Urban Hiking

I am often given to certain walks of fancy. That is to say, I walk when I could easily ride. This is not so much about the exercise as it is that I love to walk. I find the very activity to be fun. A liter of water and my iPod and I'll walk for hours.

I have to admit, under certain circumstances, the novelty can wear a trifle thin.

Take, for example, my latest adventure: starting at SE 35th & Belmont (outside of Zupan's), I had to walk home. This is a distance of roughly four miles. It starts out very pleasant, the Belmont area is abuzz with hipsters leaning out of tavern doors, dark-haired girls with stars on their slender wrists and ankles riding Schwinn Cruisers older than they are. Walking down Morrison in the blocks prior to the cemetery gives one the impression of being very far away, almost like a neighborhood in Eugene; indeed, the river is still miles off.

The low twenties and teens on Morrison are unremarkable and even slightly unpleasant, except for one point: it is downhill travel. It would be excellent for coasting on a bicycle, but is just as nice walking, as you can take in the whole tableau of the city rising in the distance, having previously been somewhat obscured by the slightly hilly nature of that part of East Portland you have just traversed.

But such joys are notoriously fleeting, as you are soon presented with the daunting task of crossing the mighty Willamette. You have several options:

1. Take the Morrison Bridge
2. Take the Hawthorne Bridge
3. Hire an Indian to help you cross

I opted to take the Hawthorne bridge, and so I had some more walking to do, sidewise. Down near the Burger King on SE Hawthorne and Grand, I met a very unhelpful man. I had somehow missed the pedestrian access point to the bridge, and I asked him if he knew where it was. He barely managed to say that he didn't.

Don't fret. I found it. And boy-oh-boy, was I ever rewarded for my troubles. It was about 2300, and so there was neither any pedestrian traffic, nor many automobiles about. Had it been otherwise it certainly would not have spoiled the experience, but being a solitary creature on that great ferrolith is certainly something to experience.

From the time you leave the ground on Grand to the time you alight down on Front, the crossing seems to comprise about a third of your total journey. The twisting onramp to the bridge is fascinating because it seems you are going to corkscrew endlessly to the spires of the pre-Park Block skyscrapers. You pass over impossibly large sections of open lots, industrial yards and marine facilities. But most importantly, you watch the City Proper appear over the lapping of Cascadia's loveliest river. If I might make a very serious recommendation: now is the time to switch your iPod to loop-play of Björk's 'Bachelorette'. This is critical.

The final steps over the oldest vertical-lift bridge in the Former United States are, in a word, unsettling. There's something very insubstantial about the thin metal plating covering the lift section, made all the worse by the thunderous noise of my boots striking it (loud enough to be heard over the dulcet, max-volume strains of the girl from Iceland).

Once over the river, my narrative ends. It is too busy to be described in such low resolution as I have been presenting here. I could spend a thousand words on Thompson's Elk alone. And I will, to be sure, as it has become one of my new favorite things in Portland, as much an icon of Portlandness to me as is the Volvo sign on Burnside.

Sadly I neglected to keep time on my journey, but some four miles later I arrived home invigorated and not without some pangs in my arches.

Think of how much the bus robs you of!