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Loss is something everyone will experience in their lives, yet it seems to be a lonely experience for those trying to fgure out how to move on. How does one move on from loss, and does the pain ever stop?
Story by Sydne Long and Anna Ward Illustrations by Gillian Blaufus
(Disclaimer: Some of the names in this story have been changed to respect and protect the people who have so kindly decided to share their stories with us)
andy Linke’s parents knew they were in love within the frst 10 minutes of knowing each other. Linke’s dad Randy proposed that night and the two moved in with each other the next day. Te following 44 years, the couple would parent three kids and enjoy a happy marriage. Linke laughs as she recalls the story of how her parents met. Love at frst sight. She estimates that in the four and a half decades the two shared together they only spent about 30 nights apart. Te conversation shifts. Cindy, Linke’s mom, passed away last April from lung cancer. Since then, her dad and the rest of her family had to fgure out how to cope.
“I think I just love her so deeply that it makes me feel better that I miss her,” Linke said. “Grief is just love with no place to go,” said author Jamie Anderson, the author of “Doctor Who.” From a physiological perspective, this statement rings true. Dr. Mary-Frances O’Connor, Ph.D., explains that when we fall in love with a person, place or experience, our brains encode a bond. “Essentially, it creates a we … it creates a ‘we’ of overlapping experience,” said O’Connor. “ Ten, when a loved one is no longer there, we actually experience it as part of us is missing. At a very neural and coded level, our representation of the ‘we’ has a hole in it.”
For some psychologists, grief is most commonly packaged to ft into fve stages: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. Tese stages were frst outlined by Swiss-American psychiatrist Elisabeth Kubler-Ross in 1969 based on interviews conducted with terminally-ill patients.
However, according to the National Institutes of Health, many psychologists consider the stage model of grieving outdated due to its implications of a “standard and linear” grieving process. Te reality of grieving is that not everyone goes through all of these stages, nor will they experience them in the same order and some may even repeatedly cycle back through stages over time.
Just as the process of grieving presents diferently for each person, so too can the type of loss. Grief is often associated with death, especially of loved ones. However, people also grieve those
who are still alive with the loss of romantic, platonic or parental relationships. Grieving can also exist following the loss of a community or when refecting on previous versions of oneself or life before dramatic changes.
Variables like these have the power to turn a universal experience such as loss and make it a unique and often lonely experience.
“I mean, after she passed, I have felt alone because she’s always my go-to. And I was always her go-to, you know,” Linke said Cindy was diagnosed with colon cancer 15 years prior. Tat day she was in remission but, the cough had Linke worried.
Linke took care of her mom for almost six months until one day she kissed her mom goodbye and headed out for a dentist appointment. Her mom seemed stable. Upon returning home, she knew something was wrong right away. She urged her dad to call her siblings.
It was time.
“ Te frst time [she had cancer], it never even phased me that she would even have a probability of dying,” she said.
After almost fve and half months of fghting, Linke said goodbye to Cindy on April 28, 2023. Ten, she began to grieve.
Linke has tried to adapt to a world without her mom. Her past year has been full of ups and downs.
“It comes in waves like one day you’re like, fne, you can look at pictures. Te next day, the breeze hits your face and you’re bawling your eyes out in your car,” Linke said.
Linke has done her best to feel her emotions and take time to be sad and miss her mom. Over the year, Linke has realized that burying how she feels will make it worse.
Elaine Smith had a diferent experience with grief. Te person she lost is still alive.
“I just knew my mom was gone and I grieved her loss for a very long time even though she was here, she was gone,” Smith said Smith spent the frst 11 years of her life traveling all over the country with her mom before they fnally settled down in Eugene. Her mom was a snowboarder and freelance photographer. With no siblings and her father out of the picture, they were close.
When Smith was 20, her whole world was turned upside down. Her mom was on her way home from snowboarding and a snow load fell on the front of her car causing a major accident. Te airbag saved her life, however she was left with a traumatic brain injury. Te TBI had caused her mom to forget the last 20 years of her life — her daughter.
“I had to develop a sense of ‘Okay, this isn’t my mom, this is a person that I just have to delicately walk around,’” she said.
In a single moment, her mom had forgotten everything about her daughter. All their shared adventures had been wiped away. Smith was devastated. Her mom started to live a new life away from her daughter.
