Things To Do In Portland When You’re Not Dead
Portland, Oregon

A man in a scarecrow hat just handed me a bag filled with five different kinds of apples. “I was supposed to give them away in a trivia contest but I ran out of questions.”

I gratefully accept the bow-tied parcel of fruit and he moves on to the next table.

I’m not sitting in front of a country fair or a cafe. I am sitting outside of “Natures” a large, organic supermarket in Portland’s Northeast district. Like most supermarkets, it is nestled in a strip mall along with a Starbucks and a chain video store. But here, the similarities end.

All around me Portlanders sit chatting over coffee, talking to their friends, their neighbors, to strangers they have just met. The supermarket courtyard is a community meeting spot replete with little dining tables and chairs, filled with urbanites who still remember to notice one another. A bluegrass band stands at the entrance to the large market, yodeling and finger-picking to our hearts’ content.

Nearby there is the delicious, crackling smell of grilling meat from a pavilion set up to raise money for a children’s playground. Across the way a woman with generous eyes sits by a table covered in brochures and little blue Earth beanbags. She sits quietly, enjoying the music. She doesn’t heckle or tout, leaving it up to the passersby to stop and examine her environmental message.

From behind her I hear laughter. A perfect, towheaded child appears careening around the well-spaced lunch tables, clapping and squealing. His young mother – her hair dyed three shades of outrageous red – gives chase, then catches him. Her embrace is like a sunburst.

Fall leaves the colour of antique gold scrape across the pavement in a light breeze. The skies above are daubed grey-blue with watercolour clouds. Portlanders ebb and flow and chat as the hours pass. And the bluegrass band plays on…

This too is America. We shouldn’t forget that.