Portland Waited Outside

On my first full day in Portland, I walked across the river toward Powell's City of Books, the world's largest independent bookstore. Over half a million books. It was a pilgrimage.

I had arrived the previous evening and was staying on the other side of the Willamette River. The bookstore was already fixed in my mind, one of the pins I had placed on the map before coming west. Friends had told me I had to go. I had read enough to know that Powell's occupied an entire city block in the Pearl District, though knowing the fact did little to prepare me for the thing itself.

I crossed the Burnside Bridge, stopped to take a few pictures of the Portland Oregon White Stag sign, and continued up W Burnside toward the store. I was not wandering yet. I was determined. So much so that I arrived roughly 15 minutes before it opened and had to do several laps around the neighborhood.

I wanted it to be magnificent.

It was.

The entrance on the corner of NW 10th Avenue and W Burnside with its white and red sign is the backdrop for countless photos. Everyone wants to enter there. I had waited to get inside and happened to be on the opposite side when the doors opened. I wasn't waiting another minute.

After a few good mornings and nods to the staff at the registers, the first thing I understood was that I would need a map. The store rises and turns through different floors, half-levels, rooms, staircases, and categories. Its nine rooms are divided by color, an arrangement that seems almost whimsical until you begin trying to find your way through. Then the colors become less like decoration and more like trail markers across thousands of subsections.

Normally, I browse through the Fiction section to see what bookstores carry from Hemingway or the Fantasy section to see how many copies of The Lord of the Rings are in stock, but I had arrived knowing exactly where I wanted to go. Within minutes, I was no longer sure where I was. I put the map away and let the colors and overhead signs guide me instead.

The Red Room was on Level 2 so I doubled back to the stairs. After a little searching, I found what I was looking for: the travel section. Portland was the third stop in a journey I was still learning how to make. I didn't yet understand what living on the road would require. Holding The Vagabond's Way, The Slow Road to Tehran and others in my hands provided evidence that people had committed themselves to journeys larger and longer than mine.

I stayed for a while flipping through tables of contents and chapters before returning the books to their place on the shelf. Wondering if the sentences that I would write one day would sit here next to them. Rory Stewart's walk had Kabul waiting at the end of it. Heat-Moon had only the blue highways to follow across America. I didn't have an end date or final destination in mind. I didn't know what I was doing or whether there would be a story for someone to read.

Portland waited outside. Still unknown to me.