One of Smith’s favorite things her mom did for
her before the accident was write love letters to her. Sweet notes about how much she loves her daughter. She gives a sad smile as she recalls all the things she once loved about her mom, a woman who is still alive but not the same.
As Smith has continued to grieve her own mother, she became a mom herself 10 years after the accident, giving birth to a little girl. Smith recalls how lonely it was to give birth to her own daughter while her mom didn’t even know who she was.
“She hadn’t written me a love note, or any of the things that she used to do,” said Smith. While Smith has begun to heal from her loss, she recently received a love letter from her mom for the frst time in 21 years.
“A huge wound was healed, which made it possible for me to do the work that I do with others,” she said.
While this is not the frst or the last loss Smith will deal with, it has changed her life and pushed her to help others who may be struggling with the same thing.
A common theme of those who have grieved is their desire to help people who are now ex periencing it.
Tawnya Davis has been a therapist for over 12 years. Most of the work she does is fo cused on grief.
Davis’s ofcial title is Death Doula. Instead of bringing life into the world like most dou las, she helps people leave this world.
Davis didn’t always plan on focusing on grief and loss for her career in therapy, however, as she started her work as a therapist she felt herself drawn to grief therapy.
“Because if I am going to be frank, everyone dies. Tings that you love will die,” said Davis. While Davis has seemingly surrounded her self with death and loss, she keeps the atten tion on those she helps.
“I do whatever a therapist does, and I com partmentalize that and I keep focusing on the person in front of me,” Davis said. Compartmentalization is a common coping mechanism used by those who struggle with complex and multilayered grieving. Such was the case for University of Oregon senior Hannah Simmons.
In 2022, Simmons took a gap year to work sea sonal jobs at a rafting company at Glacier Na tional Park in Montana and a ski resort outside of Salt Lake City, Utah. In each of these places, Simmons built a strong support system.
After her year away, Simmons returned to Eugene, Oregon, to fnish her journalism degree. Tis meant the inevitable loss of the communities she had built, including a sev en-month long relationship.
“I did a lot of very adventurous things and I feel like I had an identity around that and then I didn’t have that identity anymore,” Simmons said. “I felt very not like myself and out of touch with who I was.”
To regain her sense of self, Simmons went on a four-day hiking trip with three friends from UO. Before leaving, she made the short trip to her grandparents house next door to the home she was raised in. Her second home was surrounded by overfowing garden beds and orchards heavy with ripe fruits. She said goodbye to her grandmother with promises of fresh-baked strawberry rhubarb pies — their favorite — when she returned. But while Simmons was 100 miles from home with limited cell service, her grandmother sufered a heart attack and passed away at the age of 81.
When Hannah returned home, she immediately felt something was wrong as she unloaded her car. Her parents were acting strangely. Her last clear memory from that afternoon was walking into the kitchen with her arms full of gear. After that everything went “fuzzy.” She can picture her dad telling her the details of the previous few days, but she could not absorb them.
“It was a very hard thing for me to grasp because I have never experienced loss in my personal life,” said Simmons. “She was a very healthy person, but she was there one second and gone the next.”
After struggling to cope with these experiences during her frst fall term back in classes, Simmons attended therapy for the frst time.
Tere she realized that the source of her grief was not the one she was working through.
“I feel like I put the other issues on the forefront, like the end of my relationship. And then coming back to school and losing community. I didn’t really let myself think about and process the one that, I feel like, was the heaviest for me,” said Simmons referencing
the loss of her beloved grandmother.
But Simmons chooses to focus on what grief has taught her. “You never come out of grief knowing yourself less,” she said.
Over time, Simmons became more comfortable talking about her grieving experience with others. Previously, the thought of her grandmother would move her to tears. Now when people ask about the tattoo on her left arm, she smiles in gratitude.
“I got a [hummingbird] tattoo for her,” Simmons said. “She loved her hummingbirds. I feel like they’re very emblematic of who she was as a person: very quick, vibrant and full of energy.”
While grief and loss are difcult to deal with, people choose diferent ways to honor their loved ones. Linke has lived through the emotions of losing her mom but she and her dad have found a way to honor her.
Linke’s mom loved gardening and wildfowers so Linke and her dad have started making native wildfower packets to send to people.
