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
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