Along for the Ride: Going Live on the 75

[shashin type="photo" id="202" size="320" columns="max" order="user" position="left"] Today marks the public launch of "Along for the ride,"* a new series of mass transit adventure chronicles on Lascher at Large.

Watch an Audio Slideshow | Explore the Map | See the Photo Gallery

The concept: explore Portland as seen from the metropolitan region's transit lines. Each week, through a highly scientific selection process (in other words a combination of my mood, any errands I may have to run, suggestions from the peanut gallery and other such extremely formal criteria), I'll be riding the full length -- each direction -- of one of Tri-Met's bus or rail lines (and perhaps those of surrounding transportation authorities, like Clark County's C-Tran). Who knows what I'll experience along the way or what I'll observe, or even what form my storytelling will take? Learn more about the project, how to support it, or how to come along for the ride at the end of this post.

For this inaugural week, I rode Line 75, a megaroute running from St. Johns through much of North, Northeast and Southeast Portland, all the way to Milwaukie (for the non-Oregonians among you, that's a city immediately south of Portland, not the alternately-spelled lakeside Wisconsin metropolis). For a taste of the route, check out the following audio slideshow. The speaker was a slightly counter-culture, late middle-aged man who identified himself as Robert. Reflecting on Portland's public transit system and his regular commute to and from St. Johns, this afternoon, Robert, who refused to give his last name, accompanied family on a trip from Portland's Woodstock neighborhood North to Burnside Blvd.

Before you read the rest of the story, listen to what Robert has to say about riding the 75, check out some images I snapped along the route, and even enjoy a moment of riparian pleasure, all brought to you by the 75:

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4zCJR3l6OE

A tale of two Wunderlands

You ride, And ride, And ride, Only at the end do you know the purpose of your trip.

One of twelve current "Frequent Service" Tri-Met bus routes -- those designed to run every quarter-hour -- the 75 averages intervals of about 17 minutes, according to the Portland Afoot Wiki.

I didn't time the 75 when I rode it this week. I happened to arrive at its door just before it left Pier Park in St. Johns. Such details will have to be saved for Portland Afoot, or perhaps for future installments of this series. Anyhow, though I originally envisioned "Along for the Ride" as a series of journalistic accounts of individual transit lines, this first trip devolved into more of a solitary journey, albeit one in which my commitment to my profession was redeemed by the discoveries I made along the route.

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My ride along the 75 started quietly. I barely made it on board. I don't live by either end of the line, and my path to Pier Park, the route's northern terminus, will remain a closely-guarded secret. What I can reveal: It involved an unidentified second transit line and a pedestrian meander to throw off would-be followers. I can, however, say I saw the biggest dog I've ever seen in my life along the way.

Anyhow, when I arrived the bus was empty aside from the older woman grilling the driver for details about how to make her connection. Despite the driver's insistence that there would be plenty of warning before the woman's required stop, she didn't seem convinced, and the full-speed run I made to board the bus started to seem unnecessary. But I made it.

Before long we were on Lombard. A bunch of teenagers boarded at the first stop. One sat in the seats across the way from me. He was easily too cool for school. Every few seconds he'd erupt with smirking mirth. That wasn't minimized by my donning of gigantic headphones as I slowly moved a cheap, underwhelming Radio Shack microphone around to pick up ambient sound (read, cacophonous static roughly reminiscent of rattling windows and engine noises). Already too shy for a journalist, I decided that wasn't the time for an interview, and packed everything but my camera away.

This was the first instance of a dilemma that persisted throughout the day. People rarely want to be spoken with on buses, even less so than on the street, or so I led myself to believe. They don earbuds, they stick their noses into books, they sigh after a long day at work, they text friends, they flirt and gossip and stare intently out the window. Perhaps, at least for this first trip, the best way to experience transit in Portland was to do just that: experience it, fully.

So I took in the city as it passed. St. Johns' mid-century downtown brimmed with summertime pedestrians. Friends met for coffee. Photographers ducked into a camera shop. Moms and dads pushed strollers. I saw one of two fencing halls I'd see along the 75.

It was the first of many pairs. The camera shop -- Blue Moon Camera and Machine -- also boasts typewriter repairs, and only a few blocks southeast, we'd also pass Ace Typewriter, possibly one of the only full-service typewriter maintenance businesses left in the entire country. Eventually, the bus passed two Trader Joe's locations and two bowling alleys and not one, but two Wunderlands.

As it turns out, the two places I decided to get off the bus -- in Portland's Belmont neighborhood and Downtown Milwaukie -- brought me a short stroll from two Wunderland Arcades. Sadly I lacked in nickels and competitors for air hockey, skee-ball, and scads of ticket-spewing games. Beyond the Wunderlands, which also feature second-run movie theaters, Line 75 passed, or stopped within a few blocks' walk of, multiple cinemas, including the Baghdad, the Hollywood Theatre, and both of St. John's movie houses.

Even more plentiful than movie theaters were parks. Big parks, little parks, dog parks, boring parks, fun parks, ugly parks, pretty parks, the 75 stopped near them all (actually, I don't recall any particularly ugly or boring ones. They're parks, after all). Parks too constrained for you? Why not take the 75 to the Springwater Corridor trailhead at Johnson Creek? Or head out on the water? Though I didn't realize it at the time, my trip on the 75 was taking me to the river.

