river into the sea

I’m in my motel room in Astoria, overlooking the water. Below me, the Columbia river widens to meet the Pacific. LeeAnn booked the room for me, and when I got here I found out she’d paid for it as well. It’s perfect, not a chain motel, but one with distinct character and a sense of place. I’m deeply touched. Touched. How right that word is! Moved and touched by the power of human connection, by this incredible day.

Picking up my rental car in Portland, I headed off after consulting with the rental guy about the best route. I promptly got lost in the wastelands of industrial Portland, driving this way and that until I finally found my way back to the place I’d gone wrong. I’d taken a wrong turn just blocks from the bridge I needed to cross. I noted the crossing of it, hoping that it was a portent, that all the turns and wanderings of this life time lead me exactly back to where I need to go. This is a bridge I’d never seen or crossed before, this Saint John’s bridge. An elegant, gothic, suspension bridge, my guess is it was built in the late 1920’s or early 30’s. It soars above the Willamette, and my heart soared crossing it, and I wondered for awhile if there really was such a thing as a wrong turn. If I hadn’t have been lost, I might not have marked the crossing with the same verve.

Driving down Highway 30, just as I was settling into the beauty of the landscape, the winter palate of muted colors, what loomed large but the Trojan Nuclear Power Plant. It was a shock. Have I ever actually seen a nuclear power plant before? I always drove on Highway 26 to the coast and I came to San Francisco the week my soon to be comrades were getting arrested at Diablo. I can’t draw up a memory of seeing one before, but I know instantly what it is. Seeing that iconic shape rising in the winter mist was chilling. Perhaps if he hadn’t live downstream from this monstrous giant, Max would be alive. And Jody wouldn’t have breast cancer.

I met LeeAnn outside of the Logger Restaurant in Knappa, a small town filled with people who depend on the bounty of this coast, making livings from fishing and logging. It's going to take weeks to truly process all that came next. The memorial service was in the high school gym, the same high school that Max had attended. Max was man in his seventies who had died of pancreatic cancer, but in that room his presence came in the form of a youthful basketball star. Almost all his highschool teammates were there, and his friend Bud guided the service. Max’s favorite songs were played, among them songs by Johnny Cash and Merle Haggard. Max was a big man in many ways. He filled the room. The gym was crowded with family and friends and you could spot his relations by looking for those who towered above the rest of us. I sat between LeeAnn and Jody, with pictures and stories of Max flooding the room, creating what Jody had so intended, a celebration of his life. We left the gym and ate in the cafeteria, feasting on an incredible array of food, countless tables laden with home-made dishes.

I left the high school and came to the motel, knowing that Jody and LeeAnn will probably go out to the local taverns tonight. At least I’m hoping they do, Max needs a wake element to this day. I’m exhausted from getting up so early, plus my intuition told me that if I went out with them, I’d end up sleeping in my rental car. Better to be here, cozy in the motel, high above the river, thinking about life and death, about aging, about what it means to have one great love in a lifetime, about the power of small towns, about my working class roots, and about my intense love for the ocean that this river is flowing into. Some of who I am was forged in this place. Some of me is being forged here again. This is an important weekend.