“It opened up a lot of people to be able to talk about their grief. It’s like a good icebreaker,” Linke said.
Linke not only spends time making the packets but also uses her free time to make a fower garden to honor her mom in the home the two of them spent so much time in. While Linke has missed her mom since she passed away, the fowers are one way she will continue to honor and remember the woman she loved and cherished so much. G
the on
RoadHome
A short-term fling for some and a locked-in commitment for others, living on the road can be a curse and a blessing.
Photos by Sophie Craft
Story by Ellie Graham
In a gray and storming Albany RV Park, Shainna Tompson scrambles up a wet metal ladder connected to the roof of Winnifred Elvis Presley — her 2002 Winnebago Class-C RV. Her van, Winnie for short, is her fulltime home. She demonstrates how she stargazes when she’s out in the desert. Rain begins to soak through her jacket and she ducks into the driver seat to ignite Winnie’s engine — she won’t be driving away though.
Mobile homes have been around since long before Tompson found Winnie. In 1920, the idea of living in a motorized vehicle was born. Car manufacturers converted automobiles into livable shells on wheels. By the 1960s, van-living gained traction as an emerging utopia. Tink hippies smoking joints in tie-dye attire. Vans symbolized freedom. Te free-spirit counterculture primed a retreatist legacy for van life today.
In 2020, van life swept the Pacifc Northwest with a recharged urgency sparked by the pandemic and drove people to re-examine the way they lived. Remote work was the default, and after long periods of government-mandated lockdowns, people became restless. American van lifers increased by 63% over the next two years, taking the stats from 1.9 million in 2020 to about 3.1 million in 2022. Oregon, Washington and California are among the states with the highest van life populations.
“You can make it [your van] your own,” Tompson said. As a traveling nurse, she lives on the road in her van Winnie, and has no plans of returning to renting an apartment. She’s tired of the unhabitable renting conditions she often encounters, and prefers to make her own mark on her living situation. “I rented apartments for a long time, you can add your touches, but you never get to make it yours.”
At times, Tompson struggles with securing a vacant spot at RV parks. When a spot opens up, she doesn’t want to leave it.
“It’s been a struggle just being stationary because I can’t just on a whim go and hang out at a national park, I have to be here,” said Tompson. She parks in a month-by-month space leased in Albany. Rent at RV parks ranges from $450 to $1500 a month, according to Tompson. She notes that restrictions apply: some parks won’t admit an RV that’s over a decade old, which Tompson thinks is due to parks storing “visually pleasing” RVs rather than being a safety measure.
Tompson doesn’t love everything about living in her van. Meeting people is a challenge — as Tomp-
Left: Shainna Thomspon lays across her bed in her Winnebago RV. Thompson renovated her RV in 2022 to match her nomadic lifestyle. The RV has running water, heat and a kitchen designed for Thomspon to live comfortably year-round.
“I love being able to take an empty shell and, in my mind, build something. I get to take those ideas in my head and use my hands as tools. It literally brings it to life.”
Isaac Turner stands in front of his Toyota Tundra in Lowell, Oregon. Turner, a van-life influencer and musician, spends his weekends camping and exploring Oregon’s forests. During the week, he is busy
son accepts. “I feel like on the road, it’s a little tougher [to socialize] because people are protective of their own space. I haven’t really met a lot of women on the road,” she said. “I keep
e Van” podcast host and social activist, Marty Benson entered van-life to tackle ordable housing crisis. Benson says the US is a car-reliant society and that’s his reason for trying to live in a vehicle. Cars take up cant public space that Benson believes could be used for low-income housing. He said a van doesn’t fall into the car category because it is a habitable mobile home — a ordable living.
“I’ve always been a bit of a minimalist,” Benson said. It’s one of the reasons he once enjoyed living in his Mercedes Metris van. e idea of making everything [in the van] a Swiss Army knife was really interesting to me. Packing as much as you can get into as small of a space as possible.” Benson says people do van life as a stepping-stone to fnding their forever spot — where they eventually settle into a home — like himself. Benson names Oregon, and Portland in particular, as more tolerant than other parts of the Pacifc North-
Van enthusiast Isaac Turner has one foot in van life and one foot in his rental house. During the week, he makes music and con-
verts school buses into livable homes. On the weekends, he travels in his unnamed Toyota Tundra conversion to obscure forests along the Cascade Mountain range.