Summertime, and the Living is Easy

Upon arriving at the route's terminus in Milwaukie, I headed out for a stroll. The day was far too beautiful not to do so. Of all the ways I'm nerdy, I'm not a comic-book reader. Were I so, I might have been thrilled to pass the headquarters of Dark Horse Comics (though the Darth Vader posters on the window were enough to excite the Star Wars nerd within). But my nerd-dom lies elsewhere, so I continued on toward a glistening shoreline I spied from Milwaukie's Main Street.

I soon forgot about it all -- the storefronts, the bus, my frustration with not interviewing anyone -- when I reached the shores of the Willamette. There, dogs played, boaters launched, office workers strolled in khakis and button-ups and old men surveyed the landscape from recumbent bicycles flying hot pink banners. Summer surrounded.

It only continued. On my way to the water I'd passed the Main St. Collectors Mall and Soda Fountain, and I stopped in before re-boarding the bus home. Like any antique mall, its shelves were stuffed with pan-decade nostalgia -- Star Wars Toys, World War II memorabilia, old record collections -- but it featured an extra treat: the counter of a former Rexall Department Store -- also known as Perry's Pharmacy -- where a family laughed over phosphates and hot dogs and an elderly mother treated her adult daughter to an ice cream cone. It was as if no one had ever moved. My only regret: not shooting the scene when I first glimpsed it through one of the store's aisles. I did, however, enjoy my lunch and my dessert of chocolate peanut butter ice cream in a sugar cone.

This was no longer a bus ride. This was a journey. With a $4.75 day pass, I'd wandered across a metropolis, stopped for snacks and a stroll in a hip neighborhood (I'd grabbed a bite on Belmont Ave.), run an errand for a friend, and found myself on a quiet shoreline, where water lapped at my feet, dogs played fetch, kids laughed from inner tubes pulled behind motorboats and the world slowed down, if only for a moment.

More Transiting Portland Each Week

What's "Along for the Ride?" It's my evolving series of Portland-area mass transit chronicles. For the next, well, for the next long while I'll be riding a new Tri-Met operated transit line. By new, I mean new to me. I'm beginning with lines I've never ridden, then I'll move on to riding other lines I have taken, until I've ridden every bus, railway and shuttle operated by Tri-Met (and possibly routes on other public transit systems near and far, should the situation arise). Expect stories along the way. What kind of stories? I can't quite be certain. Some newsy. Some reflective. Some only possible in the moment. Expect guest stars too. Perhaps expect to even come along yourself.

I expect Along for the Ride to also be a laboratory for new (to me) storytelling practices and a chance for me to hone audio recording, photography, videography, interviewing, mapping, writing, editing and other skills. Don't be surprised if different forms are used to tell stories from week to week, though it's conceivable the series will find its own rhythm, just as transit has its own pace.

You can help set that rhythm, however. You can start by getting involved. Tell me about your reflections of transit or via a tweet to @billlascher. If you use public transit, what do you use it for? What transit lines do you ride and why? If you don't use public transit, explain why not. What might change your opinion about using transit, whether you currently use it or not? I want to know about transit in any city -- after all, my love affair with transit writing started in LA, where transportation policy became the focus of my graduate studies -- so why not reflect on your town's best or worst routes?

For those of you familiar with particular Tri-Met lines, why not suggest in the comments what lines I should try next? Do you know of great stops along the way? If so, enter them on the map. Do you have a favorite transit story? Why not share some here, though I don't want to step on the toes of Michael Andersen, and the great stories in each edition of his incomparable Portland Afoot (By the way, if you need something to read on the bus, or anywhere else you happen to be, I bet your $5 subscription or other support will be well worth it).

*By the way, special thanks to writer Christina Cooke for devising this series' title, "Along for the Ride." Check out Christina's work at christinacooke.com.

Click on any image to enlarge:

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Plutonium pride on the Mid-Columbia

[stextbox id="custom" color="000000" bcolor="000000" bgcolor="ffffff" image="null"]This update originally appeared April 15 on the blog for the Spot.us story I'm working on about seismic risks at Eastern Washington's nuclear power facilities. Later updates -- including news of a petition by environmental groups to stop the NRC from nuclear plant licensing and other proceedings until it completes a review of the Fukushima disaster -- are available here. Expect the final story May 2.[/stextbox]

"We're proud of the cloud."

That's what Dave Acton - the general manager and brewmaster at Atomic Ale & Eatery in Richland, WA - told me last night. Acton grew up in Richland, part of Eastern Washington's Tri-Cities area. The town's biggest claim to fame, though, is the nearby Hanford Site, the site used by the U.S. government for decades to produce plutonium for nuclear weapons. It's also the place where, for more than 30 years, the Columbia Generating Station has produced electricity on land leased from the federal government from the only commercial nuclear reactor still operating in the Northwest.

Acton chatted with me over of "Plutonium Porter" last night. He explained to me how safe he felt growing up in Richland -- and how happy he is to raise kids here. For Acton, concerns about safety at the Columbia Generating Station and the Hanford site are the result of fear-mongering and panic. Though the conversation happened spontaneously (the way the best journalism often does), it reminds me just how much more complex any story is. Of course, one person's opinion shouldn't be seen as representative of an entire community, but it's worth remembering that as I consider the seismic hazards of Eastern Washington - and what it means for the Columbia Generating Station and the Hanford Site - there's a real value in understanding how those most directly impacted by these facilities feel about them. I'm looking forward to sharing what Acton had to say in my final piece.

