Our visit to Oregon or “The Ocean’s in Sight!”

Elena Tucker
6 min readSep 27, 2023
A photo of an actual sticker of an outline of a state of Oregon

The light is different in the Pacific Northwest of the United States.

This may seem like a self-evident statement. The light is different no matter where you are. The light differs in California from New York state, and it’s different in France than it is in Cuba. That’s why French croissants are so much better there than anywhere else (along with that sunlight, the quality of soil and water should also be noted). Perhaps I should be more specific. And also, less enigmatic.

My husband, Jeff, and I just returned from a trip to Oregon. We went there for a two-fold reason. First, we both needed a vacation and wanted to visit with family, and B) we needed to fulfill the last of my deceased brother-in-law, Glenn’s, wishes and spread the last of his cremains in some beautiful place that he also loved. Jeff’s sister, Amy, had lived in Oregon for the past 20 years, and Glenn had visited her there — he was even thinking of moving there, until he got too sick.

Oregon is beautiful. Well, western Oregon. Eastern Oregon is high desert, all scrub bushes, sand and rocks, a lot like eastern Colorado. But the western part of both of these states … wow.

Even flying over, I saw mountains with lakes nestled in the grooves of their peaks, reminders of their volcanic origins. These aren’t the Rockies I know, I…

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Elena Tucker

Writer and storyteller, immigrant, wife, mom, knitter, collector of jokes, lover of cheap, sweet wine.