“I love being able to take an empty shell and, in my mind, build something,” he said, referring to the school buses. “I get to take those ideas in my head and use my hands as tools. It literally brings it to life.”
Van life presents some niche opportunities. For Turner, this looks like one of his school buses landing on the big screen for a 2019 Super Bowl commercial. Turner puts this down to his Instagram presence and previous school bus conversion eforts.
When he’s able to, Turner plans to return to full-time van life to work on his 50-state-traveled wish list. But today, he’s focusing on raising his two-year-old on solid ground. “I see everybody getting older. I see people dying younger than they want to die,” Turner said. “I just want to experience and see things that I haven’t seen. I don’t want to die and have been to only three states. I just want to have a little bit of life under my belt.”
Tat desire to experience life a little freer than most is what connects all members of the van life community. It’s a magnetic idea but it comes with many challenges. Some will fnd a way to fnd their forever home while, for others, it’s more of a long vacation. S
Where
Red Blue
& intermix
Oregon House District 52 is a microcosm of modern American politics. No one party holds majority control. Winning the district might come down to bucking the trend of hyper-partisan politics.
Story by Pierce Baugh
Illustrations by Kevin McAndrews
Inside a two-foor community center in Northwest Oregon with teal walls, wooden foors and a teenager manning the front desk, nearly 30 people are in attendance to hear Nick Walden Poublon speak. Most are silver-haired, but there is a rambunctious toddler and even a balloon artist on hand. Walden Poublon makes his way to the front. His campaign launched its frst event in Sandy, Oregon — population 12,953 — which sits in House District 52. Tis is a swing district, historically wavering between red and blue. His campaign needs steam, especially since the incumbent he’ll be up against in November is perhaps the most powerful Republican in the state — House Minority Leader Jef Helfrich.
“I know that this is going to be a really hard process,” said Waldon Poublon. “And it’s going to take a lot of time and energy.”
Unlike many of the Democrats in the state, Walden
Poublon says he has to choose his words and positions carefully; he’s a rural Democrat.
“Fifty-two is an interesting district because it has a variety of small to midsize towns and cities rather than any large urban area,” Lori Kuechler said. Kuechler is a former District 52 representative. She employed Walden Poublon as an aide when she was in ofce. “And then there’s a lot of rural constituents with varying interests and needs and farming and timber, and environmental interests as well.”
District 52 exemplifes Oregon. With Mt. Hood in the heart of the district, it spreads roughly 50 miles in each direction from the mountain. Some refer to District 52 as the “real Oregon,” a meeting point for the conservative East and the progressive West.
Making this section of Oregon even more intriguing is the recent promotion of state Senator Daniel Bonham
to Senate Republican Leader, whose Senate District 26 overlaps House District 52. Unlike House District 52, Senate District 26 has been a Republican stronghold
am, that what our party is trying to accomplish in this state without variance,’” Kuechler said.
She believes Helfrich’s position as minority leader could bolster Walden Poublon’s campaign. “One of the reasons I think Nick could win is because Jef is not going to be able to deviate from that platform in any way,
e race is already beginning to heat up — cold calls are being made, doors are being knocked on, money is being donated, speeches are being given and candidates
In March, Helfrich was accused by a political science professor from Willamette University in Salem, Oregon, of an antisemitic dog whistle when Helfrich placed some of the blame for Measure 110’s passage on groups funded by George Soros. It’s an accusation that “lacked evidence,” the Anti-Defamation League said. WhenPeter Courtney, the longest-ever serving state Senate president and a former House member, entered politics,
“I was very fortunate to mingle with some very good legislators on both sides of the aisle,” Courtney said. “I was learning, and I was learning by observing and listening. You kept your word, you gave your word. I also was trained by Republicans as well as Democrats back then,
“Your freshmen [representatives] come in, they don’t ey just start talking frst day, or a person who gets freshly appointed to a vacancy talks on rst day. So that’s all changed,” Courtney said. He’s concerned for the future. “I do think that things are really bad right now, very serious. And your generation [Millennials, Gen Z] is going to have to save the day. Because if you can’t do it, then we’re done.”
