While I was driving home tonight I was suddenly struck with how Goddamned beautiful this valley can be. I think I’ve come to appreciate it more since I’ve been traveling back and forth to Medford for work. Medford is okay, but as far as physical beauty goes, it’s lackluster.
It’s about at the point where you turn the last bend after the city of Rogue River, going north on I-5 when you really start to notice it. Eyes wide open, I was struck with the simple, natural beauty of the landscape surrounding me. It was 7:45 in the evening, the sky was dappled with random, feathery clouds tinted with distinctive hues of pink. I exited the interstate and sailed down deeper into the valley. My car shifted and turned with the curves of the road, but in every direction I faced a different mountain, each with it’s own silhouette in varying degrees of shaded gray (depending on their distance) in the horizon. It was a rather warm day, and maybe I get nostalgic and introspective when I feel a hint of summer. But that moment… That moment felt really good.
My mind traveled back to the days when I dawned a pink and white polka-dot swimsuit, the kind with the little girl ruffle across the waist, and ran through the sprinkler in my parents’ back yard.
These were the days when I set up shop with my Snoopy Snow Cone machine on the front side walk, selling paper-cupped snow cones for 25 cents a pop.
These were the summers tattooed with chalk-drawn hopscotch boards and laced with roller skates.
Take a look at this town. Take a look at me, and you might see no connection. I assure you, these things are sacred in my eyes.
The sad thing is, everyday I drive down these streets and everyday more and more of the businesses that have been here longer than I’ve been alive, making these memories, are vanishing. I see sign posts missing their signs, windows and doors reflecting empty rooms inside. It makes me sad. It makes me wonder what is going to happen here. I see buildings abandoned like broken down cars on the side of the freeway and I know there is no one coming right now to fill them.
So the filling inside the pie of the valley is missing. Sure the crust is fluted and pretty, but where’d all the good stuff go?
Some things are just sacred as I see it, and this town is one of those things. I don’t want us all to end up sucking in fumes under the highway pass in five more years.
I’d rather eat more pie.
- Kate
3 Comments
One thing that me and K-Ballz always notice is coming back to Oregon from California. It seems that as soon as we cross the Oregon-California border, we just have to sigh and huge sense of relief comes over the both of us. We are very fortunate to live in an area like this, now if it only paid us too.
I want it to be summa!!! That is a super cool pic. Do you have any of you with ur sweet poke-a-dot ruffle swimsuit!?!??! That is awseome!
This town is the greatest and worst thing about this town. I know EXACTLY what you mean, Katie.