A Wandering Surprise in Portland

Earlier in the month I flew out to Portland, Oregon to visit my daughter’s family. If you have followed this blog or have read The Gentle Art of Wandering, you know that Portland is a great place to wander. In fact, the book’s cover photo was taken on Portland’s 4T Trail.

While in Portland, my daughter, grandson, and I happened to walk the 4T Trail again. And again the combination of trail, tram, trolley, and train was a great way to spend the better part of the day. We even topped off the hike by having lunch at one of Portland’s many ubiquitous food carts. As an added bonus, our trip was delayed a bit by a protest march streaming through downtown Portland.

This blog post, however, is not about the 4T Trail. It is about a walk I took the next morning before everyone else was up and ready. I had no destination in mind and really just wanted to stretch out my back and loosen up my body.

But soon after stepping out the door, my wandering instincts kicked in when I noticed a “Roadway Not Improved” sign and started following the unpaved road. They are perfect places to begin a wandering adventure and southeast Portland, where my daughter lives, has plenty of unpaved roads.

With a few twists and turns, the unpaved road ended at a busier street. Across the street was a “Dead End” sign. And again, if you have read any of the stair climbing posts in this blog, you know that a “Dead End” sign really means “keep walking” for those on foot.

When you’re new to a particular area, you never know what you’ll find at the end of the “dead end” street. It really may come to an end and force you to bounce out of there like a pin ball if you want to continue your walk. But sometimes you’ll find a passage that begs you to keep going ahead.

It may only be a short cut to the next street, but sometimes it may be an opening to a new adventure or opportunity. Where I live in Albuquerque, it might be an acequia ditch that you could follow for miles; in Los Angeles, it could be a public stairway leading to another neighborhood; and in some parts of Portland, it could be a stairway; but in this case, it was a path.

This path was way more than a short cut to the next street. It plunged into the woods and dropped down into a broad gulch full of trees, wetlands, and animals. It was truly a natural area hiding inside a crease in the middle of a large city, only few hundred feet from a busy neighborhood commercial district.

Who would have imagined that you could find a natural area as wonderful as this in the middle of town. If you were walking or driving along a nearby road, you would never suspect all that was waiting for you only a long fly ball away. There were no signs saying, “To the Natural Area.” There was only a sign saying, “Dead End.” You can only find a special place like this by straying from the pavement and following your instincts.

It turns out that this area happens to be on the backside of Reed College and is called Reed Canyon. Because the land is inaccessible to development, it should remain a natural area for the people of southeast Portland to enjoy for years to come.

I eventually followed another footpath that led me to a different Portland street. On my way circling back to my daughter’s home, I spotted many other things to keep the walk amazing. I even came across another dead end street. It, too, had a path at the end. Needless to say, I followed that path too. Here is some of what I saw on the way back.

I hope you agree that even a little spontaneous walk to loosen yourself up in the morning before everyone else gets up can be amazing. An adventure might be right outside your front door. The only thing you need to do is to let yourself see what is already there.