We drove to the Portland, Oregon area yesterday. There was a time, decades ago, when we came to Portland on a regular basis. When we lived in Idaho, Portland was the location of the office of our Church Conference. In those days, my sister lived in Portland, our children were young, and we would load them in the car and head west. My sister lived in the Portland area at different times in her life. It is where her children were born and raised. In the days before GPS, I got pretty good at navigating around Portland with a map and my memory. There is much that has remained the same and I have a general sense of direction when I’m driving around the area, but there is a lot that has changed over the years. There are areas that once were farmland than now are housing developments. There are busy four lane highways where rural streets once were the way to navigate. The city has a compact and dramatic downtown with tall buildings and a spaghetti bowl of highway bridges and interchanges.

For years, Portland was the destination of our vacations and countless business trips. Portland is inland from the coast, bounded by the Columbia River on the North and the Willamette River which cuts through the east side of the city.

This time, we approached Portland from the north, instead of from the East. Crossing the Columbia from Washington to Oregon, we could see the city emerging. My sister has recently moved back to the Portland area and is just settling into her new home. Part of the reason for our trip is to help her move some of her possessions. We’ll be driving out to Montana to pick up some of her things.

It is interesting to me how memories can be layered in a place. There was a time when I had a lot of friends in Portland. I knew the other ministers of our Conference, I knew the youth from church camp and from youth retreats. A few of my friends remain in the area. We are all a lot oder now. Those youth are now in their late forties and early fifties. Time passes and things change. The decade we served in the Central Pacific Conference is just one of the layers, however.

I remember driving into Portland in our 1978 Ford Pinto. The car did not have air conditioning, and the drive across Eastern Washington and down to the Columbia gorge had been hot. Cooler air greeted us in the gorge and Portland was an amazing city to us. Our urban experience at the time was pretty much limited to the four years we had lived in Chicago, which is a very different kind of city. This was before we had children, and my sister was working as an engineer in a western suburb. We drove out to the coast on that trip, visiting the Tillamook Cheese Factory on the way. I was amazed that we could drive out onto the beach in our cars. I took my first glides in a hang glider on that trip. It was the first a a whole lot of trips.

When we moved to Idaho from North Dakota, I made a silly error the first time we came to Portland for a Conference meeting. In North Dakota, we lived in the Mountain Time Zone and our Conference Office was in the Central Time Zone. We had to compensate for the time zone change when attending meetings. Everything in Bismarck happened an hour earlier than in Hettinger. When we moved to Idaho we were still in the Mountain Time Zone, and our Conference Office was in Pacific Time Zone. We didn’t have cell phones or watches that automatically set their time to the current local time. I changed my watch in the wrong direction, absently thinking of how I would have changed it in North Dakota. I showed up two hours early for a meeting. That was probably better than showing up two hours late.

I drove a lot of rental vans into the Portland area over the years we lived in Idaho. It seemed that I was always transporting youth to Portland for one event or another. Each fall our conference had a youth leadership event that was usually held in the Portland area. One summer I drove a van load of youth to Portland. After an overnight with host families from area churches, we went to the airport and flew to Hawaii for a regional youth event. One of the youth in my delegation took his first ride on an airplane for that trip. I still keep in touch with him. His children are now older than he was when we took that trip.

Memory upon memory, layer upon layer. There are hundreds of other stories that come to my mind when I think of Portland.

In the afternoon yesterday, I had time to go on a brief adventure with my nephew. He came over to his mother’s place to see us and we took a walk through the woods and through the brambles to get down to the river where we took a canoe out of the water and put it onto the dock. I have watched him grow up and it is a joy to see him as an adult.

Last night we were guests at the home of my niece. She and her husband have a daughter, about nine months old. Their daughter is my sister’s only grandchild. They have a lovely home and it was our first visit there. Children become adults with children of their own. It is amazing to witness the change. It is amazing to me to listen to their stories. They have learned to make their way in this place and have forged a life and a family that goes in directions vastly different from my experiences. For them, Portland is home. Both have lived in this area all of their lives. Both have traveled extensively and know a lot of the world and are confident in their choice of this area as their home.

The lure of children, and of that delightful granddaughter, are the primary reasons my sister is returning to Portland to live. I understand this decision well. It is what brought us to our new home. The move is worth all of the work and effort. May she find the joy we have discovered in this city layered with memories.