I'll also have details from my enlightening conversation with Steve Reidel (without whom, coincidentally, I wouldn't have found Atomic Ale after bumping into him long after our interview). Reidel, a geologist and adjunct professor at Washington State University, Tri-Cities, recently retired from the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. Recently retired after decades working on the Hanford Site, Reidel reminded me how little we still know about earthquakes in this part of Washington - a point he also made in a column in last Sunday's Tri-City Herald (you'll have to pay to see the story in the paper's archives). More concerned about the risk such quakes might pose to aging buildings on the Hanford Site than at the Columbia Generating Station, Reidel reminded me just how much of a struggle it is to get scientific studies done consistently and thoroughly. There was much more to our conversation, but you'll hae to wait until May to learn the full story.

When you read it (and I hope you'll support it by clicking "fund this story"  or, if funds are tight, by taking surveys to earn free credits to apply to this piece), you'll also learn about my next destination: a newly trenched fault outside of Yakima that I'll be visiting with Brian Sherrod later today. Sherrod, a paleoseismologist, works with the U.S. Geological Survey and the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network to map and identify active faults. Thanks to LIDARdata that has become available over the past decade Sherrod and the PNSN have been able to identify one new fault a year in Washington. Their only limitation: having enough resources to collect and process data from around the state. Sherrod is also preparing to publish research that will provide a new understanding of the relationship between fault systems east of the Cascades, and those in the more heavily populated areas west of the mountains. I'm looking forward to seeing in person how Sherrod works and literally getting my hands dirty as I see his work first hand.

I'm happy to be out in the Tri-Cities and to have the opportunity to see what I'm writing about first hand (theres no reason why any journalists shouldn't go in the field, but that's a blog for another time). Disappointingly, I've yet to get Energy Northwest - the operators of the Columbia Generating Station - to talk with me about the basis for their safety claims. As i try, I'll continue analyzing some of the other materials and interviews I've had - including a discussion with an emergency management expert, congressional research service reports on seismic safety near nuclear power plants, and more.

I can't do any of this without your continued support. Please click "fund this story" or "free credits" if you want to help me tell this story.

Heart of the Monster: Journey to SEJ 2010, Part 3

[stextbox id="custom" color="000000" bcolor="000000" bgcolor="ffffff" image="null"]As I prepare for a new journey, I'm thinking about past travels, so here is the third installment of my tales from last fall's trip to the 2010 Society of Environmental Journalists conference. See Part 1 here and Part 2 here. Talk about slow journalism.[/stextbox] [shashin type="photo" id="422" size="medium" columns="max" order="user" position="right"]Imagining my own murder came easily. Shadows sapped what last fall warmth might have lingered from the forests around the confluence of the Lochsa, Clearwater and Selway rivers. Choosing a river-rafting resort for its off-season rate, I was the only guest on this, the day of the year's first frost. I envisioned my role as the victim in a backwoods-set horror film. Having battled a cold all day, a fever crept through my brain in sharp contrast to the plummeting mercury outside. My thoughts ran wild.

In truth, they had all day, just as this text, as all text seems to escape my control.

Before succumbing, I ate across the highway at Ryan's Wilderness Inn. I sat at the counter and watched a courtroom reality show through the static on a small T.V. What could have been my last meal was a French dip with over-salted, but tasty, au jus. It was served on a place mat depicting a map of the solar system (I think one of my best friends growing up had the same set). The mid-October day unraveled as I ate. Listening to crackle of the snowy TV screen and the waitress chit-chatting with the cook, I marveled at the vastness of the universe from this roadside eatery, just a speck in Idaho's forests.

I'd left Oregon that morning before swinging across a remote corner of Washington. Along the way, I inched ever closer to my professional line in the sand. I wouldn't arrive in Missoula, though, without facing the Heart of The Monster.

As I've previously recounted, my day began with deer at dawn in a campground on the shore of Wallowa Lake. After a breakfast in Joseph of polish sausage and eggs  drove North through Enterprise (disappointed not to have realized the night before that the Terminal Gravity brewery was there). I left Enterprise along Oregon Route 3, following the road up a slowly-rising plateau until I traveled above the western rim of Joseph Canyon. I entered Washington where the Lewiston Highway becomes state route 129, then decends into -- and rises again out of – the Grande Ronde River Valley on a tangle of twists and turns protected only by guardrails resembling white picket fences.

"Discovering" the land

[shashin type="photo" id="394" size="medium" columns="max" order="user" position="left"]Long before I descended again – this time approaching the Snake River at Asotin, just south of the twin cities of Clarkston and Lewiston – I learned these lands were not by any means as wild, as remote or as isolated as my first impression led me to believe. After Joseph, as “empty” as the land seemed, I started to learn something else that perhaps many of us don't realize when we approach the “wild.” This land is -- and has long been -- home to many generations of people, even if perhaps the relationships those people had with these surroundings were so different, so much more subtly integrated than our current society's.

That realization started to emerge about ten miles south of the Washington border, when I “discovered” Joseph Canyon. Having never seen the Grand Canyon and having reluctantly skipped Hell's Canyon, I was easily impressed by Joseph. Beyond the natural beauty and beyond the fascination I felt for its geology, though, another thought circulated: what was this vast and dramatic and beautiful place like when there wasn't a road above it, when tourists weren't stopping at overlooks to peer down into the valleys that used to be the winter home of an entire nation?