Courtney believes that by refusing to collaborate with counterparts on the other side of the aisle, simply beliated with, politicians also exclude the constituency they are sworn to represent. Lost then is the ability to bring communities together. at unity is something Courtney is hopeful will return as Gen Z becomes more involved with politics and less concerned with conforming to labels like red or blue. R
to
Story by Carlie Weigel
PHOTO BY ELIOTT CODA
Herland Forests’ Walt Patrick stands in the cemetery beside a small sled used to transport the deceased to their final resting place during snowy months. Herland Forest operates year-round.
A “Amy Berman and Andrew Moss always wanted a child. Kai, who they planned to name after the ocean, was supposed to be the result of an embryo transfer. When Amy developed an infection in the placenta and he died, their lives were forever changed.
After undergoing an emergency hysterectomy, which negated the possibility of conceiving again, Amy was in a medically-induced coma for about a week. Andrew, meanwhile, had to determine where and how to bury Kai. Reluctant to purchase a traditional cemetery plot, he was drawn to the ethos of Herland Forest.
“It’s in line with, more than anything, just the way that we would have hoped to have raised Kai,” Andrew said. “What we had hoped to pass along to him was and is inspired by the natural world — a closer human connection to the natural world and a more intense awareness of our position in it.”
Nestled atop of a serene hillside in the unincorporated town of Wahkiacus, Washington, is Herland Forest, a nonproft cemetery. Along this eastern fringe of the Cascadian wilderness, winter blankets the ground with snow as spring brings forth vibrant wildfowers. Walt Patrick, its lead steward, helped Amy and Andrew bury Kai. Tere, natural burial — a practice where the deceased are interred directly into the ground — eschews embalming and cofns in favor of organic decomposition.
Traditional burial and cremation methods are a heavy burden on the planet. Embalming fuids laden with formaldehyde contaminate soil and groundwater, and the production of caskets consumes valuable resources. According to the Funeral Consumers Alliance, 30 million feet of lumber and 90,000 tons of steel are buried in the U.S. each year. Not to mention, 535 pounds of carbon are released into the atmosphere with a single cremation, which is the equivalent of a 600-mile journey in a gas-powered car. As awareness grows about the environmental impact of conventional end-of-life practices, alternatives, including those of Herland Forest and its counterparts, ofer a green and meaningful approach to honoring the dead.
At Herland Forest, natural burials act as a conservation efort. Human remains safeguard the land from development, and those who decide to lay to rest in the cemetery, Patrick said, are the “guardians of the forest.”
In the process, bodies are dressed in biodegradable shrouds and cocooned with wood chips gathered from broken branches and scattered tree bark. Oxygen and water permeate the ground through a drainage pipe, which acts as a conduit for nourishment. It fosters germination where the departed become part of the forest. One grave site, for example, supports 23 baby ponderosa pine trees.
“ Te body has crucial elements in it that need to go back into the ground so the trees can grow and recreate themselves,” Patrick said. “ Tey’re all eager to welcome the new person into the grave.”
Sometimes, the next of kin will request a particular tree on top, such as chokecherries or crabapples. A canopy of native oak, fr and pines also weave a tapestry of color and fragrance, feeding the permaculture ecosystem and local wildlife.
Andrew and Amy recently planted a western serviceberry on Kai’s plot. Its sweet fruit is one of Andrew’s favorites, and over the years, he has convinced Amy to love them, too. Tey look forward to watching it grow in the stead of their baby who never got the chance.
At 75, Patrick has made arrangements for his own death. He will have a natural burial and return to the land he lovingly stewards. At the bed of his grave, which he prepared
“They're all eager to welcome the new person into the grave.
-
Walt Patrick
in 2016, lies a purple fuorite crystal. In some geological settings, the stone is found alongside gold deposits.
Planning for death, in Patrick’s eyes, is an expression of love. His decision to prepare his own grave was born out of consideration for those he cares about and the practicalities of laying someone to rest during a time of grief. He fnds
PHOTO BY ELIOTT CODA
Herland Forest operates five handmade body composting vessels, each temperature-regulated — powered by hydroelectric and solar energy. The remains of the deceased will stay in the vessel for many months until the thermostat temperature drops to 90 degrees Fahrenheit.
peace in knowing this burden is lifted from their shoulders.
“Confront your mortality,” Patrick said. “It’s there. Tere’s nothing new and novel about it.”
