The Old Trail

My friend Beth and I walked this trail almost every day for about 6 years, then I moved and we moved our walk to a different trail. Actually, they are both sections of a 15 mile long trail called The Fanno Creek trail. This is the Garden Home section of the trail and in my opinion the more beautiful section. It feels a bit hidden and secret from the outside world, running through the hidden interior of a neighborhood, past backyards, open spaces and the back of the Portland Golf Club. Accessible on foot, back in where the streets have ended. This morning Ray and I, bored with the gym, decided to walk the trail instead. It has been several years since I was there and I wondered what might have changed.

It was as beautiful as I remembered. The trail has been widened in some areas and there are some new benches, one near the site of our protest of the ugly razor wire the golf club had there. Some trees have been removed—recently it appears.

We stopped to admire some interesting fungi...

And to play our old game of dropping pennies from the bridge onto the top of an old piling that sticks up from the creek.

There are some nice new signs about the history and features of the trail.

All was good until I spotted this:

One of the parts of the walk Beth and I loved was past a lovely house, hidden away back along the creek. It had a curved driveway and big trees and a glorious garden, filled with flowers and art. The garden was huge, with the trail following along it for awhile. And it had been right here, where now there was a huge hole in the ground, earth moving machines and piles of construction materials. As we continued around the corner, I saw that the house was gone. We asked a man walking by what was being built and he said, with anger in his voice, it was a water treatment facility. The neighbors had fought it. The people who owned the house and property had been forced to sell to the water district. No one was happy, said the man. Further along there was a sign explaining the project. Progress. Clean water for all. I felt sick.

Below, the old driveway that curved up to the house. Every spring this drive was lined with daffodils.

We contined on to the end, then turned around and walked back. We got our coffee at the Starbucks where Beth and I had spent so much time and money that we figured we owned the chairs. The Starbucks has been remodeled. It is fancy. None of the old baristas are there anymore.

Starbucks then (2007)

Starbucks now

Time marches on, now doesn't it?

 

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