Toes of the Mountains

4110

The course of Oregon State Highway 213, a road which technically begins at PDX and goes to Salem, dances along what I've come to think of as the Cascade Piedmont.

Anyone reading this probably understands that the word piedmont, literally translated, means 'foot of the mountains'. There's a region in the deep South that they call 'piedmont', the fall line where streams in Dixie emerge from the foothills of the Appalachians and spread out across the plains on their way to the Atlantic Ocean.

 The Cascade Piedmont I am terribly fond of is nowhere near as extensive but I think just as remarkable.

 

Highway 213 dances in and out of the toes of the Piedmont quite nimbly. Much of the time, as you close on and go south of Molalla in the direction of Silverton, it's obvious ... to your left, the land is notably hilly, on the right it flattens out and gives great views of wide and deep farmlands stretch to the distance-diminished Coast Range thirty or forty miles west.

And when it comes to a hill, it skirts around its middle.

Despite the fact I've called Portland home for more years in my life than anywhere else, I still feel a strong connection to this ground, this particular soil. It's emotional, but real; I was born along the Cascade Piedmont, and I have a father and a brother who are buried in its ground. 

Much the way a young duck is said to imprint on the first face it sees as a parent, I must have done same with this ground.

Nothing like it anywhere else. I guarantee this.