The view from Lower Table Rock, in the heart of the Rogue Valley, offers a high-altitude Eden. In the distance, the Siskiyou Mountains, home to some of the most botanically diverse coniferous forests on the planet, keep their counsel. Barely visible, the snow-capped stratovolcano Mount McLoughlin (alt. 9,493) touches the clouds. Below, the Rogue River snakes through a mosaic of green and gold pastureland, providing so much yet asking so little.
Tony and I lived in the valley for two months before we actually caught sight of the Rogue—yes, from Lower Table Rock. In many ways, everything about this Southern Oregon enclave opens eyes wide. You will see crystal blue skies by day and Cassiopeia by night, aging hippies—migrants from the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond—rubbing shoulders with tourists from Arizona, cattle grazing near vineyards and pear trees flowering next to cannabis. Near the Rogue Valley International Airport in Medford, you will find a burger joint that also serves kangaroo, Himalayan antelope, and wild boar.
THERE’S NO DOUBT ABOUT IT. In our deeply fractured world, Ashland offers an oasis, an alternate universe.
While the Supreme Court hacks away at our civil liberties, this southern Oregon town of 21,000 holds the Woodstock Nation tight. In few other places across America, I wager, will you encounter such a concentration of dream catchers, essential oils, women who have let their hair go grey and men with beards. Here, holistic medicine and spiritual journeys can raise hope, not eyebrows.
For many, it is the pace of life in Ashland that draws them in—along with the sweeping views across the Rogue Valley. “You gotta slow down, girl,” my best friend from high school, Kathy, said as we drove down Ashland’s main boulevard on my inaugural visit last summer. “This isn’t Brooklyn.”
Three weeks after visiting Ashland, Tony and I made an offer on a house, sight unseen. After returning to BrookIyn at the end of August, I scoured Ashland real estate online (thanks to trulia.com) and sized up everything in our price range. Virtual reality led the way. I went on dozens of video house tours and traveled the town on Google Maps, clicking the arrows on “street view” to check out each neighborhood. My friend Kathy was our eyes on the ground.
Our house-to-be appeared on Day 18 of my Trulia Pursuit: three bedrooms, two baths, 1,700 square feet, one story, built in 1987, a two-car garage. Its charms, though, lay outside: hiking trails a block away, a huge green meadow in back, a fish pond with a waterfall in front, majestic trees—redwood, birch and blue spruce—standing sentinel.
WHAT’S NOT TO LIKE ABOUT MOVING? Almost everything.
Packing and unpacking tops most people’s lists. Having divested 90 percent of our belongings on the move from Rhode Island to Brooklyn, packing was the easy part for us. We shipped what we had and put our hands in our pockets. At our new house, we camped out for three weeks until our goods arrived. What we had in abundance were paintings I’d inherited from my mother or acquired on my own, plus framed photographs taken by me or by young people I’d worked with around the world.
The big lift, we quickly realized, was re-furnishing, turning our six-room house into a living space. It would have been much easier if we had skipped the giving-everything-away phase on our way to Brooklyn.
FOR MORE THAN 15 YEARS, Tony and I have started our morning with an espresso macchiato and venti bold at Starbucks. It’s not that we love Starbucks, but it is the only coffee shop that’s open at six a.m., which is when we like to head out for coffee since we are early risers. We spend an hour or so chatting and touching base before we start our day. In Brooklyn, we’d keep our daily coffee date even if it meant hoofing it in a cold rain, streetlights still on. We were—are—like the Pony Express.
Regardless of location, Tony and I have learned that the early morning crowd at Starbucks differs from what follows later. In Ashland, the early morning crowd at Starbucks veers male, the same every day, and includes a collection of older, solo men staring at their laptops, one sitting crossed legged, and young unkempt and “unhoused” (Ashland’s term for homeless) men who have slept in the forests above town and leave their gear and dogs in the adjacent walkway while they gather their wits inside. One day, a spaced-out fella at the table next to Tony and me—the tables are a foot apart—interrupted our conversation and asked, “Do you mind if I stare at you?”
TWO BLOCKS FROM OUR HOUSE, there is a trail called the White Rabbit that leads into the forest, along a creek, and seriously uphill with views of the valley below. It’s a magical world of thick pines and madrones with bark as crimson as blood. The trail winds through the rugged, sprawling Oredson-Todd Woods for two and a half miles and then meets up with the Alice in Wonderland Trail above downtown Ashland. These are public lands.
Locals say there is no need for a trail map. But it’s a down-the-rabbit-hole affair, with a warren of other trails crossing the White Rabbit: Mad Hatter, Cheshire Cat, Looking Glass, Caterpillar, and more. The Pacific Crest Trail appears and disappears, too. Although it may be hard to get lost, it’s easy to feel lost. Lewis Carroll would approve.