Such questions rattle through my head wherever I travel. Here in my own nation, on a landscape so many of us so readily dub "ours," they take on different meaning. It's easy for Americans to still perceive spaces like these that contrast so sharply with our cities and towns and farms as “wild” or “untamed” or “unspoiled” lands untouched by civilization. What came before is often unacknowledged, if not out of sight.

In college, I was a history major whose focus – if inadvertently so – was on the articulation and formation of national identities. Even so, I must admit to having little knowledge about the nations and communities that exist and existed within the land we describe as the United States of America. This is true even though I grew up in the heart of the Chumash world and no matter how many times in elementary school we were assigned to read The Island of the Blue Dolphins. Nevertheless, the Channel Islands I gazed at my whole life were the same ones so important to the Chumash. I've strolled countless times past the Albinger Archeological Museum and, of course, Mission San Buenaventura, both reminders of one sort or another of what came before, what we've wrought upon one another, and what's been buried by the passing decades. In many ways, though, the Chumash -- and even the Spanish who subdued them -- were abstract concepts in late Twentieth Century Southern California. The only time they really began to seem less so was after college, when I paid attention to longer and broader historic narratives, or when I worked on stories like this one I did for the about the impact of contemporary development projects on ancient Chumash sites.

Vague Knowledge

Of course, I've always known the vague superficial history of American exploitation, subjugation, extermination and marginalization of native communities, but I'd learned few details about specific histories and incidents. More straightforwardly put: I know little about Native Americans and their history aside from the cursory overview given in traditional California public school educations, and whatever knowledge I've occasionally picked up through other pursuits since.

Then, a year ago, when I moved from L.A. to Portland, I found myself fascinated by the history of the Modoc depicted at Lava Beds National Monument, a history I hadn't known, even though it occurred in my home state of California (albeit a corner of the state quite distant from where I was raised). It's likely I wouldn't have learned of it had I not been drawn to the monument purely by its geologic appeal.

It may seem naïve to carry a sense of wonder in my discovery of these topics when so much of this history is so problematic. So be it. I can't do anything to change that history, but I can welcome my broadened perspective upon it. I've been fascinated by what I have been able to learn, and by how my knowledge of tribal history has slowly grown as I've settled in the Northwest. Such lessons allow me to much more vividly understand the extent to which urbanization and settlement has extensively shifted our world.

Checking Eden off the List

[shashin type="photo" id="420" size="medium" columns="max" order="user" position="right"]My realization there above Joseph Canyon about the many thousands of people that must have crossed this landscape, a landscape I perceived as so untouched and so isolated, only served to make me feel more alone, especially as illness descended further upon me. My loneliness increased as the hours and miles stretched, and as I approached the Heart of the Monster, the site that represents the source of all creation to the Nez Perce.

Just ponder that for a second. The source of all creation. Many, many people trace all of humanity to this spot just south of U.S. Highway 12, a nation's sacred source tucked away in Eastern Idaho and now managed by the park service of another nation. The last remnant of a monster that, months later, would be dwarfed by enormous shipments of equipment meant to squeeze from the ground more of the substance that our nation now prizes so reverently.

I stopped. I looked. I listened to a recording of the tale of the coyote who tricked a monster in order to save all the other living things the monster had devoured. I learned how all the people and animals sprung forth from the defeated monster to populate the land.

Then the recording ended. I watched a mom take her daughter on a stroll, and I saw a car load of retirees stretch their legs in the nearby parking lot, and I took photos, and I enjoyed the sun on the skin of my aching body, and I returned to my own car.

I checked Eden off the list without saying a word.

On this trip, I traveled with the precise goal of connecting with others, joining potential colleagues, establishing professional connections and honing my reportorial skills. The closer I came to Missoula and the more I discovered along the way, though, the further I felt from anywhere. “Isolated” with my thoughts as the landscape unfolded beneath my feet, the more my mind wandered into these sorts of reflections and recollections.

Meanderings of thought

[shashin type="photo" id="421" size="medium" columns="max" order="user" position="left"]I admit that the story – and this entire series, delayed as it may be – has meandered from its path. Nevertheless, I'm also wrestling with how to respond honestly to my experiences, with what happened in my brain on the journey and whether it's self-indulgent to serve this soup of thought (it's a little too stagnant to call it a stream) to you, instead of a straightforward report of the who and the what I saw where and when. Which approach provides the real, honest reporting?

You'll notice in reading these recollections that I am extensively self-referential and that my thoughts are increasingly digressive. This isn't an accident, exactly. On this trip, especially at this point, passing through these locations, I barely encountered anyone else. There were few sources to develop. The encounters I did have were simply inappropriate to develop into deep connections, if at all. To do so may have been to force a story that wasn't there. This might be a reality of a solo road trip. You're so encased in your car and then, over time, in your head. As you're recollecting it hours or days or months later, doesn't it follow that your words will be uniquely shaped?

I'm confident in my abilities and experience as a writer, but I'm trying to do much more reporting, more actual reporting, and I'd like to have done so on this trip. It's pretty easy to write and to meander without a guaranteed paycheck. What I need to figure out is how to report without one, because I need to keep my journalistic skills as fresh as my writing, even when I'm not sustaining myself. Then I must figure out how to turn that writing, that reporting, that observation and reflection and analysis and curation into something that does sustain me.

