Photo by Author, Altered by Gemini AI
I live in a suburb of Portland, Oregon. When I leave the suburbs and venture out into the surrounding countryside, I have often observed that people who live in the country are highly likely to own recreational vehicles that have bathrooms and plug into power sources with giant plugs. They own them, I surmise, so that they can pack up their belongings from their country homes and drive somewhere to look at different country.
I considered myself better than those people.
I’m not.
I live in a rainforest. It is a cold rainforest covered in fir trees, but a rainforest nevertheless. My backyard sits on a stream, which at night and sometimes in the day is a highway for raccoons, possums, rabbits, squirrels, coyotes, hawks, owls, and insects of every shape and size. In the nearby Columbia Gorge, I can visit over ninety waterfalls. To stay warm and active in this environment, we Portlanders drink a lot of coffee. Local zoning codes require the building of a coffee shop every 200 yards in all commercial districts.
In the winter here, it is cold, gray, and wet. That is when my wife and I and four other couples we have known for years head to…