I don’t know if I could stay forever in Portland, but I would definitely try it out for a year or two. We had dreary weather, but people were dressed so brightly, and the smell of wood smoke carried through the streets, which were lined with giant calla lilies and great, drooping peonies. We visited Powell’s City of Books—a blissful place—and I drank chai and browsed through shelves and shelves and shelves of excellent poetry. Bought a bunch. Wanted to buy more.

I picked up was my dear friend Sheila’s new fiction book, Keeping Safe the Stars. I don’t read much children’s lit these days, but Sheila’s work is really special. Last summer, I picked up Sparrow Road, a book about a girl who lives for a summer with her mother at an artists’ colony (the setting is loosely based on the Anderson Center, where I met Sheila), and I was totally enchanted.

After reluctantly pushing ourselves out back out into the daylight, Ally and I visited the Japanese gardens and spent awhile admiring the meticulously-sculpted shrubs and trees and the way the reflections all wavered in the koi ponds.