I've long since encountered that professional line in the sand. Each day that passes, I wonder a bit more whether I ever really crossed it. Have I even properly acknowledged it? Did I skirt it? Did I place it further down the road?

Now, as my resume lingers on potential employers' desks or in their inboxes, as reporting piles high like scaffolding around as-yet-unfinished stories, as pitches bounce about the ether, and as I prepare for another, shorter journey (this time with a clear reporting objective in mind), do I need to address what I've learned about myself and my career on the other side of that line? Do I need to stop asking myself questions, and start asking them of others (my suspicion is a loud, resounding "yes")?

Do I understand whether I've encountered the monster, whether at 30 years old, after college and grad school and years as a reporter and editor and everything else I've built up, I've found the monster's heart, whether I've found a way inside, to confront it and to spring forth again from within?

Day two, part 1: Deer at dawn

[shashin type="photo" id="388" size="medium" columns="max" order="user" position="left"]See the initial story in this series

Before the second day of my trip from Portland to Missoula for the 2010 Society of Environmental Journalists conference I'd hoped to visit Hell's Canyon. That morning - if I could really call it that - I realized I didn't want to make the solo trip down a gravel road from Imnaha after a freeze, not the way I felt. Lonesomeness had crept in a little, too, and I didn't want to experience the gorge alone, knowing then that there was a traveling companion not there with whom I'd want to share the marvel. Anyhow, I didn't know exactly yet how much time I had to linger.

Still, this was my time on the road, my time made uniquely possible by a few key people. I didn't want to miss this world, knowing how remote this landscape was for me, and how rare my opportunities to visit might be. Though fatigued, it was important to me to let my spirit move me, even if it moved me slowly, even if it moved me differently than I'd expected or hoped.

First, the dawn. I can't remember a morning I've welcomed as much as that one. I watched the world take shape, connected by fog between the trees on the hill behind my camp site.  Though exhausted, I needed to stretch my legs, to soak in as much of the emerging daylight as I could, and summoned the energy to enter the space taking shape around me. I needed to draw some value, some strength, anything from that space.[pullquote]Tweets from the road: Good morning from joseph OR. Woke today at wallowa lake state park to rutting deer. Will write post when i get internet access. - Oct. 12[/pullquote]

It was little more than a typical state campground, albeit a heavily wooded one at the edge of a mountain valley.  Two campsites to my left, a couple stirred from their tent, pulling sweaters and oatmeal and orange juice from their Subaru. College kids giggled inside a big tent at another site. A bald man pulled a bike from the back of his RV across the way. Though not crowded, the campground was far more occupied than it felt the previous night, when I barely slept. Instead, I pulled all the layers I'd surrounded myself with to the passenger seat of my Mazda, where I sat with the seat warmer on for half an hour. Wearied by fire and ice fighting their way through my body, I had stopped caring about energy-savings or frugality or any rational concern. In the dark of night I ate string cheese and freshly-baked chocolate chip and ginger cookies that had been given to me at the outset of my trip, and I drew solace from their nourishment, especially after skipping dinner the night before while I looked for a place to stay and collapsed into my campsite.

To calm my mind, to distract myself, to think of anything but there, I'd wandered through 100 pages or so of Reif Larsen's The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet. (a bit “burdened by device” myself, but enjoyably so, happy for the escape from my nocturnal malaise). I took pleasure in noticing that the book began not far from where I was headed, and where I might end up after the SEJ conference. As I read of young T.S.'s fascination with the Berkeley Pit, near Butte, I lamented not having selected a conference tour of the Superfund site (though I remained excited for my own tour to Glacier National Park).

Before I headed out for a walk I picked up my journal, the one I'd written in the night before, still in the tent, still before giving up on the night, before succumbing to the cold. To this day, the pages beyond the entry are blank. Their potential having vanished as the breathing room around my brain filled and as my lungs clouded

Morning did return, though. With it came my breath, and at least a little enthusiasm. So I set out on my walk, planning first to stop at the bathroom. On my way I discovered a buck grazing on the frozen grass between me and the campground restroom. A few more deer grazed at other parts of the campground. I quickly realized whose land I was visiting.

[shashin type="photo" id="387,369,373,385" size="small" columns="2" order="user" position="left"]Continuing to the still quiet of Wallowa Lake I was welcomed by a sharp clatter rattling from the frost-covered shore. Four more, younger deer stood there, playing and locking their antlers together. Other noises also filled the silence: quacking ducks lining up to waddle into the water, a creek somewhere I couldn't see and the crunch of pebbles under the deer's feet as they pranced toward the parking lot from which I'd watched them.

I watched the deer investigate trash cans outside a shuttered boathouse for while, then returned to my site, packed up and drove back into town, pleased I'd come here, that even as the rest of the campground woke in a rustle of orange juice cartons and sewage hookups and GPS devices, I experienced, seemingly all to myself, this brief sliver of nature waking up to itself.

Roads traveled, stories unraveled

For the next week or so, each day I'll recount some element of my October trip to and from the 2010 Society of Environmental Journalists conference. I'll combine my recollection of what I saw, experienced or learned, tweets I made at the time, photographs and links to some of the cool things I learned. Check back each day for new reflections, tales and reports. At the end of my updates I'll post a link to read the story as one narrative (and post a complete photo album as well). Be prepared. This series will include a mix of storytelling styles -- don't expect straight journalism, or complete creativity. In fact, don't expect anything but a journey.

