The Whit: Tales From a Transition
On what it’s like moving to a new place late in life
My dorm room door is open to the morning as the Coast Starlight train blasts her way through this older Eugene neighborhood. Most of the neighbors here are still asleep at 6 am, but for the few out walking the dogs. Those, and the homeless encampment a few blocks up near normally-busy 6th streets.Those folks are up early, sometimes all night.
A few blocks away, one of the brewpub anchors of this popular neighborhood reeks of hops. I am not fond of that smell. It reminds me of my family’s alcoholism, but around here it’s the smell of money. Hop Valley and the huge Ninkasi Brewery have helped make The Whiteaker, or the Whit, one of the more popular summer spots to be.
Not right now. While the eclectic collection of restaurants is slowly opening, the usual crush of cars isn’t around. That’s why I can find a parking spot in the heavily-shaded side streets in front of the Eugene Whiteaker Hostel where I am taking up space in an entire dorm room all to myself.
For now.
Recently I put $2500 down for earnest money on a new house. Back in Denver, where I left almost four weeks ago to begin my journey, my home is being viewed by potential buyers. My house here is a contingency purchase and I am, as they say, bumpable. My sellers have had their place on the market for two months, which means that they’re pretty happy that someone showed up with interest, intention, and a checkbook. We all have to wait, and if I am fortunate, my sellers will stay the course. I really like that house, the neighborhood that I hope to call my own. If it’s mine, it will all work out. If not, well.
Pivot.
Meanwhile, I meander, explore, and try to put down tentative roots. Even with everything else that is happening right now, it’s a joyful process.
This small neighborhood is full of tiny houses, many of them rundown, full of tools and pots and miscellany and kid’s toys. The old trees here hang low, their branches brushing your head as you wander by on the heaving sidewalk. The place is full of old memories, and far richer because of it.
Denver’s neighborhoods like this are largely all gone. Developers came in, razed the houses, raised the cost of living, the price of rent and quadrupled mortgages. No more locally-owned bodegas and hand-ball courts where day workers play. Only high end coffee bars and eight dollar mochas. The old is gone, in with the new, white and privileged. Which is just one reason I left. Because Denver, the Denver I fell in love with nearly fifty years ago, left the building, if you will. As forced out in some ways as the many ethnic folks who have been forced out due to housing costs. Denver is now the most expensive non-coastal housing market in the country.
Eugene, with its population of 171,245, is precisely the size of small city I like best. It is of course growing, which makes developers slaver, but not very fast. Most folks who head this way go to Portland, where the housing is considerably higher. You also get a lot more sophistication for your money, and a whole lot more traffic. More big box stores, closer to Washington, and other stuff, but nearly three million souls in the greater metropolitan area and growing fast. Not my kind of town. Never was.
Here, the relatively small downtown is clustered among tall trees and near the highway. I can walk there from this hostel. Lots more brewpubs. Parks everywhere. If you want to cut down a large tree in Oregon it damned near takes an act of state legislature. My kind of place. Colorado is busy razing all its trees around Denver as it raises the prices on real estate.
This hostel is a throwback. It reminds me of growing up in the sixties, with banners for Jimi Hendrix, photos of Frank Zappa sitting naked on a toilet, the entire place plastered with the kind of paintings we used to see on VW buses. It’s about as beads and Birkenstock as it gets. The back yard opens into a tiny stage where clearly, many a band has played. The word psychedelic is everywhere. Lots of working instruments on the wall and bikes you can borrow. They get returned, cleaned and repaired, and put back out for general use.
Lots of granola, oat milk and Birkenstocks. Lately there have been more folks here, and with that, the kitchen fills with the smells of all kinds of dishes. Leftovers are on the Free shelf in the fridge. Because of our conditions, most of us leave those alone, sadly. Still. The Whit is precisely what Oregon has always seemed like to me.
I could be seventeen, walking around here. The owner, Mac, is a gracious man of the world, probably in his late forties. He’s happy to have two of us boarders upstairs, both of us here for a month, providing income at a time when many are staying home. I just extended my stay again, which not only puts money in his pocket but also means that my rather upended lifestyle will continue.
It’s been many years since I had to wander a town to learn its boundaries, beginning a love affair of many years to come. What each neighborhood hid and held, the secrets of tucked away shops and surprises. As frustrating as it can be to not know your way around, head the wrong way down a one-way street ( folks are polite), it’s also part of the charm of being in a new place.
Oh, there’s a Natural Grocer. Ah, so that’s where the the post office is. THERE’S the TJ Maxx, the Costco. The REI store. I gotta remember that park.
It’s been years since I had to build home town familiarity from scratch.
Last week I started hiking most days at Spencer Butte, a relatively easy two-miler which offers not just gorgeous views, but beauty to boot. When the park opens at 6 am, I’m usually the first or one of the first to put boot marks into the soft clay of the well-maintained path.
Yesterday as I hiked down, the first person I saw was a tall Black man heading to the summit. We waved pleasantly in the morning fog. He’s here from Maryland, as chuffed as I am about the beauty of the forest. That I regularly pass Hispanic families, Black folks, Asians and mixed race couples tells me I’m in the right place. Too many Colorado trails weren’t anywhere near as diverse as this one. I passed on moving to Boise in part because it’s too white.
That hike reminds me of why I went through and continue to go through an awful lot of trouble, discomfort and expense to get up here. It’s two full hours of forest bathing while I get plenty of solid exercise, soothe my brain, my heart and revel in the magnificence of the Pacific Northwest forest.
Much of what is happening right now causes me to badly need that soothing. Too many of us don’t have access to that kind of mental vacation.
Up here, spring stretches into June, the overcast skies and soft drizzles and fog ensure green all year round. People who grow up here yearn for arid Arizona. After fifty years in the high dry desert of Colorado with its incessant sunshine, I yearned for rain forest. Of course we do.
Last week, I found a Mighty Ducks sweatshirt and Oregon hat. Time to let go of Bronco orange and blue and start wearing green. After all, I’m surrounded by it. I have always loved college ball but rarely had the time for it. Here, you’d damned well better be a Ducks fan. I am sure I’ll be allowed a Broncos game…but only if I wear a green hat while watching. Seahawks rule the NFL up here.
The relative frustrations and irritations of moving, which can at times be overwhelming (I have longed for my house on more than one occasion, I admit) are relatively minor when I take the time to explore this area.
The world around us all is on fire in a hundred ways. I’m most certainly aware. I write about those things that touch and terrify me. In the meantime I live in a four-man dorm in Whiteaker, not far from where the protestors march peacefully. The world is tilting, and me with it.
Trying to put down roots in shifting soil, but soil that feels like home.
