Life in Pacific City

Mary and Rob live in paradise. You just have to look out their windows to be convinced. They live in the countryside, on the Pacific coast, along with their two playful cats and their four hens. The landlord, who is also their neighbour, also agreed for a dog. But not for the goat. Then they wait for their next home, and why not make some cheese.

Similarly, they were unable to install wind turbine to generate their own electricity. But it's still in their idea. One day they will own an energy-independent house. They will have their garden that will allow them to live. They will make their own fertilizer with compost and dry toilets. They will have a lifestyle with an environmental impact close to zero.

In the distance we hear the deafening sound of waves breaking on the beach. The small town of Pacific City is a few kilometres. The neighbourhood is reduced to a few houses between mountains and ocean, near a sea branch. This small community asked Rob to monitor the water retention, higher up the mountain. Pure water that comes straight from the top. And they are not about to run out; water falls here!

Obviously, given where they live now, they no longer want to move. So they welcome travellers like me. We walk along the coast, completely wild and very well preserved in Oregon. And we tell our travel experiences. A few years ago, they hitch-hiked from Portland to Mexico, and returned to where they now live through Alabama and Los Angeles. More than 10,000 km with their surfboards under their arms!

Mary is a chef at Grateful Bread, a bakery and cafe, named after the Grateful Dead, a former San Francisco group that older people surely know better than me. They make very good bread, including the famous "French baguette", and delicious pastries and scones. I warmly recommend you to stop if you're in the area!

Rob does a lot also. He works officially for his neighbour: they cultivate wasabi plants. Its roots are drawn to the famous Japanese strong mustard! Oregon apparently has a climate very similar to the Japanese one. So outside of Japan, Oregon produces the best wasabi.

And when they do not work, Mary and Rob have thousand other occupations equally exciting. They meet their friends, who I also met. Mary is an artist, she paints, she draws, she creates, she carves, she doodles. She looks at Rob flying his glider. Rob has previously made these models. Rob also produces (and repairs) surfboards. With the ocean side, they surf both regularly.

Here we are. In Pacific City, Oregon, on the edge of the ocean, life is simple. But life is beautiful!