprise me; it was quite a ghostly night.)
Such a fun, welcoming house to come home to.
There was a conjunction of Jupiter and Venus while we were there, and early in the morning I went out to see it. (The Perseid Meteors were going on too, but I sadly didn't see a single one of those.) I love being outside in the peaceful nighttime. It looked so cool to see those planets so close together in the sky!
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