Portland is an amazing little city. Our food, our fashion, our outdoors, our books… it’s comforting that, no matter where we go in the world, we can wrap ourselves in little bits of home: Seek and Swoon throws, Dehen 1920 shirts, Danner boots, Columbia/Mountain hardware gear, Pendleton everything (ha!).
This city has its problems. Oregon, the United States, the World all have problems. At each level, we the people don’t always do a great job tackling the issues.
But we believe in this Country, this state, and this town. We believe in humanity.
“I wanna contribute to the chaos I don’t wanna watch and then complain ‘Cause I am through finding blame That is the decision that I have made”
Society needs doers. We strive to be a family of fire-putter-outers, not just fire-pointer-outers. We’re leaving our home to serve everyone and everything we love about it, and that mission gives a purpose to our heartbreak.
And leaving has renewed our love for the Pacific Northwest, as we’ve done a final tour of some local favorites:
If you’re in Portland, make the time to do the factory tour, it was fascinating, and renewed our appreciation for American-made quality and style.The Jengineer geeking out with the Dehen team over their incredible knitting machines from the 1930’s-50’s. Jen’s a design/manufacturing engineer who also knits and crochets, so this was right up her alley.HEAVY DUTY OLD SCHOOL TRUTH“Skeleton Bridge” Park, an after-dinner favorite in our neighborhood, named after a game we play on the rickety playground. Roste chocolate house. Portland punches well above its weight when it comes to chocolate! Many much larger cities don’t have even a single bean-to-bar chocolate maker, while Portland has Roste, Creo, Ranger, Woodblock (and 1-2 more I can’t think of?)Portland Rose Garden – Jen and I have been coming here since all the way back when we were dating and falling in love. We’ve spent many hours strolling the roses and playing frisbee in the amphitheater.… and this rose is from our front yard!We said goodbye to one of our favorite hiking/biking/dog/stargazing spots, Stub Stewart State Park. Both of our older kids learned to ride their bikes there in the parking lot, and then graduated to mountain biking the trails.At Stub Stewart, we saw several flower crab spiders lying in wait in the wildflowers. (Yes, I posted this pic before, but it’s one of the coolest pics I’ve ever taken, so I’m reusing it!) When I told the pizza maker at EFNY Pizza that my wife and I had been coming here since before we were married, and now I was showing my son, they responded with an unimpressed grunt. The pile of Zoobomb bikes, just outside Powell’s Books. The Portland Zoo, Rose Gardens, and several other city parks sit atop a large hill, and there’s a tradition of taking the Max light rail to the stop under the hill, riding the looooong elevators up, then bombing down on bikes — especially tiny sketchy kid’s bikes, or even a skateboard +/- slide gloves (so sketchy!). Jen and I have only done it on regular bikes. Our local food carts, where we’ve had many impromptu dinner meetups with friends… our kids are in there somewhere!Stocking up on cheap clothes / gear for the next few years.Wildwood trail in Forest Park, one of our favorite local running spots, sporting gear from two local companies: Territy Run Co. (I’m on the amateur running team!) and Sunday AfternoonsJen comforts me at the finish line of the Tillamook Burn 50k trail run this spring. It was a doozy. Our forests are a treasure! We feel so at home in the middle of 100ft doug firs – which is why they feature in our little Wild and Worthwhile logo. We’ll miss you, Pacific Northwest!
