Reimagining Portland: Part 1

Sometimes the places that change your life aren’t the ones where you were born. They’re the ones that quietly work their way into your heart.

For my wife and I, that place has become Oregon.

Our introduction began in 2014 when our daughter moved to Portland. She’d recently graduated from Southern Oregon University in Ashland, a small town just across the California border. We’d visited her there many times, and while it was a charming town, it wasn’t a place we ever considered relocating to.

When she moved to Portland after graduation, we started visiting several times a year. Every trip made it a little harder to leave. We fell in love with the summer weather, the towering trees and beautiful flowers, landscape and greenery, the walkable neighborhoods, the energy of downtown, and the incredible variety Oregon offers, from the coast to the mountains.

As our daughter settled into Portland’s Alphabet District, we began to imagine what it might be like to someday call this place home, even though our roots were firmly planted inn El Dorado Hills, California.

Then, in 2019, our son moved to Portland, and we rented a condo in Vancouver, Washington, just across the Oregon border, which sits in the middle of the Columbia River.

Each morning I’d walk onto the balcony of our condo with a cup of coffee. The Columbia flowed just a few yards away, powerful yet peaceful. I’d often put on a little Woody Guthrie and watch the river drift by, thinking about the people who had stood on its banks long before me.

One person in particular always came to mind: my ancestor, Meriwether Lewis.

Lewis and William Clark followed the Columbia River during the final stage of their historic expedition across the continent, eventually reaching the Pacific Ocean near present day Astoria. Standing there, I wondered how close I was to places they’d once explored … more than two centuries earlier. The river wasn’t just beautiful. It felt timeless.

Years later, I watched the television series 1883. It tells the story of families enduring an unimaginably difficult journey west in search of a better life, in Oregon. While the story is fictional, it reminded me that generations of Americans have crossed mountains, rivers, and plains with the hope of finding a place where they could build a future for their families. Subconsciously, I think that’s why I moved to California when I was 19 years old..

Watching the Columbia each morning, it wasn’t hard to understand why so many people fell in love with this part of the country.

Then the world changed.

In early 2020, COVID went from being a brief news story at the end of the evening broadcast to completely reshaping everyday life. At the same time, we had reached our own decision. We’d already made the decision to move and we established residency across the river in Washington, but when Covid hit, we knew it was go time to find our home. We weren’t just visiting Oregon from El Dorado Hills or Vancouver, we were moving and we had to move fast.

The timing couldn’t have been more complicated.

We suddenly found ourselves selling our California home and our Tahoe condo, trying to pack up decades of memories, arrange movers during a pandemic, donate belongings to places that were all closed, and relocate to another state while much of the country was shutting down. Like many families making life-changing decisions that year, we had to move quickly, and adapt as we went.

After searching throughout the Portland area, we found ourselves drawn to Eastmoreland.

Its tree-lined streets reminded us of Sacramento’s Fabulous Forties neighborhood, with beautifully preserved homes, many nearly a century old. It was a neighborhood filled with history, and we found what we thought could be our dream home. It was 99 years old and filled with memories from days gone by.

A few blocks away sits the beautiful Reed College, which reminded us of schools we’d seen in England like Eton, or a smaller version of Oxford. It’s also where Steve Jobs spent a couple years attending classes that helped shape the curiosity and ideas he carried into building Apple. Just two blocks from the home we purchased, Phil Knight began building what would eventually become Nike, in the basement of his parents home. As someone who spent much of my career as an entrepreneur, I found those stories inspiring.

In April 2020, we bought a house we loved and officially made Oregon our home.

Looking back now, I realize we arrived during one of the most extraordinary moments in modern history. At the time, none of us knew how much our lives, and the city we had fallen in love with, were about to change.

That story begins in Part 2.