Our adopted home of Portland, Oregon, is known above all for being two things: Rainy, and dog-friendly. In the courtyard of most cafes, you’ll find a water dish. At the counter, dog treats for $1, and outside, friendships being made in every combination of four legs and two. But our local Mexican takeaway doesn’t […]

  Birders are an interesting species. As hikers, we encounter them often on swamp trails and lookouts, throughout this glorious state we call home. Sometimes in sunhat and shades, other times crouched in knee-deep icy sludge, but always quiet and still, they are never far from their two most prized possessions: Binoculars, and their bird […]

  We often think about our coast as a line. Before the line is land, where we live with our perambulating limbs and our porous lungs, and after it is the sea. That’s where the sharks live. But scientists will tell you it isn’t so simple. At the edge of the ocean, when conditions are […]

      Oregon has a complex relationship with its neighbors. Portlanders, in particular, look at Seattlites sideways and Californians with particular contempt. But Oregon is also reliant on its west-coast sister states for imports, exports, tourism, extractive industries, and manufacturing. So… it’s complicated. // At Astoria, the mighty Columbia that forms much of Oregon’s […]

  Earlier this year, archeologists positively identified human footprints that had been encased in sediment and preserved off the coast of Canada for the past 13,000 years. The fossilized footprints capture a single journey across what was then the beach, and we are incredibly fortunate to still have them. Because the ocean isn’t much of […]

    For many people, fall is their favorite season. Other people? They’re wrong. We are unapologetic fall fans here at Euphoregon. The chill in the air, the smell of woodsmoke, the turning leaves, even the famed Portland rain – we say, bring it on. For us, fall means the sweet tang of cinnamon, the […]

  “It snows in Portland, sure, but it never sticks.” We heard this from at least four people before we moved here, just months before Portland’s most intense snowstorm in a generation. Being cold-loving penguins, we welcomed the “snowpocalypse” of winter 2017, watching the neighborhood kids shut off a steep street for sledding, and bemused […]

  Small things take on great meaning inside caves. The absolute darkness, constant temperature and complete absence of breeze creates a kind of sensory deprivation. Your sense of smell compensates for your dulled other senses and floods your brain with the wet earthiness of your surroundings. Every tiny sound is louder and clearer; and carries […]

  A stone’s throw from the hub of the John Day Fossil Beds in Eastern Oregon is an historic homestead which has a funny name: James Cant Ranch. Poor James. Perhaps it just wasn’t his calling. The ranch isn’t much to see – a genteel building nested in an apple orchard by a babbling river […]

  We live in an epic place. Big, knotted trees, wild rivers, snow-covered peaks and astonishing vistas seem to be around every corner in this glorious state, but few places can make you feel so small as you do standing riverside at Smith Rock. The otherworldly and gravity-defying formations that make this outcrop the best […]