Old Town

It is raining in Portland. There are lots of things things Portland has going for it and some not so great. I know some people don't like the clouds, rain, and such but that doesn't really bother me. There seems to be a surprisingly large homeless population. I wonder why? There were two beggars rotating and using the same sign outside the coffee shop yesterday. Just a shift change I suppose.

There was something that struck me when we flew in and that was how developed the land is - all under plow or with streets and buildings it seemed.

Lewis and Clark made their expedition between 1803 to 1806. By 1850, Portland was a pretty good sized town. By the late 1800' s, the railroads had tamed the West and the American Indians were all on reservations. Within a few more years a lot of the rivers had been dammed and a substantial amount of the forest logged. The entire area had been wilderness and now only remnants remain.

Two hundred years later it is all drastically different. I have always thought that change has accelerated in my lifetime but I am not so sure. At least you didn't see that much of a change to the landscape when the semiconductor was invented or the internet was invented (not by Al Gore as sometimes thought). To take a place from wilderness to tamed in 100 years is pretty dramatic. One hundred years doesn't seem as long anymore since I have lived more than 50 myself. I wish they had left a little more of it pristine.

I think I wrote once that the rain forest seems to go on forever in PNG. It must have seemed the same to the pioneers.