In the two weeks before starting the current quarter at Stanford, I took a trip from the Bay Area up to Portland, a community called Windward in Klickitat in Washington, Bend (in Oregon), and then on to Victoria, Vancouver, and town called Nelson in the middle of British Columbia. It was an amazing trip.
This is my lovely traveling companion Jess, who inspired the trip in the first place, and I on the train to Portland. I love the train! Smooth, pretty on-time, way less stressful than dealing with the random attempts at security/harassment in the airports, and scenic.
This is driving along the Columbia River gorge, east from Portland headed towards Klickitat and the Windward community.
It's impossible to capture the feeling of Windward. This is due to the fact that it is situated in a forest so you can't step back and see the whole thing, as well as it being a community of people doing great work taking care of themselves and the land. I've included this picture because the sheep were really cute, and very friendly every time we walked past their pen. The Windward folks are doing so much more than sheep-raising. They are gardening, doing aquaculture, managing their forest as best they can, and perhaps most importantly asking deep questions about how they and all the other people on the planet are living in terms of resource use and cooperation. They are seeking to model a different way of life focused on love, caring for each other in a close-knit community, working smart with appropriate technology when they can, and living in the peace and quiet of a rural setting. They were wonderful hosts, and I look forward to visiting them. If you have more questions, just email me. It's too much goodness to put into words here.
Then we drove a few hours south to Bend to visit my friend Matt, who turned out to know all sorts of people that Jess knows as well from Stanford. Small world! Bend looks like this...
this...
and this. Yes that's snow. Both the rock tower and the snow are a few miles outside of Bend, in opposite directions. Skiing one day, hiking in 65 degree sunny canyons one day, and lots of chilling out in downtown Bend. Local microbrews are great, people are friendly, and our hosts were great.
We got back on the train in Portland, and took it to Vancouver. Vancouver is a lovely city, with lots of views like this one. In the total metropolitan area it has around 2 million people, and it is snug in between mountains with snow on them and the ocean. We only stayed for a day, but had a great time walking around and eating Japanese noodles.
Victoria is a smaller city, located on the southern tip of Vancouver Island, about a 90 minute ferry ride from the southern outskirts of Vancouver. I loved Victoria. Nice beaches, beautiful downtown right by the harbor, and the restaurant that is the source of my favorite cookbook, The Rebar. We stayed for four days here, split between wandering the beaches, downtown, and idling in Jess' grandparents' house nearby.
At this point you may notice that the rainbow sweater makes frequent appearances in the trip album. I packed with the intention of camping, and therefore had few clothes so as to save space and weight. I ended up not camping, but rocked the rainbow (wool!) sweater all over town.
Check out this sunrise over Mt. Olympus that we saw on the ferry ride back to the mainland from Victoria. Amazing!
The last stop was Nelson, a 7 hour drive inland from Vancouver. Jess' dad Bill lives in this town of about 20,000. It's a nice place. Good people, good nature nearby, quiet vibes. This picture is from a provincial park nearby where we went on a long hike one day. Once again, amazing!
These are just a few photos from the trip. I have a few hundred, and wanted to share at least some of them with you to let you know what it was like. My main feeling the whole time was being overwhelmed with gratitude for access to such natural beauty and wonderful people. I had a fantastic time with Jess, and it was great to see old friends. It took me a while to mentally check back in after this epic 16 day trip, which is fine with me.
These days I'm helping lead a class at Stanford on values, science, and the current deep ecology of being human. I'm also leading a regular meditation group, doing yoga regularly(including bikram - John Nishan, who could have guessed I'd get there?), and thinking about what I'm looking for in community. It's a great place to be. I look forward to writing some more reflective pieces for this blog in the coming weeks, so stay tuned.
So much love and peace to you, from the western edge of the continent.
ps - Forgive the chunky format of this posting. I can't get blogger to do what I want with the photos and spacing.
