Oregon-Beautiful Dissonance

Obscurity Lake, Washington - Alluringly Peaceful Trap of the Biting Fly Apocalypse. 

Went to Oregon to escape the heat and flatness of Texas and test my mettle backpacking. 
3 of my closest old friends live in the area around Portland with their spouses.  All migrated years ago from California.  This trip was an insightful opportunity to see how others from my youth have chosen to live their lives and retirement years.  And also to better understand what it would be like to live in this area.  My best friend from high school lives in a wooded suburb south of Portland close to mountains and the Columbia River. Riding horses and hunting remain his passions. 
Another lives in a beautifully restored 1925 house in Portland  surrounded by mountain hiking/biking trails,  eclectic food carts, with close proximity to river kayaking. 

He and I drove 2 and 1/2 hours to backpack for 3 days into the Margaret wilderness north of volcano Mt St Helen's having forgone going further east due to forest fires.  Even 15 miles north of its 1981 eruption flotillas of dead trees still float on lakes and lay strewn like matchsticks on mountain sides-blown over by 300 mph winds traveling up the canyons from the blast that blew of the top 4000 feet of the mountain (see photo below looking south at Spirit Lake and Mt St Helen's crater). 
The Margaret trail has not been unmaintained and is treacherous in places. 6 miles in we arrived our destination.   The unbelievable beauty of this backcountry (more photos) was marred by smoke from forest fires and at our campsite near Obscurity Lake unrelenting swarms of biting flies who attacked anytime we stopped moving or were outside our tents. However the record warm temperatures made staying inside our tents during daylight unbearable. Disappointingly this drove us to an early retreat back to civilization the following day.  We both wondered if we had grown soft in our old age.
Still plan B wasn't so bad, considering it gave us more opportunities to sample new foods and ponder the effects of aging, climate change and social dynamics on our short lifespans.  
If you ponder these things as well consider watching, "American Factory" a startlingly documentary about a mainland Chinese billionaire 2017 taking over a huge Ohio factory and requiring American workers who were previously unionized to work the "Chinese way"   Another must see in this vein of 'nothing stays the same' is, "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button"  

My other friend and her veterinarian husband live on a 60 acre multi-crop farm on the outskirts of the university town of Corvallis. Copious fruit, fruit trees and vegetable crops abound together with alpacas and their own personal lake.
It looks so peaceful but exudes non-stop work.  Not sure I want to work that hard...? 

Given the warming trend and drought northern Oregon now has a flora look close to what I grew up with in northern California 40 years sans the vagrant tent communities that are a city blight.  Still, Portland has all the offerings of a hip and diverse smaller cosmopolitan city, including an international airport.  Is this a place to retire to...?

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