I wanted to write little snapshots of daily life in Portland that mixed the history and nature of this place with some of what it's felt like to live here during the past couple months. A lot of the profane mixing with the sacred, so to speak. I first started writing some of this down because I felt struck by how the opening of spring coincided so perfectly with the virus and the lockdowns. Here we were in those few precious weeks of open-window weather and we got at this latitude, and no one was supposed to go outside.

With special thanks to Judson Kovasckitz.