"The only way out is through," I thought, pulling my scarf tightly around my neck as I burrowed into my sleeping bag. Admittedly, I didn't realize when I mumbled this that I was (not quite precisely) quoting Robert Frost. For a week or so, for a variety of reasons, a dear friend and I had been throwing this phrase around. Never was it more true to me than this moment.

Likely resembling little more than a lump of a polypropylene undershirt, two sweaters, a down vest, a pair of long underwear, waterproof gloves, fleece socks and a knit hat, I burrowed deeper into my bag as temperatures outside my tent dropped below freezing. I'd already felt the tickles of a cold coming on before I arrived after dark to Wallowa Lake State Park. Did I really want to push getting sick before the SEJ conference after working so hard to get there?

I'd already paid $16 for the site, after all, a whopping $16. The closest motel was 5 miles back in Joseph and another $70. If I wanted to actually see the lake, I'd have to return once more the next morning.

No, I could do it. Adventurers did this and far, far more everyday, right ? Besides, I had a car with a heater, seat warmers and a reclining seat. I wasn't exactly isolated (really, it's pretty ridiculous I even thought the word "adventurer").

It's now a few days before Christmas and I'm packing for a holiday trip to my mother's house. I grab a dop kit and find some cold medicine inside. The discovery reminds me how long I've been taking to tell this story. Holding the medicine in my hand, I remember my trip's first day.

Sixty miles east of Portland, after a brief stop in Hood River for coffee and a bagel, I felt the first hint of a scratch in my throat. Ten miles later, my throat burned. As I progressed further eastward, my eyes watered. My face burned. Each mile closer to Missoula seemed to bring new aches. Pain coursed behind my eyes, but, no, I wasn't going to succumb. I would battle through. I was far too excited about the conference, about the people I'd meet and the places I'd go and the ideas I'd generate. As the week progressed and after I arrived at the conference, each day I did what I could to set the cold aside as late into the night as possible. Back where I was staying for the event, at the Hutchins Hostel, I'd return to the bottom of a bunk bed in a room I shared with other conference-goers and try, desperately – and unsuccessfully -- to muffle hacks and coughs, stringing sleepless night upon sleepless night throughout the length of an event that I'd been looking forward to for months.

Tweeting the road: Bagels, coffee, homemade cookies, i am well stocked for the road. Ps it is a glorious day in Hood River. - Oct. 11

Still holding the cold medicine as I walk to my suitcase to finish packing for my holiday trip, I see dark lines stretching across the United States. Rather, I notice lines across a map of the country tacked to a wall in my apartment.

Each line traces a route I've driven at some point in my life. The record tells a story as comprehensive and accurate as I can attempt. Much of my memory stretches across this map. In the nine years I've been tracking my journeys in this way, I've had to buy at least one new map, and I've done my best to stretch my recollection as far back into my youth and my memory as I can accurately recall.

The map only documents roads I've driven, or ridden along, and it's at such a scale that the nuances of my trips get lost. I've had to guess at routes taken during a few trips because they took place on stretches not charted by this map, or so long ago that I can't recall their exact path. Nevertheless, each time I return from a journey I look forward to tracing my trips on the map. Doing so is the only reason I keep pencils around my house.

More than two months after I've returned from one journey, though, I've yet to trace its path. I still haven't traced my trip from Portland to Missoula and back, and I can't quite express why not. Perhaps I don't feel like the trip's over, like I've truly returned. Perhaps I can't record it until I've described it, until I've wrapped the journey in words and pictures and recollections that I realize are fading with each day.

Some of you might not be interested in such ponderings.

“Get to the point,” you'll say. “Tell me about the conference. Tell me what you learned, what you saw along the way, what the latest news is. I only have so much time. Don't you know attention spans are ever so slight? Haven't you ever heard of an editor?"

Indeed I do, and I have. As I've noted elsewhere, as so many have noted before, though, to truly travel you can't simply move from Point A to Point B. You can't experience this world's multiplicity of dimensions through a straight line.

The truth is, of course, I did wait to write this down. I let the story fester. I let it fall away and apart. Like anyone might, I've been making excuses for months now for not chronicling my trip. My terrible cold on the road. Assignments due just upon my return. Job applications. Novel Writing. Story development. Other conferences to attend as a reporter. Holidays. I could think of any number of reasons why you're reading this now, today, this very second, and only now, but this is the moment, this is when these words take shape.

I've also, I'm coming to realize and admit, been utterly incapacitated for months by writer's block - really the worst I've known - despite having felt so inspired, so driven by the conference (and, despite having completed the rough draft of my first serious stab at fiction during NaNoWriMo, which, it should be said, was the only thing to really begin to loosen this writer's block).

But somewhere in the middle of the first sleepless night of my journey, in that jury rigged tent, as the cold descended -- both in the form of my illness and the weather -- I wrote clumsily, with gloved hands, in an irregularly kept journal, beginning with the following fragment: 10/11/2010

Sometimes I ponder the choices I make, or my difficulty making them. I end up here, in what promises to be a beautiful setting, but aching. I ache with the impact of pride, of love, of adventure.

The first day never quite goes right. Surprises for both the better and worse arise and you're left not quite certain how to process them.

I'm fighting a cold I refuse to catch, but hearing creeks splash from what seems like all sides. My tent is jury-rigged together – I'm missing a stake so I put a rock in the corner to hold one side down – but outside the stars pepper the sky in such a way that clichés actually serve them well.

