Now Is All You Have

Never Done: Springwater Corridor
Tshuve: Amy, Carol, Judi, Molly, Howard

In 1903, John Charles Olmsted, who designed Central Park, made a report to the Portland Park Board in which he wrote, "A connected system of parks and pathways is manifestly far more useful and complete than a series of isolated parks." In 1990, the same year I moved to Portland, the city acquired portions of out-of-use rail lines, and over the years acquired more rails and other small connecting bits, and in 1996 opened small segments of what is now called the 40-Mile Loop to the public. The Springwater Corridor is major Southeast part of this big loop, that crisscrosses Johnson Creek, and passes over industrial areas, and weaves through fields, and eventually connects to other trails that take you all the way to downtown Portland.

Not only had I never done this, I had never even heard of it, even though it is right up my alley. I love to walk, run, or ride my bike away from traffic. I love the idea of conserving and connecting land for public use. My father was involved for years with the Harvard Conservation Trust, which over the years has acquired and protected over 700 acres of land in my home town. When Josh and I visited Anna-Karin in Lund, Sweden this summer, we hopped on our bikes whenever we wanted to go somewhere, and rode on a spectacular, interconnected system of bike paths to get anywhere we wanted to go. But not bike paths like we have in most US cities, where you have to suck fumes and dodge cars and stop at lights, but bike paths like the Springwater Corridor -- 10 feet wide, paved, off the road, wending through trees and fields, crossing roads safely and well-marked.

We walked from Carol's house in Brentwood Darlington to Sellwood, about 4 miles, and saw the rushing, rushing Johnson Creek. We saw beaver dams and birds, and more than ever before, I felt like Portland was part of the rural Oregon -- its pre-development history poking through its present, and co-existing here where the creek rushes through people's back yards, and blackberry brambles line their unpaved roads. You get a little of that bramble and pothole in my old neighborhood in Northeast, but without the rushing creek, which I found quite thrilling in an urban residential setting.

As we passed over Milwaukie Boulevard, we looked down and saw an old boxcar that someone had painted with the words Now Is All You Have, with a web address (www.niayh.com) in the upper corner. I took it as a message to help me with my concerns about my limited time to spend time with everyone I would like to. Not so much in that way we do when we say to ourselves that we could get hit by a bus tomorrow, but more a reminder that every moment is Now (unless it's Then) and that the best thing we can do is to pay full attention to it. I tend to spend too much time worrying about what is coming next and not enough time fully enjoying the now. I think it comes from having to look over my shoulder to see if something bad was coming my way, which I had to do when I was little. Even though most of my young days were just as you would hope for a child, some of them were seriously not, and I never really learned to fully relax into the Now, without also worrying about the past and future Then. In my years of Buddhist meditation, my mind never fully calmed down to the now, because I found that sitting for all that time, with nothing very interesting going on in the Now, all my mind had was to go backwards or forwards. But coming across a boxcar reminder while walking on a quiet urban trail in the cold rain with an old friend was actually a helpful reminder which I carried with me through the rest of my day, except when I totally forgot, and didn't. But the great thing about Now is that it is extremely forgiving, and offers an infinite number of opportunities to rejoin it every day.