Seasons in Portland

As spring awakens the plants in the city, I walk down Burnside. I take the slight angle to Morrison and see trees lighting up, growing new leaves.

When I run through upper left Northwest District, I see recently empty trees fill with brilliant color. The sun tempts the delights of the cities citizens with its bright, mostly warming light.

As spring comes to life, I think about how I have now lived in this city, in this region, for every season, once. It is almost like a year, but not quite. Just shy of that time, I still feel almost a part of something, a part of some place. Just barely.

I came in the summer. Warm, the air marked with a sticky humidity. Nothing near as bad as my summer in New York, but sticky. Sweating everywhere I walked, I hoped for a cooler season.

The warm days and sweet sunsets of summer wore into fall. The trees and bushes put on a new coat, the yellows and reds. These colors were soon lost to a dull grey. A sense of sorrow and calm, a dreary season. A hearty season, full of soups and rain jackets and dark beers.

It does me well to be in a place that has defined seasons, but not regular harsh extremes. A weekend at 12 degrees and another weekend of snow do not come close to the windy 7 degrees I experienced one morning in the last state I lived. The summers are far more mild too – 90 degrees is warm enough to sweat, but cool enough that being outside is not a physical punishment.

I like it here. It has been a good turn of seasons.