Daria travels Oregon
June 10th-June 15th 2017
1500 miles
Portland >> Bend >> Eugene >> Corvallis >> Tillamook >> Canon Beach >> Oceanside >> Astoria >> Centralia >> Olympia
"I grew up the watching the sun crest over snow peaked mountains, smelling the morning frost on the breeze, listening to the vastness of the Alaska wildness. Having travelled and lived abroad in foreign mountain ranges, traveling to the Pacific Northwest felt like a pilgrimage: a moment of sanctity, to reach back and find that younger, softer version of myself who still exists on gravel trails surrounded by fireweed and rocky beaches casting a fishing line. Arriving in Oregon felt simultaneously awesome and familiar, approachable yet noble. Much like my current state at the time, it was an intersection between old and vibrantly new, yet quickly the lines blurred and it simply felt: magical. Spending the week with Cat meant many hours of laughing and catching up on our misadventures in the years since we left home and forged our way into the foreign world beyond Alaska’s protective boundaries. It meant long conversations about our shared hopes and fears about the future, and our ever-pressing desire to know how our dreams fit into that unknown space which at times seems to swell in front of us, like a vast ocean. It meant sharing deep, comfortable silences over the many miles of road burned under our tires. It meant sighing into the past of our mutual history of growing up in a place so wild, so free. It meant driving fast and carelessly into Oregon: a place which allowed us for the moment throw our heads back and laugh at how foolish we are to ever think that life is anything but riotous and beautiful."