While Herland Forest nurtures this symbiotic relationship between the departed and the land, Patrick oversees another innovative approach to green death care: natural organic reduction, otherwise known as human composting, during which human remains are transformed into soil.
“We take the natural part of the natural organic reduction real seriously,” Patrick said. “We’re not doing it in an industrial park or in an industrial warehouse. We’re doing it out in the forest, and so the process is dependent upon temperature.”
Te process nearly mirrors the cycle that takes place below ground during a natural burial. Te deceased are laid into a round above-ground vessel, which is insulated with wood chips and temperature-regulated using a heating pad powered by hydroelectric and solar energy. As the body heats up within the vessel, it will break down over many months, typically until the thermostat reads a temperature below 90 degrees Fahrenheit. Winter yields a slower progression than summer.
Following this stage, the remaining bones intermingled with the compost are removed and reduced to a fne powder. Te resulting soil’s texture is refned by a wood chipper. It’s then transferred into a large barrel and heated to 131 degrees Fahrenheit for an additional three days to pasteurize. A sample is sent to a state-certifed soil laboratory for testing. Scientists will look for zinc, mercury, selenium and
Walt Patrick gazes out on his nonprofit cemetery in Washington state. Named Herland Forest, the area provides natural burial and natural organic reduction for people after their death.
PHOTO BY HARPER MAHOOD
potential contaminants, like E. coli, before ensuring the soil’s quality and safety. Once the process is complete, descendants will receive up to 355 gallons of soil.
“We all do this,” Patrick said, “because we have a calling to care for life and its forms.”
Return Home, located in Auburn, Washington, a suburb 30 miles south of Seattle, specializes in natural organic reduction. Inside the facility, rectangular metal vessels stack three tiers high. Te scenery resembles that of a Costco, yet vibrant sliding panels painted with trees soften the surroundings, as do the mementos adorning each vessel. Some feature photos and letters. Fresh bouquets rest atop others. One is decorated with a collection of “PAW Patrol” stufed animals.
end-of-life option in Washington. By advocating for legalization of the process, she not only sought to ofer a sustainable and eco-friendly alternative to traditional burial and cremation methods but to provide people with autonomy over their bodies.
Only eight states in the U.S. recognize human composting as a legal afterlife choice.
““We’re really passionate about the experience,” Smith said, “and the rationalizations that have been developed around the process.”
While the process is diferent than the one at Herland Forest, the objective remains the same: to transform human remains to soil.
Katrina Spade, the founder of Recompose, another human composting facility in Seattle, shares Smith and Patrick’s fervor for returning life to nature.
“We think of composting as a craft,” Spade said. “It is a science. It is an art. Tere’s engineering to it.”
Spade founded Recompose before natural organic reduction was certifed as a legitimate
There’s so much potential to reconnect us to nature, especially when we face the end of our lives.
- Katrina Spade
In spite of these numbers, Spade is resolute in her vision for the future of natural organic reduction. She sees it becoming the default.
“If that was the case, we’d be saving millions of tons of carbon every year, and we’d be aligning, in such a diferent way, the fact of our mortality with the health of the planet,” Spade said. “ Tere’s so much potential to reconnect us to nature, especially when we face the end of our lives.”
Operational and logistical complexities, however, loom large in eco-funeralisms’ path to scalability. Patrick said that fnding individuals willing to do this unconventional work poses a challenge. At Herland Forest, he’s content operating just fve composting vessels.
“I worry about when I meet somebody, do they smell death on me?” he said. “ Tat death smell lingers. Only a certain number of people want to be involved in that.”
“
Washington was the frst to do so in 2019, followed by Colorado and Oregon in 2021. According to the National Funeral Directors Association, approximately 60% of Americans are interested in exploring green funeral options, yet 95% of the population still opts for traditional burial or cremation.
As a nonproft cemetery, Herland Forest faces hurdles in recruiting and retaining staf. Te practical considerations of upscaling operations are daunting, and Patrick fnds meaning in the intimate scale of his work.
“No growth will kill you, but too fast growth will kill you, too,” he said. “It’s called cancer, and I don’t want to see cancer take over what we’re doing here.”
Patrick is passionate about the ethics underlying what he does, where the commodifcation of grief can take precedence over hon-
Walt Patrick unties a young crab apple tree from atop a grave. Many of the graves at Herland Forest are topped with trees, adding to the forest’s diverse ecology.
