50@50 – Portland, OR
Portland Oregon’s culture is distinctive. “KEEP PORTLAND WEIRD” Austinites swear they had the logo first, but really, why argue? The two cities actually have a similar vibe. Portland has the highest percentage of bicycle riders in the country; a reputation for being “green”, a passion for organic food (except for Voodoo donuts), an active lifestyle, and more small business than big business. The longest running gallery in town features Native American art and residents joke that Subaru is the state car. Casual is an attitude as well as an attire choice. Go sit in any major airport and see if you can tell when the Oregonians arrive in the luggage area. I bet you can.
The Chinnook people, among others, lived off this land for several thousands of years. Clark wrote in his journal, at a point just north of Portland, that “I slept but very little last night for the noise kept during the whole of the night by the swans, geese… they were immensely numerous an their noise horrid-“[1] A veritable Garden of Eden, temperate rain forests exist from here up into British Columbia.
I could spend too many paragraphs describing the cultural development of Portland, but you’ll have to read it somewhere else. Today, Portland has an artistic vibrancy which far exceeds the city’s size. The city DOES art, not just show it. The artistic community, from the architects to the musicians, looks for ways to fuse elements together, old with new, soft with hard, timeless with time. And the collaborative Intermedia festival, TBA (Time Based Art) showcases how artists and performers blur the lines between the disciplines of visual and performing arts –art-dance-music-theater-media-dialog. I also think the Oregon Symphony is underrated; or perhaps they’ve only been superb for my attendance. I attended a great Third Angle concert at the Alberta Rose Theater, built in 1927 as a motion picture theater, and re-emerged in the late 1990’s as a premier music, and art house theater space.
One of my favorite hikes is an urban walk, along both sides of the Willamette River on the east side of downtown. One can start at any point, cross over the oldest Steel Bridge in the country, walk closer to the river on the east side, crossing the Hawthorne Bridge back to the starting point. The website portlandwalkingtours.com is a great source of other walks throughout the city.
Public parks make up nearly 10% of Portland’s land. Forest Park, the largest at 5100 acres, encompasses the Wildwood Trail, spanning nearly 30 miles from one end to the other. Trail maps are available at the visitor’s center, REI, Columbia. 
I picked up the trail off of Cornell Road just west of the tunnel. This access point (appropriately called the Tunnel Trail) climbs steeply for about ¼ mile. At the juncture of the Cumberland Trail, I turned right, climbing, but less so, for almost another ½ mile, then turned left at the Wildwood trail. Starting off mercifully level, the switchbacks steepen. Fortunately, the pathway is wide and well groomed and judging by the number of people I encountered, well used. About 25 minutes later, I arrived at the Pittock Mansion parking lot. Across the mansion’s lawn is a stunning view of the city and the cascades to the east. The trail picks back up across the parking lot, but I returned down to the Cumberland trail – past my original intersection to the Audubon Center before returning down the Tunnel Trail. The only distracting element was the traffic noise below, but otherwise, the forest seems a world away.
So many more trails to hike, more concerts to attend, more performers to write for…