atlas of design

at first glance, i took this photo to be a plume of smoke until noticing that it is none other than an aerial view of our very own willamette river!  "how beautiful!" i gushed, pinning david coe's cartography to my bulletin board.  (if you look closely at the bottom left tributary, you can see the shape of a heart tilted on its side).  fitting because i was just about to use the analogy that came to me today:  if the city of portland and i were dating, we would be well past the small talk (zoo train and voodoo donuts level) and into the sharing of history (more on that soon) that promises to be a deep and life-long relationship. one example is that i'm privileged to have kayaked a large section of this river in the last couple of years (most recent segment 15 miles on tuesday) as far north as the fremont bridge upstream to the wheatland ferry and it is every bit as beautiful as you can imagine.  from urban funk to grazing herds (in the water, cows!  i am not making this up) the river's course has carved new beds but is still the same flow our native american ancestors would have navigated so well.  more of david coe's work can be found in the book "atlas of design".