PHOTO BY HARPER MAHOOD
“It helps for us to situate grief and situate loss and situate all the existential questions that come to mind when you're thinking about losing somebody.“
- Andrew Moss
oring the deceased with dignity. He loses sleep over the lack of space for authentic mourning in an environment driven by fnances and efciency.
“One of the problems in my mind with the death care industry is that there’s no place for grief,” Patrick said. “It’s all about, ‘Time is money. Get people in. Get as much money as you can and move on to the next one.’”
Due to the traumatic nature of Amy and Andrew’s loss, they needed time and space to process, which Herland Forest provided them both.
“ Te solitude out there is amazing,” Andrew said. “It helps for us to situate grief and situate loss and situate all the existential questions that come to mind when you’re thinking about losing somebody.”
Te couple has camped beside Kai’s grave several times, and will continue to do so. Tey have a newfound interest in the continuity of Herland Forest. Andrew wants to visit all the graves.
“I view the place and the interaction with the place and everything that comes from it as an ofshoot of Kai,” Andrew said. “ Tere is meaning in that, especially for a child that never got to interact with the world.”
Right: An American flag and a makeshift wooden cross marks one of the graves in Herland Forest.
PHOTO BY HARPER MAHOOD
PRESERVING THE PAST
Many of the places we walk by every day have a deeper history. Eugene’s historians want to make sure they aren’t forgotten.
Story by Bart Brewer
The campus experience at the University of Oregon looked completely diferent in 1912. Students would swim and paddle canoes along the millrace, now a sluggish and polluted creek. Partygoers caught the “drunk-special” trolley afterward for a night on the town in Springfeld, where the rails are now paved over.
What’s left of this era may seem inconsequential at a glance. Why pay a muddy creek and rusting rails any attention when there are more intriguing sights to see? Tese features, however, are both tied into the foundation of Eugene.
In the 112 years since 1912, we’ve forgotten parts of the city’s history, even those that helped form its identity. It’s a history worth preserving.
Eugene’s millrace — a channel of swift water used to power mills — runs directly
through the north end of University of Oregon’s campus, parallel to the Willamette River. Peering down from one of the many bridges that cross it, there isn’t much to see today — a listless body of water fowing between two muddy banks. Its memory of a more rapid current refects a legacy in decline.
A place you can explore that legacy is the Lane County History Museum. Among displays of covered wagons and turn of the century frefghting, one can peruse the archives with the museum’s Interim Director Marin Aurand.
“Eugene has been really good at tearing down old buildings to the point that a lot of things that would have historic signifcance aren’t here anymore,” Aurand said. “I think that the millrace is one of those really good last vestiges of early Eugene and campus culture.”
Aurand, a doctoral student studying history
at the University of Oregon, researches the history of small communities, gender and labor. She’s had a passion for history most of her life.
“My mother is a genealogist,” Aurand said. “It was just very much part of how I grew up — that it was important to know where you came from and who came before you.”
Te millrace is one of the places the city grew up in. To understand its historical signifcance to Eugene, “you need to know the history,” Aurand said.
Before the millrace, a natural slough branched of the Willamette River. Tis convenient feature saved precious time and resources when laborers dug the channel in 1851.
Te millrace is what charged Eugene’s expansion. Its implementation “really helped Eugene to settle,” Aurand said. A gristmill produced four, a woolen mill spun cloth and
A group of students scramble as their canoe tips over, one of their members plunging into the water circa 1950. Onlookers laugh at the situation.
PHOTOS PROVIDED BY UNIVERSITY OF OREGON LIBRARIES
several sawmills cut wood. Tis furry of production helped to bolster the city’s economy and incorporate the town by 1862. “It’s a really good example of how we have worked with and against nature to create this community,” Aurand said.
Mills weren’t the only things that dominated the millrace. Recreation on the water began as early as 1885 when it froze over during a frigid winter — residents skated on the surface and built raging bonfres on its banks.
In 1900, recreation boomed with a canoe craze. University of Oregon students held the frst canoe fête on the millrace in 1915, hosting a pageant of decorated canoes near where the Knight Science Campus stands today. “It was a lot of pomp,” Aurand said. “It was a pretty popular part of campus life.”
Fête is French for celebration. Students would decorate their canoes to resemble just about anything: a dragon, a blooming water lily or a scene right from “Alice in Wonderland.”
