Just after 9 a.m. last Tuesday, my friend from Bend Climbing Club and I picked up an empty 10-foot Uhaul truck with an ambitious mission to drive the three-and-half hours from Bend to Portland, Ore., and back—in one day. Because of my broken leg, she graciously offered to do all of the driving.
We oohed and ahhed at every one of the eight mountains that came into view as we drove along Highway 20 toward our first stop in Sisters, Ore., interrupting our own conversation to share ideas for backpacking, climbing, and hiking as much of the Central Cascade mountain range as possible this spring and summer. One of the main reasons we are both based in Central Oregon.
After stopping to pick up a new queen bedframe I bought on Facebook Marketplace and to get a tea and latte at Sisters Coffee, we drove along Highway 20 through the still snowy mountains, over the Santiam Pass, and up I-5 to Portland to meet the professional movers at my storage unit.
As we crested the top of the I-5 Marquam Bridge over the Willamette River, we saw my favorite 360° view of Portland’s petite cityscape beneath a bright blue sky. I felt that love-at-first-sight rush. What a pretty city!
That same warm fuzzy mixture of awe, gratitude, and relief that I had felt coming home from my worldly adventures all my life. “How lucky was I to love my hometown!” I always thought to myself and sometimes squealed out loud if Mount Hood was also visible to the east.
According to a 2023 study by Lending Tree, over half of Americans ages 18 to 42 live where they grew up. And 43 percent don’t. It’s not just my generation of Millenials who don’t want to (or can’t) live where they grew up, but so many in recent generations—including my Baby Boomer parents who transplanted from their hometown outside Boston in the early 1970s. But I did.
We exited I-5 at the 33rd Street off-ramp—a quarter-mile to the left was my high school and a half-mile to the right was my childhood home. We took three rights until we circled back to the storage facility tucked beside the freeway and next door to a Fred Meyer grocery chain I remember being built in the 1990s on the former site of the Hyster forklift manufacturing plant that originally brought my parents to Portland for my Dad’s first engineering job.
In just over an hour, the professional movers loaded up the Uhaul with my mattress, desk, armchairs, bookcase, bike, art, books, and 20+ plastic totes like a high-scoring game of Tetris®, and we headed a few blocks down 28th Street to meet my Dad for a quick coffee and lunch at Crema, of course. My coffee shop/office of choice since 2006.
Literally driving down memory lane.
I knew every block, every corner, by heart.
The movie theater my siblings and I walked to as kids, the Starbucks that started gentrifying the neighborhood in the early 1990s, my first apartment, my first yoga studio, my favorite hairstylist. I knew what every building had been for its past few iterations and had memories from most of them.
Not only good memories like discovering Butterscotch—the used leather armchair in the antique shop that became the epitome of my first Buy Nothing year—but bad memories like nearly dying at the intersection of the movie theater and Starbucks later that year.
During lunch, we sat at the picnic tables outside Crema. While my Dad chatted with my friend from Bend and a high school friend who stopped by with his new baby, I was a bit high on nostalgia.
Reliving the past, the known, the familiar was as intoxicating as the scent of the cherry blossoms blowing by in the breeze or the warmth of the sun on my face on this perfect spring day in the present.
Once we drove through my idyllic childhood neighborhood back to the freeway—the yards bursting with yellow daffodils and white tulips, the lush green trees already in bloom—and took the 39th Street on-ramp to I-84 toward Mount Hood, my heart hurt.
This wasn’t the first time that I’d left Portland, but it felt like my last time.
When I originally left in 2000 for college in Boston, then left again in 2002 for college in Salem, Ore. before going back to Boston after college in 2004. But, returning to Portland in 2005 I thought it was for good. So, when I headed to New York in 2022 to try a seasonal work opportunity, my mind thought there was a good chance I’d resettle in or near Portland. But, when I came home for the holidays, my heart instantly knew.
So, I left for Central Oregon, but my P.O. Box and storage unit still remained in Portland.
As we drove back to Bend with all of my belongings, it all started to sink in. No longer living with that connection to my past, no longer enjoying those favorite places and especially, all those favorite people.
Even though I don’t belong there anymore, so many of my loved ones still do. I know that I won’t see them very often and when I do it will be brief visits—no longer able to go for a run in the park or grab an impromptu coffee or bump into each other at the grocery store, attend a birthday party or come over for dinner and help put the kids to bed.
No longer able to watch my friends’ kids, my nephew, and my nieces grow. Or watch my friends, family, and communities grow, accompanying all of them in their lives’ highs and lows. That’s the part that I don’t want to leave and feels involuntary. But I must.
That’s part of moving on.
The brisk two-hour stop in Portland before driving back to Central Oregon felt like tearing off the bandaid after slowly moving on from Portland throughout the past two and half years. Now, with the P.O. Box closed and everything out of storage, it really felt like I didn’t live there anymore.
I knew this heartbreaking feeling. Sweet with a bitter aftertaste. Bittersweet. Remembering all the best parts but knowing it doesn’t fit anymore.
Like breaking up with a first love.
Halfway up the road over Mount Hood we approached Silent Rock and quickly stopped talking while I said a prayer in observance of a local superstition.
A moment of silence.
Like one does to grieve what was and make space for what’s to come.
Back in Bend just before sunset, there were many more helping hands from our Climbing Club and REI waiting outside the duplex who swiftly unloaded the Uhaul and built my new bed in less than 30 minutes. We returned the Uhaul right on schedule by 9 p.m. and triumphantly fulfilled the day’s ambitious mission.
See photos of the moving on adventure on Instagram.
Too exhausted to unpack bedding, I stayed one more night in employee housing at the Campfire Hotel and finished moving the last carload the following day. On the way from the hotel to the duplex, I stopped at one of my longtime favorites, Sparrow Bakery, for their mouthwatering sugary, cardamom and bergamot-speckled signature morning bun called the Ocean Roll that always tastes like a “Welcome to Bend.”
I’ve barely started to explore the new Mirror Pond neighborhood, but I know there’s a great coffee shop, healthy restaurants, breakfast spot, brewery, my favorite yoga studio, and the Deschutes River all within walking distance. Plus, REI and my new job are within biking distance.
Close to all the charming small-town parts of “Old Bend” but away from the urban sprawl.
Exactly where I wanted to be here.
May you keep moving onward this week.
Love,
Jules