Same Song, Second Verse

You know you are in

when one of the biggest tourist attractions in town is a bookstore.

A bookstore that is home to more than one million books.
A bookstore where they don't just have a section for fiction, they have a whole room.
And where there are all these eloquent and pithy descriptions of books on little pieces of paper attached to the shelves. Descriptions which cause you to start making lists on your phone of all the books you are pretty sure you are probably really going to read someday. And in spite of a small feeling of despair in the pit of your stomach at the sight of all the books you are pretty sure you are probably really never going to read,
you still feel compelled to try.
And so you purchase more of these:

 Even though you really don't have any more room in this:




And later, as you are wandering through the neighborhoods, 
you stumble across several of these:

And you discover that these are a thing.
A tiny neighborhood lending library designed to "nurture literacy and camaraderie."
And you learn that these little boxes have been appearing in neighborhoods around the city
for nearly twenty years.

And you know you are in Portland
when the people you are house-sitting for created this in their backyard:

 An urban co-housing ecovillage,
complete with chickens and vegetable gardens and communal meals.

And when you take sweet Molly the rat terrier

for a walk,



in the Cully neighborhood you are calling home for three weeks, 
a neighborhood located in a city that is home to more than 600,000 people, 
you only have to walk two doors down to see this:



and a few steps later this:



and a little farther down the road this:



Every other house seems to have raised beds in their front yard, 
and piles of black compost in the driveway waiting to be worked into those beds.  
And everyone seems to be out in their yards planting their spring gardens, 
and cleaning up after winter.  
And everywhere you look there are chicken coops and plastic growing tunnels and bamboo trellises.

And even a goat.




And you have to remind yourself that you are only about 40 blocks away from this:



Your son who is walking with you says it feels like somewhere in West Virginia,
even though you are pretty sure he has never even been to West Virginia.

And even though Bea, your temporary cat, is heavily medicated:



You are not.

Although you probably could be.



But you already feel so calm.
Surrounded by all these gardens and books.
And the people that care about them.