Pilgrimage to Parkdale

Last Friday, Robert and I went over to Mount Hood’s eastern side to get a cord of firewood. Bill, whom Kim and I had met a couple weeks earlier, called to say he had just cut up a good supply for the winter. While we loaded the pickup with seasoned and split white fir, I asked Bill if he knew a good place to buy Gala apples near there, Parkdale being apple orchard country.

He spoke of neighbors just down the road who had an organic orchard and offered to take us up there when the truck was loaded. We spent the next couple of hours meeting John, a visionary beyond his means. The guy had more ideas per minute than a whole university think tank. He’s been delving into architectural and artistic designs, remaking the buildings on his farm until a creative wonder.

He takes ancient art forms such as Babylonian or Minoan patterns and mixes them with modern ecological images depicting lost habitats or vanishing species. He combines Mayan structures with Chinese forms to create eclecticism a la Northwest.

What keeps this dreamer fed and housed apparently is his wife who runs the wedding site business offering awesome views of Mount Hood in pastoral settings. She also takes her husband’s attempts at cottages in Russian peasant style and rents them out to tourists looking for a bit of rural peace and tranquility. Good thing. John’s run through the extended family resources already and his organic farm’s been a white elephant in the income department. His apples sure are tasty, though.

It’s an odd mix, this rural neighborhood not far from a crossroad called Parkdale. In between Bill and John is the son of some well-known mega-rich man and nearby is a guy who never amounted to much by anyone’s standards, not even his own.

All this oddity made for a productive day. We returned home with a truckload of relatively inexpensive firewood, a boxful of apples for making into applesauce, and eight delicious looking green peppers ripe for stuffing for supper later this week. The day was relationally and intellectually stimulating. Good time getting to know Bill better. Invigorating conversation with John that spanned the globe and the genres. And a great father-son day discussing the unfolding economic mess and the special vitality of rural America.

As a friend named Jim said last night, the difference between a trip and a pilgrimage is that, with pilgrimage, what you do along the way is as important as your destination. You may not even remember where you were headed or why, but you sure had fun doing it.