Oh Oregon, What Happened?
A reflection on a beautiful state, that’s let itself go
I First Visited the PDX Area in 2016…
Portland was a pretty cool city when I first saw it. It had brew pubs and chill vibes, beautiful bridges and coffee addicts; lots of people with dyed hair, many tattoos and even more piercings.
If you go east you’ll find the Columbia River Gorge and plenty of beautiful trails and falls.
If you go south you’ll find the Willamette Valley, your final destination on the Oregon trail. Further on and you’re in the Cascade Foothills, small for the area but taller than anything on the East Coast (where I’m from).
West is the coast, which is beautiful, cold and imperious. You’ll see imposing and recognizable (i.e., Goonies) rocks in Cannon Beach, or spot whales migrating if you’re out at the right time of year, easily accessible from Depoe Bay.
East you’ll pass over the mountains to find ranches and desert, most notably Bend, a high elevation desert resort town. It’s sunny and has every sort of extreme sport activity you could expect, satisfying any alpinist or elite athlete, especially Californians seeking cheaper costs of living.
Since I’ve moved to the Portland area in 2020 (technically right outside, in Vancouver WA), things have been worse for the state of Oregon, and the Portland area.
But Oregon is the birthplace of my wife and my daughter, and I think it’s worth reflecting on how this final destination on the Oregon trail has found itself at such a low point.
Let’s Start with the Trees
If you drive around Oregon or Washington State, any distance away from civilization, you’ll find this mass of fir trees encircle you. That’s because the Douglas Fir is very good at surviving the wet winters and dry summers of the Pacific Northwest.
Doug Fir also make for great lumber. Oregon is the Beaver State, and Washington is the Evergreen State. What both these states share besides a strong addiction to coffee and beer is a historical dependence on timber production.
The trees are vital to the economy of this area. Or, they were.
My wife grew up in Douglas County (along the I-5 corridor). As a kid, a logging truck drove by every 10 or so minutes through her town. These days, most of these mills are shut down.
Up until very recently (we’re talking the 90s), federal land allowed pretty much unrestricted logging by the timber companies.
But protection for the spotted owl and other environmental fights served to effectively wipe out the timber industry in Oregon (and Washington and British Columbia).
And say what you will about how the timber companies have destroyed the land, but that genie is out of the bottle: these forests are no longer old growth. These lands serve as tree farms. If we decide not to log them, then they’re now mismanaged tree farms.
The tension of city folk driving policy against ranchers and lumberjacks leaves us with a totally dysfunctional forest ecosystem.
Now, turning them into private timber farms won’t eliminate forest fires, but the reality is: just letting them burn won’t solve anything either.
What needs to happen is Oregonians need to try and control their destiny when it comes to the forests, not allowing environmental demagogues or logging company mouthpieces tell them what to do.
That means employing proper fire suppression and using costlier but more forest friendly techniques for logging where appropriate (apparently Doug Fir are better to clear cut). Oregon needs to hire and train more of its people to help maintain one of its greatest assets, its trees.
While the timber industry took a hit, Oregon had a few other major companies that filled in the gap, but are now in a bit of a slump —
CPUs and Expensive Shoes
If you go to Portland, and you end up driving around the western side of the city, you’ll find these massive suburbs built around a couple companies, Beaverton (Nike) and Hillsboro (Intel).
Both companies have been the corporate stars of Oregon (though Nike is a branding company that charged way too much for a pair of okay basketball shoes). In an era where branding is not everything though, Nike has not been faring very well.
Intel has been receiving a similar drubbing, not because of its brand failing to keep the spark, but because it has had some big misses on tech innovations of late, namely mobile hardware and AI/ML hardware.
But these are still multi billion dollar companies, so they’re not out of the race quite yet. Both of them need to reinvent themselves; Nike as a company that not only has good branding but also as good or better gear than its competitors. A shakeup at the top might help, but a shoe that’s as good or better than what Hoka can make is probably where the focus should lie.
Intel as a company needs to step up to rival Nvidia instead of simply standing back while Nvidia rakes the (metaphorical) chips in.
Intel is being given direct handouts from Uncle Sam, one can only hope some of that money makes its way to helping make the company and its home state more of a tech haven.
The last bit about the state is something that has been on an increase for a while, but came to a head in 2020 —
We Can’t Forget the Drugs and Riots
My time in and around the Portland area has given me less and less of an appreciation of recreational drug (ab)use. And rioting.
Drugs are bad, mmkayyy. And Oregon misuses them. (Also weed smells.)
If your life is such hell that you turn to something like Meth or Fentanyl, then I’m sorry. Your circle of people, your society, and your country have failed you. But that doesn’t abnegate personal responsibility either.
And when I say personal responsibility, I don’t just mean the folks on drugs (though we need them to step up too!). I mean people in the community who either enable or ignore the behavior. And the state is one of the worst enablers I’ve seen.
The fact that it had to re-criminalize drugs after decriminalizing them just shows that it is ill-equiped to deal with the problem. The War on Drugs is a joke (only the drug dealers are winning), but letting people murder themselves with substances, illegal or otherwise, is just as much of a joke.
There are other countries that have figured out better ways to combat these issues; we should just cheat off their homework. Oregon doesn’t need to let people do whatever they want, or throw druggies in jail; it needs to find a way to get the outcome that Oregonians want: people not killing themselves and making their state a crummy place to be.
The riots part is thankfully mostly over, but Portland was one of the worst hit by Black Lives Matter protests. Not to diminish the importance of the issue, but the city was trashed for 100 nights. And the people doing the trashing weren’t necessarily BLM protesters, they were anarchists.
There’s nothing so depressing as being known as a state full of anarchists and drug addicts. Especially when it represents a tiny fraction, and is almost totally localized to the Portland area. But appearance is reality.
Oregon Will Always Be Beautiful
One thing that no amount of human misery, stock slumping, or mismanaged forests can ever take away is the beauty of Oregon.
It’s a land of volcanoes, haunting coastal views, evergreen forests and lots and lots of water and wildlife (and god dang blackberry bushes).
Even if huge fires sweep through, Oregon will grow back. I can only hope the same can be said of its people.
This state is not my home, and it never will be, but it’s my wife’s home and where my daughter is from; the two most beautiful people in my life are from here, and I hope that more beautiful people will help pick it up from its slump and make this state “she who flies with her own wings.”
Thanks for reading!
