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© 2004 Brian Lanker Introduction Essay for Oregon 24/7 Small Wonders By Steve Dunis Big fish. Small pond. Oregon has long worn the tag as a badge of honor. Small wonder. For the longest time, the fish-steelhead and Chinook-were stunning, and their spawning runs relentless. And if the pond was far off the beaten trail, it was wondrously landscaped. We could hike and bike and windsurf. We'd ski Mt. Hood and hit the surf at Seaside in the same long, lazy afternoon. At a safe distance from the headaches of Seattle and California, Oregonians could relax in a minor key, convinced our comfort zone was secured by marvelous public beaches, an environmental ethic and an evergreen color scheme, and the right to a doctor-assisted suicide. For the longest time-note that we are still tethered to past tense-Oregonians gracefully compensated for situational shortfalls. While our state is short on major-league sports franchises-none save the Portland Trail Blazers, who won their lone NBA title during the Carter administration and have been an embarrassment ever since-it is big on participatory athletic extravaganzas like the Hood-to-Coast Relay and Cycle Oregon. Far removed from the halls of power, we're committed to allowing individuals to carve out their own destinies: Voters twice gave autonomy to the terminally ill in making end-of-life decisions. When same-sex marriage licenses recently became problematic for even San Francisco, Multnomah County continued to crank 'em out. "We do have a progressive tradition, but it's a selective one," says local historian Gordon Dodds. "The progressive things-initiative voting, women's suffrage, the bottle bill, and vote by mail-don't cost anyone any money. If it doesn't require money and work, we'll do it." Dodds calls this habit "adventuresomeness in pursuit of the ordinary." For the longest time, Oregon got by on the ordinary with a light dusting of the extraordinary: Crater Lake and the links course at Bandon Dunes. The Pendle-ton Round-Up. The best bookstore in the world (Powell's Books in Portland), and urban growth boundaries that discourage quarter-acre sprawls and preserve farmland. Oregon today is not as boldly diverse as some of the sensational photographs in these pages suggest, but they make clear that it's home for some quirky and artistic individualism. Indie filmmakers and mountain-climbing dogs. Homeschoolers and saddle makers. Refugees who don't want to live by the rules or the traffic patterns of Atlanta or Los Angeles. There is no shortage of small miracles in Oregon. But where are the big ideas, bold public figures, and ambitious businesses to match the aging icons of the nation's first bottle bill, former Gover-nor Tom McCall, and Nike? Too often we have allowed our inability to improve the landscape to become an unwillingness to generate new landmarks. So it is that Seattle spends millions on a breathtaking, wireless new public library while Portland bitterly laments paying its new library director her $127,000 salary. Last time I checked, the salmon and steelhead runs had recovered from a dismal decade or two, and the big fish were back. As you review the small wonders of Oregon, a state in which both the fish and the citizenry delight in swimming against the current, you might look for the hook of another big idea. The small pond could stand the excitement. STEVE DUIN is the Metro columnist at The Oregonian in Portland. He lives with his wife and three children in Oswego. Browse    View All    Small Wonders    Hearth & Home    Hard at Work    Oregon at Play    Reason to Believe Photos: 124 Photographers: 37 Towns: 50

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