Trip Home: Port Orford

My wife, canine and I have returned to her mother’s home in the small, southwestern Oregon, coastal town of Port Orford for a day or two. I have always enjoyed these towns south of my own hometown for their local ilk and picturesque ocean views. Like my own town, P.O. sees the persistent dilapidation of its buildings, small business decline and fewer young faces as the lure of bigger profits and grander entertainments entice the population to cities like Ashland/Medford, Eugene and Portland.

My wife and I have been welcomed by her mother, brother, her precocious black cat Alanna, and mother's canine companion, Lizzy. Her home is a small one, but offers all the comforts that can only be found in at a in-law's: a backyard garden complete with a flourishing tree, engorged with semi-ripe apples, blackberry bushes aplenty, and conversation that's ready for picking year 'round. Pie and cobbler are immediately suggested as bakable goods during our visit.

Still, quaint as this township is to me and my family, I can’t help but find myself comparing it to the conveniences I have grown accustomed to in Stumptown. The accessibility of the Internet being similar and few shops with simple pleasures like coffee, bread and fruit are not lost here; but they are easily overlooked as uncommon when considered normalcy up North. I find myself almost an outsider, one that I’d regularly notice as such when living back here, due to my unfamiliarity with the surroundings. This has been the case since arriving yesterday until this afternoon, when I walked down the road (the main road being Highway 101) with my wife. The intension was for a morning coffee and as we looked at the closed shops, either by decree of their posted business hours or by closure of the business entirely, I saw before us the grandeur of Battle Rock and the open sea.

Few things, more than this, can remind me of why I miss home than to witness the Pacific Ocean and the natural geoforms that accompanies its coastline. As I looked out at the scene I thought of all the matters that I had just begun to complain about. The lack of shops, few people and seemingly placid lifestyle, all of which brought me back to how I was a part of that living for years in Coos Bay/North Bend; and I was quite content with it. My move north four years ago was hardly different from those of other youths: for higher education; new experiences; personal growth. I knew then and now that I’d return some day to the area of my youth and even knew that I would have a different perspective on its make-up. I see now just how much of a change that has become since this return to the area. It is a trip not as a single man, a college student escaping away to a shire of familiarity for a moment of brevity before returning to the glamour of the metropolis; but as a family man, with wife and four-legged “child” now a graduate of college with employment in the great city of the State. The view has changed just as time and my character have.

Home, once a place seen as somewhere to escape, the as a refuge for youthful memories, has become a destination sought after as a goal. Home is no longer that, but a future location to reside. I wonder now if I’ll see home in further new standpoints as I age and grow and live from afar.

Tomorrow, I will see my hometown and, of course, I will also see my mother and former workplace those remaining confreres whom have remained working there so diligently over these past four years.