Stop #2: Deadwood

From Portland, I hopped on the Amtrak bus to begin the trek southward. The rainy cityscape gave way to a land of impossibly green hills. At the Eugene train station, a minivan pulled up and spilled out a whole family that's sprouted since the last time I saw my friend Mizu. She emerged with two small girls hiding behind her - Opal and Helen - and then came Lou with baby Lucie. And thus began a few lovely days in the misty wet hills of Deadwood, Oregon.

I had heard lots about Deadwood. Mizu and I were housemates in our last year of college. She always spoke fondly of her home in the Oregon hills, and she brought jars and jars of blackberry jam that she and her grandmother had made from the berries in their garden to stock our pantry. There were seven of us in the house at 4th and Union, and it was a comfortably social place. We never locked the doors and often came home to find various extra friends around. Somebody was usually cooking dinner for whatever crowd was assembled, and often the cook was Mizu. I'm pretty sure I can trace a lot of what I know about cooking back to that year. I especially remember returning from late-night studying to the smell of bread fresh out of the oven, a recollection that's mixed up with a tangle of other good memories - the bouncy inner tube that served as furniture when it wasn't being used for sledding down Bell Hill or floating the Cannon River, the upside-down maps and artwork on our walls, double-biking home from campus or from frisbee games on the hill...

Mizu moved to Seattle after we graduated, and I dropped in for brief visits there twice, once when she and Lou were just roommates and again after they were married. But I hadn't seen them since they became parents and since, a few years ago, they moved back to the house where Mizu's parents and grandmother still live. Not long after that, Lou's parents built a house across the creek. Now they have three little girls and a veritable family compound.

It's a place of huge green trees and dangling moss and sproinging ferns. A rushing creek surrounds the property, and the house looks out over a big pasture and the sleeping winter garden. The first morning, a herd of elk stood outside the window, munching in the early light. The house has been built over decades by Mizu's family, with lots of wooden beams and big windows and creative touches, including creative wiring - so things were running on half-power while I was there - and more renovations in progress. There are two sweet (if soggy) dogs outside and a wood stove inside for warming up after venturing out into the wet.

We went for a rainy puddle-stomping walk and checked out the garden and the creek.

 

The next day, we drove out to Florence, on the coast, and dropped Opal and Helen at preschool. Then Mizu, Lucie, and I walked on the beach, where we watched the waves and three seals in the surf.

And on the third day, we hiked up to a patch of old growth forest, with some impressively tall, broad, ancient trees, plus some skinny, bouncy, viny maple trees that were just right for jumping.

Back at home, we hung out, read stories, sang many rounds of the ABC song, and gave the drawing kits I had made for the girls a workout. Opal and I made a whole book. Helen liked carting hers around in her backpack (sometimes wearing nothing else), taking it all apart, and putting it back together. And though the girls were a little shy for the first, say, 10 minutes, they had pretty well warmed up by my last afternoon there!

 

While I did a better job of taking pictures here than at any of my other stops, once again some of my favorite images from the visit are the ones I didn't manage to capture with my camera:

• Mizu in action at the grocery store shortly after they picked me up in Eugene, with Lucie strapped onto her back, Opal and Helen riding in the car at the front of the cart, and Mizu maneuvering through the aisles all while shopping from memory because the list had been left at home. I was in awe.

• Opal and Helen helping Mizu cook, standing on chairs at the kitchen counter in their underwear measuring and stirring ingredients into the sauce for the stir fry.

• Lou managing to wrestle with all three girls at the same time, keeping Lucie in a snug hold while Opal and Helen leap and shriek.

Thanks, Kinney-Burruss clan! And I will definitely need to plan a return visit in the summer to see the garden in all its glory, take a dip in the creek, and taste the blackberries!