Foodie Field Trip: Eugene's Social Justice

A few months ago I had the opportunity to visit an old friend. A wonderful friend, close to my heart. The kind of friend who reminds me of who I used to be, and at the same time inspires the person I someday want to become.

Every year I look forward to visiting her, if only for a day. But the problem is, as with any friend, that as time goes on we change. She changes; I change. And after ten years we sometimes hardly recognize each other anymore... which leaves me feeling a little lost, a little forlorn... because my entire life used to center around her, within her. Of course I'm not talking about a person, but a place. My favorite place: Eugene, Oregon.

This is the town where I took my first steps of independence, discovered and nurtured my interests, fell in love with my husband, and made big plans... lots and lots of plans.

It was ten years ago that my husband (then boyfriend) and I packed up everything we owned inside of and on top of two cars, and we drove away from her--from Eugene--to start a new life together in Long Beach, California. In some ways Long Beach reminds me of Eugene: its eclectic population, its energy, its lack of pretense. But in other ways, the two locales couldn't be more opposite: the climate, the environment, life's pace.

And though Long Beach has seemed to stay relatively the same throughout my twenties, Eugene has been transformed, developed dramatically. Most Oregonians herald this progress. As alumni and benefactor Phil Knight (of Nike) pours money into the campus, new super-glitzy structures of steel and glass spring up around East Eugene. There's the new basketball court. And the new baseball facility. Not to mention the new tutoring center for college athletes. These buildings may be modern, they may be expensive, and they may draw more students and serve them well.

But I will always remember what used to be there: a view looking out from my old dorm room towards the Willamette River; a breathtaking planting of daffodils that has since been paved over; an emerald meadow sprinkled with evergreen trees near the football stadium; and the Williams Bakery from which heavenly scents of freshly-baked bread wafted each and every morning of the four years that I lived there. These things are no longer.

Not only the campus community has changed. City-wide, visitors will find revamped shopping centers, monstrous billboards so low to the ground they practically slap you in the face, and space-age sculptural elements. The city has big plans for updating its riverfront property. Roads swerve in different directions around recent construction, and even the road signs are new. My husband and I drive, confusedly, up and down streets that were once second nature, second-guessing our routes and even our destinations. This must be what it feels like to have the beginning stages of Alzheimer's.

Near downtown, at the heart of the city, the largest, most obtrusive structure of all rises up before us suddenly, like a tidal wave. We almost slam on the breaks in surprise as we approach the new Wayne L. Morse U.S. Courthouse. It shimmers and gleams as a few rays of fleeting, evanescent sunlight make their way through the pervasive, Pacific Northwest cloud cover. It looks like something out of Gotham City, not my brick and mortar Eugene of a bygone era.

Eugene's New U.S. Courthouse

We pull over on a [newly paved] side-street adjacent to the building. We stare, wide-eyed, through the passenger-side window, gawking at its monolithic stature for a moment. And then we look to the left.

On the other side of the road, just beyond the shadows of the courthouse, lies something amazing, something beautiful, something completely paradoxical, something organic. Inadvertently, we have parked beside the brand-spanking new Eugene Community Garden.

Eugene Community Garden

I had read about this project a few months before our visit, in an alumni publication I receive. But here it was, still unexpected. A University of Oregon professor had noted this land, sitting blank and unused beside the new courthouse, ripe with potential. With the help of many dedicated students, raised rows were dug, irrigation was laid out and connected to a fresh water supply, and a storage building was erected and fenced off.

Rows upon rows of vegetables grow in stark contrast between the new courthouse and the antiquated, dilapidated riverfront industrial buildings seen in the background.

A View Toward the Riverfront

Demolished hardscape was removed from the site and rests, like horrific haystacks, along the edges of the garden. You can just make them out in the middle, left hand side of the photo above. I assume that this debris will be reused or relocated in the future.

My family huddled in warmth of the car while I got out with my camera and meandered through the snow-sprinkled paths to take a closer look.

In the November cold, Brassicas, like these cabbage below, flourished to gigantic proportions.

Six-foot-tall trellises supported a variety of berry canes. Of course, there were no actual berries to be seen this time of year.

Rows were thickly mulched with fallen leaves and straw, natural resources which are in no short supply in the Willamette Valley.

Strawberry bushes huddled by the hundreds against this concrete wall, which was covered with pea netting (I suppose for spring crops to come). The plants look healthy, despite their light frosting of ice and snow.

In front of the strawberries stood a single line of fruit trees, a mini-linear orchard of apples and stone fruit. I imagine how full and lush this will look when the trees mature. Interestingly, the trees are underplanted with onions.

More onions emerge, nearby, from a straw-mulched, raised bed.

Artichokes cap off the ends of each row with a colorful burst of purple.

There were many more varieties of vegetables growing here, but because I was frozen to the bone after only a few minutes, I did not manage to snap pictures of them all. I recall, however, multitudes of Swiss chard, rhubarb, broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, and blueberry bushes. Many of these were ready to harvest.

Off to the side, down a grassy slope and next to a pond of sorts, lies a make-shift gathering place. Metal and plastic lawn chairs and tables are strewn, happenstance, alongside a Weber barbeque and assorted bales of hay. I envision a balmy summer evening here, the sweet perfumey scent of the Willamette Valley in July, college-age gardeners gathering at the end of a long afternoon harvesting vegetables for the local Lane County Food Bank. I see them lounging atop the hay bales, cracking open a cold one, sharing fresh food, relaxed conversation, and the leisurely comraderie of fellow farmers.

If I still lived there, and if I were a little younger, I would probably be one of them. But times change. Places change. People change.

As my head swirled back to reality, I turned to see my patient husband and two beautiful children jumping up and down wildly (the kids, not the husband), waving me back toward the car and my own current reality.

Practically numb with cold, I was picking my way toward the street, through the rows, when I stumbled upon a marker. Looking down, I found a hand-painted stone that said--simply--this:

Between the smoke and mirrors of the new courthouse, and the industrial, river-front reminders of yester-year, lies something wonderful. The Eugene Community Garden is the intersection of the past and the future. It is the embodiment of sustainability. Without trying, it is the most progressive new structure in the city of Eugene. And it didn't even cost $96 million dollars to build.

Now that is social justice.