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About Vernonia's voice. (Vernonia, OR) 2007-current | View Entire Issue (Dec. 3, 2015)
community Like Rain, We Fall december3 2015 19 continued from front page dogs at Big Eddy. In the falls, we ate endless elk, venison, and salmon. In the winters and spring, rain fell as if the sky was a shower head. Holidays came and went, with haphazard Christmas plays and Easter celebrations. I learn to drink coffee in Styrofoam cups, where “over the hill” is, and how to put all sizes of bullets straight through pop cans on tree stumps. There’s a crush or two on local girls, tag in the church yard at a semi-professional level, and the realization that it matters very much if one drives a Ford or a Chevy. And all the while, this place was making the boy into Paul, summer of 1996. the man he would become, as it has done for so many others. For so many of you reading this. So what kind of person am I? I am still discovering. But a few things I know. I value community, because of how richly I experienced it. When a Christmas windstorm put the “schoolmarm” of an ancient cedar tree through our Dodge van (and a good chunk of our little C Street roof), neighbors were there within the hour, revving saws, backing up logging equipment, making the kind of jokes people need when something like that happens. I was never just a face, for better or worse. I was known, loved. I love nature, and found God in it, because of how close it was in Vernonia. Every day, I was outdoors. Long were the empty hours that I rode a neon green bike up the quiet streets, along the old railroad and logging grades to a dozen fishing holes, swimming holes, the abandoned millworks. To throw rocks at trees and whittle sticks into . . . well . . . smaller sticks, for perfectly obvious reasons that only make sense to boys. Every day, the pulse of the river called me. In season I even aware of the debts we owe the places and people fished for trout and steelhead in Rock Creek. In season around us. the waters rose and slowed when they dammed it for They have made us who we are, but so quiet the summer swimming at Hawkins Park, in season and simple is that process, that like the rain around us, the deer ate apples from our backyard and the salmon we can ignore it. Like a great cedar tree, we can pass rutted sideways in the brown gravel. I wrote songs and it by—at least until the flood rises, or the tree crashes bad poetry by the river, trying phrases down, or a big birthday comes and we and ideas, teaching myself to play the are overwhelmed by the momentary The place was guitar from a permanently overdue power of what has been there all book from the library (Nancy behind shaping me, and like along. the desk eventually just said she’d How blessed I was to land in most of us, I knew call if someone else ever wanted it). I Vernonia as a boy of ten, part of a nothing different. I walked the empty woods. lovely family, a strong community, took it for granted. And in many ways, the quiet the vast unbroken forest that stretches life in Vernonia made me a dreamer. But I don’t anymore. from California to Alaska. The years Like most small-town kids, I felt that I spent there rooted me, shaped like a growing fish in a tiny tank. me in the kinds of ways that a person My muscles ached to swim in the sea, to feed like can overlook, can take for granted. Shaped me the way a salmon in foreign waters. I dreamed about getting that clouds shape rain, the way forests shape deer, the out of town, seeing the world, the things I would way streams shape salmon. Shaped me with the quiet do when I traveled to the million Big Places I read power of places and people that have been there all about. I stared out the window of our little house, along. watching deer walk straight through town like it I am able to see it now—like rain, I fell. was just an asphalt clearing in the vast forest. Their The place I landed was very good. And I look breath steamed blue like cigarette smoke on frosty at it, at the people I still count as family there, and I say days, forming and dissipating like a young man’s thank you. dreams. I saw a hundred different futures for myself in the steam; traveling, writing, finding a dozen Paul J. Pastor is a former conflicting things that I was made to do, falling Vernonia resident and in love, collecting stories and memories like shed author of The Face of antlers in the woods. A few of those dreams would the Deep: exploring the come true. More would not. All would become a mysterious life of the Holy part of me. Spirit (David C. Cook, The place was shaping me, and like most of us, 2016). Look for two more I knew nothing different. I took it for granted. But I pieces, “Like Deer, We don’t anymore. Run,” and “Like Salmon, *** We Return,” continuing When we are kids, we don’t choose our home. this piece. They will run in Like the rain, we just fall. Where we land, we land. the January and February We can make the most wherever we are, but we’re editions of the Voice. A Vernonia author event for Paul’s there for a while, stuck with it until we grow a bit, book will be announced soon. like deer, able to bound up “over the hill” and see what’s on the other side. So as I think about these past twenty years, I say this--like rain, I fell to Everyone is welcome in our vibrant & active community! ground in Vernonia for a while. And it shaped me, Sunday • Youth and Adult Sunday School body and spirit. Worship Service • Evening Youth Groups Everything that 11:00 am shapes us on the outside 4th-6th Grade Junior & Senior High leaves its mark on our souls, too. Fishing by a • Home Study Groups cold river on a frosted • Outdoor Ministry Pastor Sam Hough morning gives contour to Christian Bow Hunters of America 410 North St. the spirit, nourishes the life Annual Sportsman’s Banquet Vernonia of the heart. Gathering, season after season, around the office@VernoniaChristianChurch.org same table with the same people nourishes our inner 503-429-6522 roots. Often we are not Vernonia Computer Services Computer problems? We can help. V ernonia C hristian C hurch Absolute MARBLE QUALITY FABRICATION & INSTALLATION Hardware testing, repair, replacement Windows Software install/upgrade Virus/spyware removal Custom systems built Housecalls Bill Langmaid (971) 998-3705 bill@rangelights.com Available by appointment MARBLE GRANITE TRAVERTINE FREE ESTIMATES Kitchen Countertops Fireplace & Furniture Tubs & Vanities CCB#204480 Phone 503-429-2617 AbsoluteMarble@frontier.com