Nobody knows where I am (how near or how far). Were I not ill, I'm not sure whether I'd really want them to.

Sneak preview! expect to learn more about grizzly bear behavior through absolutely adorable videos from a study in Glacier National Park)

A few thousand words on the road

I've been driving and fighting off a cold while traveling to the 2010 Society of Environmental Journalists Conference. Now I'm here and diving right into the event. For now here are a few thousand words -- in the form of a few dozen photos -- describing what I saw. Be sure to click past the jump for more.

[shashin type="photo" id="608,609,610,611,612,613" size="medium" columns="2" order="user" position="center"]

[shashin type="photo" id="614,615,616,617,618,619,620,621,622,623,624,625,626,627,628,629,631,632,633,634,635,636,637,638,639,640,641,642,643,644,645,646" size="medium" columns="2" order="user" position="center"]

Sights seen while not writing

As I noted last week, I don't just write: [shashin type="photo" id="279,867,863,865,976,963,941,848" size="medium" columns="2" order="user" position="center"]

Writing (and driving) gone wild

The Umpqua River Valley as seen from Oregon Highway 38 in August, 2004. Photo by Bill Lascher.

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Transitory nature | What you may read | Join the journey

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Today I leave Los Angeles for Portland, Oregon.

As I do, I look forward to taking an as-yet undetermined path to my new home hundreds of miles north.

I don't know how exactly I'll get to Portland, though I've set a few ground rules. I won't set a firm date to get there. Though the trip could easily take as little as a day and a half, I don't want to constrain myself to any schedule, lest I miss the world I pass through (you can help me get there, too). I may backtrack. I may make detours. I may decide to linger in one spot staring at the sky for hours. I may rush. I may wander.

Which brings me to rule #2, perhaps the most exciting and most questionable part of my plans. To best experience the journey I plan to completely avoid freeways and even divided highways. Getting to Oregon from Southern California in January makes this a rather daunting task, particularly because I also plan to steer clear of the coast. As stunning as the coast is, I've seen much of it and hunger for a new path, at least this time around.

Instead, after a brief visit to Ventura, I might start crossing the mountains of the Los Padres Forest along Highway 33 or perhaps head east to U.S. 395, the Eastern Sierras, and a detour through Nevada. It's likely I'll have to ditch certain highways for local roads as some stretches, like the 33 in Ventura, become highways. Perhaps I'll find myself crisscrossing farmland on country roads in the San Joaquin Valley. Most certainly I'll travel along dozens of unknown roads upon which I've yet to decide. I may very likely encounter snowy passes, and, though I have chains, I don't intend to be stupid and may have to make a number of adjustments to the paths I set (I won't, however, bring a GPS because I treasure my sense of direction and my ability to read a map).

On the other hand, I'm most likely to pass through a California and an Oregon oft-ignored. I'm free to turn elsewhere if an obstacle proves more than I'd like to surmount, if I simply tire of where I am, or if I'm curious if what's down that side road, and I'm free to experience the landscape I see along the way as a result of those decisions. I'm also leaving myself free to change the parameters of this journey, though I don't expect to too drastically.

I have no set plans for what I intend to write or how frequently I'll do so (and I may be constrained by wi-fi options or simply too caught up in adventuring at certain points along the way), but I imagine some account of what I see, where I am, where I am not, and who I meet will pass upon this screen.

Transitory nature

After reading about my plans for a road trip, some of you might question my commitment to shifting society away from its focus on single-passenger automobiles toward more sustainable, rationally planned transportation strategies. Yes, I do own a car and yes, I do enjoy driving it, though I never have qualms leaving it behind to take transit, ride a bike, or just walk. I can say that I plan to determine how to offset the carbon footprint of my journey once I have a good sense of its reach (including the distance traveled, the food I consume, and an estimate of the resources I use to write and post about my trip). What you make of my intentions beyond that is your business.

What I will say is that there are different ways to experience the automobile, and to experience the landscape through which it can take a person.

Despite my passion for transit — and a history of misadventures on solo road trips — I'm thrilled about this journey. Indeed, I have come to realize it's quite difficult to really discern a “misadventure” from simply an adventure. Like life, it's all interpretation. Too much of this world focuses on perceived destinations, and not the road we travel to reach those destinations.

That statement has been made so many times in so many ways. What I might add is that we are constantly in motion, even when we are “home.” As hard as we struggle for stillness, as passionately as we seek peace, we are in motion. Fulfillment might be more than freedom from desire, it might require accepting our transitory nature. Perhaps more than anything, I believe in the fluidity of life, and find transition to be the most constant force we face.

What you may read

This weekend, after encountering yet another bevy of predictions about exciting new technologies, prognostications about the evolution of journalism and fretting over worrisome new trends in the news business, I realized just how pointless it is to dissect the minute details of the future of media. Afterward, I made a statement I've already shared publicly and think is relevant to my motivation for this journey:

“Let's go out there and tell the stories we see, tell them well, and stop worrying about who's reading them and what they're worth.”

I'm taking this journey in part because I want to tell a story of the road. You may read it. You may not. Though I welcome donations, I don't expect it, and definitely will not put a price on my writing. More importantly, I know my writing and my ability to record what I see would suffer if I did.

