Last night I had an otherworldly dream. I was in a house in a desert, among strange people. The house had four windows, and looking out of each one I saw a spinning black tornado coming, one from each direction. The people were preparing to go down into their basements and pray for mercy from the terrible Finger of God, but I knew that my home was far away and that I had to leave this place which would soon be ripped apart. I ran out of doors and to the west. For as long as I have known the world, home has always been west. I was pursued by the furious twisters, which would be sucked back up into a sky that would hold its breath, and then roar the funnels back down onto the earth without warning. Finally, I came to a gate where the desert ended and a dark green forest towered upwards, blotting out the hungry sky which tore at the swaying trees. A harried gatekeeper was fighting against the wind, trying to close off the green corridor to the west. I asked him if the road was closed, and told him that I must get through. He shouted above the storm that I could go that way if I wanted, but that the tornadoes were worse beyond the gate, and that he was closing it behind me so I would not be able to return. I went through the gate, and then I woke up.
No, I have not watched the Wizard of Oz recently, nor have I even thought of it (consciously). Strange, though, the resemblance... I think that sometimes my dreaming self likes to practice its destructive capabilities, and that is where the tornadoes came from. Perhaps more so because I grew up on the Oregon Coast, where winter gales sweep shingles off your roof and hammer at your windows with regularity. Here in the valley, storms are mild novelties. I miss watching the churning brown rivers rise up the bare white necks of alder trees, and even the moments when we thought the roof would surely come down with heavy gusts that shook the walls. We lost power so often in the wintertime that none of us missed a beat, just went on about living. Everyone knew not to open the refrigerator, and that it might take a few days for the power to come back on again. Someone would build a fire in the wood stove, and someone else would brave the flying widowmakers to go and see if the road had washed out yet. Neighbors would spontaneously emerge out of the dark, rainy woods bearing Coleman lanterns, smoked salmon and stove-top popcorn, as welcome as they had been uninvited. We would sit around the kitchen table and play cards by candlelight. We would tell stories and the mood would lift with the pitch of the wind. The roof might come down on us, but we knew we were alive. No person on earth could dictate the weather, and somehow the indomitable strength of it melted away daily worries. Bosses, bullies and teachers were all the same to the storm, and they were impossibly far away now, with the water rising and trees falling across the roads. No tourists would cross the mountains to be waited on in the shuttered cafes. There was nothing to do but live.
Now here I sit on a ridge on the east side of the coast range, watching the dark blue shadows of evening stretch out across the vibrant green of the valley. The air is ambient and still. I went for a walk around the tree farm just after sunset, and didn't realize that I had forgotten to wear my sweater until I was back inside the house again and saw it draped over a chair. Crickets and frogs sing out into the soft night. Bright red apples dot the gently sloping hillside behind the house, reminding me of the opulence of nature in this place. It is, after all, the legendary Willamette Valley, the promised land that led droves of white people to cross the long, dry interior. This is the place that made that journey the "Oregon Trail," rather than the Mexico Trail, or any other kind of trail. And I sit atop it all like a fortunate descendant of royalty, complaining that it's not windy enough here. I do appreciate my luck, but some small part of me wonders if those tired wanderers who crossed an ocean of grassland to get here ever felt strangely restless amidst the gentle peace of this place. Did they ever miss the dark storms of their homelands?
There are many things about the coast that I do not miss; most things, perhaps. But on sweet, heavenly nights like this, just after I drift off to sleep under woolly white clouds and sparkling stars, my subconscious loves to take me back down into dark, blustering forests of fir and alder, where rivers threaten to swallow bridges and the earth threatens to shake loose the houses, and the sea threatens to rise up out of itself and rush against the gray cliffs.
