My annoyance with urban sprawl was approaching a boiling point as we drove east out of Portland on I-84 for Multnomah Falls; the suburbs we had passed was indicative of the country’s ills. Oversized and overpriced prefab homes had sprung up or were springing up wherever developers could find open space, like weeds that grew out of the cracks on a busy freeway. They were ingrained as part of the American dream, albeit an outmoded and irresponsible one. Homeowners would have to seek out high-paying jobs or multiple sources of income to afford them. To stand out to potential employers for the more lucrative positions, they would have to earn advanced degrees, thus starting out at a deficit before buying a home. The prospect of having or adopting children would be pushed back to the mid-to-late thirties. Those fortunate (or, rather, unfortunate) to have children earlier in life would be too busy to provide their full attention. Kids would grow up being raised by digital nannies (smartphones, tablets, laptops, video game consoles); those neglected critical early years would result in later development problems. A skewed sense of self. Issues with social interaction and acceptable societal behavior. A warped idea of reality. Bigotry. Narrow-mindedness. And the most detrimental of all, the absence of independent thought. Eventually, the homeowner, if not already doing so, would covet what others had and blindly try to accumulate the latest and greatest. Alongside these homes, storage businesses would quickly sprout to house all the extraneous junk. The repercussions of this most American of fallacies were endless.
Multnomah Falls, the most famous of the three waterfalls that we had visited, was located along the scenic Historic Columbia River Highway, an attraction in itself.
As the Falls were a popular local attraction (even more so because of COVID), the parking was limited and we were compelled to take a small hike eastward from the Wahkeena Falls picnic area. No complaints though as it gave us an opportunity to see the fascinating flora and fauna and glimpse the stunning (and very windy) Columbia River.