What you read here, and this adventure itself, are products of imagination, not crowd-sourcing. Is there an audience for it? Who cares? Or rather, the audience is this one now, the one reading these words, whether the reading occurs today, two months from now or decades hence. This is simply an effort to describe one sliver of the world as filtered through my eyes, not by metrics and news budgets or obsessing over what I think my readers want to see. Though I definitely do not know, I think my readers, whoever and whenever they might be, want to see what they don't know they'll see, what they won't expect, just as on the road I hope to see what I don't know I'll see and what I don't expect.

I am not a backpack journalist. I am not part of a media industry in upheaval, nor a media innovator. I am not a technophile, nor a Luddite. I will not constrain myself by trying to pinpoint ways to present my narrative or funding channels to tap. I am simply an observer willing to use whatever tools are handy to tell a story and to uncover those parts of the story that might matter, but might not easily be seen at the surface.

Join the journey

If you feel you'd like to see what I come up with, perhaps you'd like to throw some change my way, or perhaps you'd like to avoid doing so, or, perhaps, you'd like to give me some cash and don't want to see what I come up with. If you do want to offer money, you can safely drop it in my PayPal account by clicking here or on the button in this site's right-hand column.

I’m not going to ask for a specific amount of money, and I don't only welcome money, as you'll see below. I’m not going to define what you'll see in return for your support. I’m not going to outline how much I expect to write or how often. I’m not using a formal service to raise money, just asking whether you might want to buy me a gallon of gas, some coffee, a bite to eat or, heck, a night's lodging. I’m not following any rules or any standard practices for fund-raising, just as I'm not following any set route to my destination.

Should you so choose, please fuel my journey. Fuel my writing. Fill my tank. Fill my belly. Fill my cup. Just as my route and my writing won’t be restricted by artificial constraints and deadlines, your choice to support my efforts or not won’t have constraints. You can offer $100, $1, 50 cents or nothing at all.

If you want to support me in another manner, perhaps consider offsetting some of my carbon impact (though, like I said, I won't know its extent until after this trip) or maybe share this with a friendnor someone else who might want to read it or see the photos or video I take, if I happen to take photos or video.

Or do something creative of your own. Take an adventure in the manner best suited you and maybe share a tale of it with me. Or avoid adventure. Or don't share your plans with me and revel in your privacy. Write your own piece about a totally different topic or don't write anything. Make dinner for your best friend. Play.

I won’t mind if you offer nothing. If I raise nothing more than the cost of a cup of gas station coffee I’ll still be pleased, as I’ll still have had that opportunity for the journey. So please, please don’t feel bad if you can’t afford to support me, or if you simply don’t want to (particularly those family and friends who have been so extremely generous and helpful to me lately).

Perhaps asking strapped friends, family and strangers to drop some change in my jar or take their own adventures instead is a bit insane without any concrete commitments and with such murky goals. But there’s no certainty to the road and, more importantly, writing thrives in the wild. Perhaps we can try to set it free here.

Koreatown's sign language

This afternoon I ran an errand a couple Purple line stops away. It was such a beautiful day that instead of taking the subway I decided to meander home on foot. Fortunately, before I left the house I thought to grab my camera. I took the opportunity to look around a bit and capture some of my favorite signage and guerrila art in Koreatown. Note Kim Jong-Il's appearances. Guess at which point my sense of humor turned a little juvenile. Also, pay close attention to the heart on the banner outside Mr. Pizza Factory, where, apparently the choices among the pies include beef, fish, chicken and "love for women." Click on the arrows or individual thumbnails for a peek at what I saw.

Mr. Pizza Poster in Koreatown

A vinyl sign on a building advertises the restaurant Mr. Pizza in Los Angeles’s Koreatown neighborhood. It has pictures of fish, chicken, and beef pizzas and text that reads “When pizza met Taco. Amigo Pizza Special Event.” A red heart in the corner has more text that reads “Love for women” in white lettering. The Mr. Pizza logo is in the upper right corner with the name written in red letters and a picture of a white hand flipping a brown pizza dough.

Young Dong Restaurant Sign in Koreatown

A sign in the foreground of this image features text in English and Korean. The English, written in white against a blue background, reads “Young Dong Restaurant” and fill a small strip at the sign’s top. Large white Korean characters make up most of the rest of the sign and are printed against blue yellow and red stripes. The sign appears in front of a large blank wall of a tall building viewed at an angle that makes the building appear somewhat phallic.

Kim Jong-Il

Ten identical stenciled images of North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il are printed in dark gray alongside one another on a lighter gray sidewalk, with the red paint of the sidewalk’s curb just at the edge of the image. Most of the images are parallel and aligned vertically in pairs, but the third and fourth pairs are turned 90 degrees rightward from the rest.

Korea Thumbs Up

A close up of a drawing from a sign in Los Angeles’s Koreatown neighborhood. The drawing features a man with a red shirt that reads “Korea” in white letters across the chest and green pants with a black belt. The man’s clothes are too small for his large belly, which is white in color and exposed. He gives a thumbs-up gesture with his left hand and holds a large spoon almost as tall as his body in his right. A soccer ball rests next to his foot.

Jr. Market Liquor in Koreatown

A painted awning of a liquor store and bar in Los Angele’s Koreatown neighborhood features images of Korean personalities, politicians, and the South Korean flag at its center, as well as extensive Korean lettering. In the middle of the right third of the image is a sign that reads Jr. Market in small red letters on a yellow background and Liquor in large white letters on a red background, with an unlit arrow comprised of lightbulbs pointing downward at the far right side. A clear blue sky fills the upper half of the image.