Riding toward Spencer Butte

My daughter lives in Eugene in what is called the Southern Hills neighborhood. And it is hilly. By the time I arrive on my bicycle I am winded and gasping and trying not to look like an old lady.

The four days a week I work at the bike shop I head south, Spencer Butte rising in the distance, often shrouded in rain, fog, low clouds.

This is how I know I’m not in Chicago, there are hills. Actual hills, not that mount trashmore or Cricket Hill as some call it, a sledding mound created after the Great Fire and likely containing debris from sledging the harbor. So much of Chicago’s shoreline has been contoured and sculpted that it is difficult to imagine Native Americans, skunk grass, and dug-out canoes. I’m sure it was a mosquito-filled swamp next to Lake Michigan. Don’t get me wrong: I appreciated being able to ride my bike or run next to a great body of water and at times feel its tumult as a storm approached, but with the paved parking and hundreds of visitors and dogs lining the paths and shore it never felt “natural.”

Here in Eugene I live next to the Willamette River—not William-ette—a name attributed to native peoples. Thus, I’m in the Willamette Valley surrounded by several “hills” where Spencer Butte at 2,058 feet punctuates the surrounding ridgelines. Now the thing about hills are that from a distance they appear huge compared to the lower geography. But settled in the Southern Hills where my daughter lives, it is just the tallest of the others. I am perhaps one mile from the trailhead and a mile and a half from the summit if I choose to hike it. Which I am hoping to do.

It is this feeling, though, of height and hills that impresses me—every morning as I set out on my bike, huffing and puffing—that I am not in Chicago anymore, but in buttes.

                        I set my sights southward and push, riding toward Spencer Butte.