Back in the Mountains - Mt Hood

The first thing I did after waking up in the Portland airport hotel was open the window blinds and find Mt Hood. It took only a few seconds even though it was over fifty miles south and partially obscured by clouds. Even from within the hermetically sealed (even though the window did open, a rarity in hotels, the room was across the street from the airport runway, we kept it closed.) hotel room I could feel the mountain.

The second thing we did (after getting S.D. up and moving and getting breakfast) was rent a car and start driving south on RT 26, straight to Mt Hood.

The third thing we did, only about an hour later, was hike  up the Flag Mountain Trail to an overlook with great views of Mt Hood. (Still over 15 miles away). By then the clouds had all cleared and sun's reflection off the snow was almost blinding. But standing in the cool, dripping wet of a Pacific rain forest mountain top you were still drawn to the cold, commanding presence of that Mountain.

 Back home in the North East, the Mountains are somewhere you go. You go to either Northern New Hampshire, Vermont or Maine. And when you're there, it's all mountains. In the West however, the mountains aren't so much a somewhere, as a something. They are something that is always present. They may be one hundred miles off, or you may be on the flank of one but there is always a mountain. Part of the difference has to do with the size of the Western vs the Eastern mountains. If Mt. Washington was 11,240 ft high like Mt. Hood, instead of 6,288, you just might be able to see it from Boston. Part of it has to do with the history of the Western Mountains. Most of them are relatively recent volcanoes rising up from the edge of a fault line. Generally they stand pretty much alone and above the mountains around them, presiding over plains on at least one side if not two or three, rather than reaching up from within crowds of other mountains.

And the effect of that is that is that often, wherever you are in Oregon, the mountains are there too. You might be in the city, on the ridge of a small rain forest peak, or down in the high mountain desert, but wherever you are, you can see, and feel, something big nearby, something that is a mountain.