Narnia by Gaslight
Last night Sarah had a date with this Jessie fellow, a guy who she saw briefly last year, after his divorce. He'd said he needed time to get over his breakup, before he started in on something serious... So Sarah gave him a year. To the day. Called him up. He came over, and we had a pleasant evening of chit-chat - there was a showing of Sean of the Dead, and Lilly also attended. I made it clear in advance that this was not to be a double date sort of evening, and it was fine. Lily's cool, and I like hanging out with her, but she's a little too deranged for me. Entertaining, yeah, but, yeah. Anyway, that evening had gone well, so they arranged an actual date for Monday.

I spent Monday evening at Conifer House, concocting what I feel was an absolutely astonishing Chicken Tortilla soup, considering what I had to work with. I made my own tomato paste by pureeing peeled tomatoes and squeezing holy hell out of them in cheesecloth. I heated canola oil, and deep-fried strips of corn tortilla, making low-salt ultra-fresh fritos, essentially, to be displayed atop the soup when served. I used equal parts chicken and turkey, to make a more savory broth. I gotta say, it was great. My boss has been pushing for me to offer new recipes, things these folks haven't already had a hundred times, so I've been experimenting - and I'd almost forgotten how much fun cooking can be, when you've got the freedom to try new things. The reaction from the seniors? "Pretty good," said Omer. "For spic chow." I nearly burst a blood vessel in my eye not laughing in his face. Barbara said "It should've been spicier - people my age like a little spice, you know," and made a grope toward my junk. Ah, but I've learned how far she can reach past her walker, and so my junk remained unmolested. Al complained bitterly that he'd ordered tomato soup, the alternate, and I explained yet again that he's not allowed to eat fruit. Or dairy. Or too much salt. And that he was lucky I didn't just give him a piece of bread. Elsie scolded me for using too much chili powder; "It was so spicy I couldn't even taste it! Just awful!" But she'd used the cornbread muffin I'd served with it to mop her bowl empty, so it couldn't have been that foul. For the most part, I heard a lot of "Ole!" and "Mucho Gusto!" If I can find a decent sugar-free chocolate, I'd like to try a Mole Chicken dish - I had some at a local mexican place, and it was fantastic - the spicy salsa blended with melted chocolate and cinnamon, the chicken stewed in the sauce until it was falling apart... I'm going to try something along those lines in a crock pot at home, and if it goes well, I'll twist the recipe for the seniors to try. They seem to enjoy the more exotic options - as long as it's not more than once or twice a week.

Anyway, after work I walked home, since the bus stops at seven and Sarah was out puttin' the moves on Jessie. It was dark. I mean, darker than I've seen outdoors in a really, really long time. It had rained much of the afternoon, and while the rain had stopped there was a really heavy layer of clouds overhead. So, no moon. No stars. And, after a while of wandering down sidewalks muttering "Wow, it's dark," it occurred to me that there was no Dowlight. I'm so used to Dow Chemical lighting the undersides of clouds at night that a dark night has become something almost mythical to me. Hewlett Packard has their corporate headquarters here, but it's a very different kind of plant than Dow's. They mostly do research here in Corvallis - it's where they invented inkjet printers. Their manufacturing is indoors, and like most places around here, they don't overdo the lighting at night. Heck, streetlights dim after midnight to conserve power, the city bus runs on biodiesel, and there are recycling bins next to public trashcans. Very green town. So, after dark, it gets DARK. It didn't help that I was taking a shortcut through the hills for the first time. I usually take the 9th street to Walnut to home route, takes me about forty minutes to walk it. It's also almost level, because it skirts around the hilly residential area at the northernmost end of town. But last night, I thought I'd try it. I was regretting this, because for one thing, it was DARK. For another, when there were yard lights, the houses all start to look alike pretty quickly. For yet another thing, between the twisty curvy residential lanes and the upsy downsy terrain - I was navigating hills that were easily ten to twenty stories tall - I got totally disoriented, but fast. Completely lost.

I turned a corner, peering at the unlit intersection, without roadsigns, and saw an island of light downhill and to my left. I was reasoning that downhill was good, because I was tired of walking uphill, and because if I returned to the valley floor it meant I would be back in town proper and therefore unlost. Further north, and I'd be in the Cascade Mountains proper, and while really really lost I would at least have a nice view of home. So I went downhill. The light I'd seen was the only light source I could make out. Between the hills and the typically really tall Oregon pines, there wasn't a lot of open lines of sight. And HP was no help at all with the dark sky. When I got closer, I had one of those "struck dumb by surreal beauty" moments, and had to stand and gape for a while.

The light was an old fashioned cast-iron lamppost, with one of those flickery lightbulbs they sell, the kind that give the illusion of a real flame. The post itself was ornate and elegant, and the sight could have been lifted from Victorian England. Gaslight and mist - not fog, per se, but a kind of rain where the water just drifts down, and sometimes sideways. It was a yard decoration, set amidst the most wonderful garden. The weather here in the Willamette is freakishly mild, and great for gardening. It's been amusing me for weeks now that it's late October, and yet everywhere I go there are flowers. Roses bloom all year here. This yard had, in the misty shadows at the edge of the faux gaslight, tall plumes of something or other that looked like red forsythia, roses in white and pale gold, and a flowering vine with tiny blue flowers climbing up a tree trunk that was thicker than I am tall. Closer in, around the base of the lamppost, were moonflowers in full bloom, and some kind of huge white night-blooming flower that smelled intoxicating. I was forty feet away, and I could smell flowers so strongly they might just as well had been growing in my beard. So there I am, gawking at this Victorian night-garden, an island of gaslit beauty floating in the void.

It was strange, and thrilling. I'd said that Oregon felt like Eden. I was wrong.
Turns out, it's freaking Narnia.

I wish I'd had a camera. I wish I could find that place again. I wish I knew how to paint. Starting on a black canvas, I would show the flowers and the gaslight, the mist and the silence - I can see it in my mind, but I'll never be able to show it in words that do it justice or capture it on film or paint it for anyone else.

Eventually, after a walk that ended up taking almost two hours, I found Rolling Green, my own road. I followed it downhill, and came eventually back to the intersection with Walnut - only a few hundred yards from home. I dreamed of that garden later in the night, and remembered it vividly all day today.

Today was a lot less interesting. I did laundry, and read most of the morning. I left early for work and tried to find the night-garden again, but without success. In the daytime, in Sarah's car, those roads are just as confusing and I just got lost again. Later, at the high school, everything went peacefully - no trespassers or fires or lost people. Just routine and a crossword. And now here I am, back home and I still can't shake how pretty that scene in the darkness and the misty rain was.

Good.

It's not something I want to lose, ever.