Land of the Midnight Sun

Life is a funny, wicked little imp sometimes. Or maybe that is fate.  Regardless, it has us laughing, crying, excited and anxious at the moment.  We are a bit of a mess, and the emotions run high, rolling in waves. It is manic and disorderly, and I keep imagining us holding hands and jumping. That feeling that comes of jumping from cliffs into deep pools of water--that is what I have felt for a few days now. We are, again, at the point that brought about this blog and will shift its story once more. We are leaving Portland for bigger lands, and it feels appropriate that we begin a new month on this news.

We came back from Colorado in December and realized how much we love the PacNW. We decided at that point that we were going to start house hunting, to really become a part of Portland.  And then, a funny thing began to happen over these last few months. There is a strange Portlandia effect occurring, and Portland is now a curious commercialization of its own brand. "Keep Portland Weird" means that Portland has actually become a diffused mecca for hipster refugees or a "holiday in Goa"/summer camp experience for kids from the Midwest looking for a wild romp before returning home for marriage and children. It is no longer truly edgy; it's just another place where people can be weird, but not really themselves. Perhaps caricatures of weird is more appropriate. It's exhausting and claustrophobic in what feels sudden but probably isn't, if I am honest with myself. Portland has slowly been cannibalizing itself, tearing down historical buildings for apartments and condos, franchising its very Portland establishments, and pricing out and pushing out those who were here.  Portland, for us, is no longer "home".

And this move...it's scary.  It's exciting but terrifying because we're leaving the lower 48. We will be packing up over the next few months and making our way up the AlCan Highway from Portland to Wasilla, Alaska to begin a new chapter, one that is wilder, bigger, and a bit more on the edge. Alaska's motto feels especially appropriate, as I am sure it did for others before: North to the Future.