This great adventure has a beginning on a family roadtrip involving a flight to Portland, Oregon and a long drive home.
Fourteen year old me didn’t know about Mt. Hood, or Don Miller, or Voodoo Donut; all I knew was that Aunt Sherri and Uncle Tom lived out west and we were going to fly out to visit them first and drive back, seeing a big portion of the United States on the way. I was excited at the prospect of seeing the country, a little nervous about sharing the back seat with my two siblings, ages twelve and eight. (At fourteen, your little brother is still annoying and your sister is so immature. To make matters worse, at fourteen, you don’t know how to keep your mouth shut. At least, I didn’t!)
Tom and Sherri lived in a small town three hours away from Portland. After spending a night in a hotel near Portland International, we piled into the black Denali and headed east through the Cascade Mountain range, stopping along the way to take a walk along the Detroit Dam. Fourteen year old me raved about the Dam in my journal: “WOW! Is this what heaven looks like?” If heaven has turquoise mountain reservoirs and pine trees reaching up towards the sky (is there a sky in heaven), maybe heaven does.
A little farther along, passing Mount Washington and a lot of forest fire on the right, we drove down through Sisters and into Bend. The air at that time was thick with smoke from the forest fires; Black Butte Ranch was evacuated that week as fires claimed several homes. The sun was shining a little bit brown in July 2002.
In Bend, my family climbed to the top of Pilot Butte, where Uncle Tom pointed out the names of all the mountains we could see—the Three Sisters, Mount Jefferson, Mount Washington were on the list. I’m sure there were more. We went rafting on the Deschutes river, where I saw desert canyons and crystal clear river water for the first time in my life. I spent hours on my family’s back porch, and in the few days that I was there, I fell in love with Bend.
Since the great cross country roadtrip, I’ve fallen in love with not only Bend, but also Oregon in general. Over the past nine years, Portland, where the majority of my family eventually settled, went from an every two year visit to an annual destination. Family trips dwindled into my solo adventures. Apart from loving the mountains, rivers, lakes, and culture of Oregon, I valued my relationships with my aunt, uncle, and cousins. It killed me to leave, knowing that each of the little ones would be another year older the next time I saw them, and probably wouldn’t remember me next year. On top of that, my Uncle Tom began a heavy battle with cancer three years ago, and every time I said goodbye, it was with the knowledge that this time might be the last time.
Ironically, it was at Tom’s memorial service, a month ago, where I ran into some family friends that invited me out to their home in Bend for a day. Knowing that my aunt and her siblings were planning on solo family time together that day, I took them up on their offer, and headed south and east, on the same route taken nine years ago in the backseat of the Denali. The weather was wet and cloudy, typical of spring in Portland. However, as I rounded the corner at the top of Santiam Pass, the clouds parted and Mount Washington stood up, snowcapped and tall to my right. I literally screamed and clapped my hands—“thank You, thank You, thank You!” Think kid on Christmas morning. As I descended down the mountain road into Sisters, I thought, I can’t not live here. Grammatically incorrect, yes. But that drive started up all of the emotions that rang in fourteen year old me, the person who wrote down, “I wish I could bring back the feeling.”
To make a long story short, upon return to Portland, I applied for two jobs at a local hospital, not thinking that I would ever get an interview (I did), much less a phone interview (again, I did). I needed to be in Indy until the end of June (orientation starts July 8), and I needed a place to stay (found it). Every request I’ve made of God has been answered; slowly, methodically, and in His way, but answered, with a solution to every problem. I repeated over and over, “Your will be done,” between the day I applied and the day I heard from HR. I am on a temporary contract that will last until fall, and then I’ll move somewhere warm, Lord willing. The next step is up to Him as well.
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