Love from Asheville to Portland

When I first stepped into Asheville, it felt like a smaller, mountain-shaped version of Portland — creative, curious, and beautifully offbeat in all the right ways. After years in Oregon, from the misty docks of Astoria to the rain-slick streets of Portland, part of my heart still lingers there. I can feel its pulse even here in the Blue Ridge — like rain carried through distant roots. When I hear that troops are moving into those familiar streets, I feel it too — a tremor that crosses miles and memory.

Asheville and Portland are two forks of the same energetic river, cut from the same earthy cloth — both places where artists and dreamers find belonging, where kindness lives beside contradiction. So when Portland hurts, it feels closer to home.

Portland,

you stubborn light,
you damp cathedral of moss and grit,
you city that grows art from asphalt cracks
and flavor from the rain.

They say the troops are coming,
as if courage weren’t already here —
painted on plywood, sung through masks,
held in hands that still plant gardens between sirens.

You turn grunge and grit into compost —
fuel for inclusion,
soil for individuality.
Even your rebellion grows something.

You’re the city where strangers say sorry
before they say hello,
where the barista knows your heartbreak
and the cashier asks about your weekend plans.
Politeness with a pulse.
Kindness that somehow feels defiant.

You make coffee pretentious and decency normal,
you brunch like it’s religion
and protest like it’s prayer.
You keep “weird” as a coat of arms,
not because you’re odd,
but because sameness is a slow death.
And you still believe there’s a place at the table
for everyone —
even the ones who’ve forgotten how to sit together.

You are friends with the earth —
not afraid to dig deep,
to get dirt under your nails,
to return to the soil that made you,
and rise again through it.

Your tattoos are your armor,
inked messages of love and loss,
scripted prayers across your skin
that say I was here. I believed. We all belong.

And when the boots march in,
you don’t flinch.
You brew another pot, raise your umbrellas,
and remind the country
that resistance can smell like espresso and rain.

Here in Asheville, your sister in the mountains,
we feel your tremor like our own.
The French Broad echoes your Willamette —
two roots from the same tree,
drinking from the same storm,
holding the same soil.

We send you songs of pine and filtered sunlight,
hands of clay and compassion,
and a promise:
we will stand when you cannot,
and rise when you are weary.

Because we are made of the same stubborn light.
We both know the sacred work of roots —
how to hold fast beneath the storm.

You, Portland, are all roots —
grit and flavor and fire,
compost and kindness,
earth and empathy.
And the rest of us are better for you —
for your wild insistence
that protest can be art,
that rain can be prayer,
and that love still makes room
for everyone.

We sing your song, Portland, in our matching knitted beanies.

With love,

Asheville.