Canoe fêtes were held as part of junior weekend, when the junior class would cele-
brate becoming seniors at the start of each summer. Fraternity and sorority houses participated heavily, spending dozens of hours making their foats.
A surviving leafet from the 1930 canoe fête, “Les Fleurs de La Nuit,” meaning “ Te Flowers of the Night,” ofers a glimpse into the event’s structure. It featured foats, like “In a Temple Garden,” by the Zeta Tau Alpha sorority. Virginia Esterly, the dean of women at the time, judged the canoes. Onlookers would watch foats drift by from a grandstand on the south bank.
Te millrace was also a popular spot for fraternities and romantic getaways. It became the cultural touchpoint of the area. “Creating this space that was specifcally geared towards that cultural moment when you’re entering into adulthood was a very 1920s thing,” Aurand said. “It’s very Gatsby.”
In 1945, however, the millrace began its spiral into obscurity, when a major food smashed the intake dam along the Willamette River. A lack of investment for repairs prompted the channel to go dry for four years. When a weak water fow returned to the millrace in 1949 via a new pump system, it took on its contemporary, swampy aesthetic.
Te last canoe fête was held in 1970. Student involvement and water conditions had worsened. Canoeing and throwing parties on the millrace had grown out of fashion because “you wouldn’t want to spend your time doing what your parents did in college,” Aurand said.
Now, 54 years later, the millrace remains but in the form of a stagnant creek — the mills and canoes gone and the channel dependent on supplemental water to prevent it from becoming a stinking mud pit. It’s in a state far from its former glory.
Te history of the millrace is one many University of Oregon students and Eugene residents don’t know exists. Local historians, like Aurand, think that telling the story of the millrace is integral to preserving the history of Eugene.
“ Te millrace is a really good example of a community history because it touches on absolutely everything about Eugene,” Aurand
said. “You can talk about early settlement, how Kalapuya peoples would have used the slough, about the coming of industry. Te millrace can tell all of those stories in a compelling way, if we take the time to preserve and protect that area.”
Just as the millrace was a cultural center for the University of Oregon, the old streetcar system is what brought students to it. From 1907 to 1927, Eugene’s electric streetcar rumbled from College Hill to Springfeld, ferrying students and residents across town. Tese days the rails are quiet. Only metal and memories remain.
Randy Gudeika, a Eugene historian, knows the rails well. Having spent the last 20 years researching local lore, he aims to keep the tale of the rails alive.
“Historic preservation is important to the mental health of a city,” Gudeika said. “To see that things are able to continue. Tat history doesn’t just disappear.”
Gudeika has conducted walking tours of old neighborhoods in Eugene since 2017. He’s a self-proclaimed “bottomless pit” of information about Eugene’s past, and wants
Alder Street looking north from 13th Avenue. (c. 1912)
Students paddle an Eiffel Tower-themed canoe raft down the Eugene millrace.
Two students row along the eastern section of the millrace circa 1972.
Stories have to be told, if they don’t, they die. If they die, we don’t know why we’re here.
-Randy Gudeika
to share his knowledge with others.
“I help people see their neighborhoods in a new light,” Gudeika said. “ Tings that they took for granted they don’t take for granted anymore because they know the stories behind them.”
Before electric streetcars rumbled along the rails, Henry Holden of Fort Worth, Texas, utilized a diferent form of power. He moved to Oregon in 1891, and introduced Eugene to the mule-pulled carts that serviced portions of Willamette Street, 11th Avenue and College Hill.
Te rail system started as a loop, circling the east side of campus. It traveled south to the Masonic Cemetery before returning to the streetcar barn, located where Oregon Hall is today on 13th Avenue. Future lines would expand outward — one orbiting College Hill, another proceeding west along 11th Avenue and the last heading east into Springfeld.
some still visible in College Hill and along University and Moss Street.
“Stories have to be told,” Gudeika said. “If they don’t, they die. If they die, we don’t know why we’re here.”
On Gudeika’s walking tours of the Fairmount neighborhood, he stops along the rails, which are partially covered with asphalt and crosswalks.
“ Tere is a little disappointment that we lost something,” Gudeika said.
With eight mules — Sam, Crickett, Molly, Dallas, Shave Tail, Belle, Dave and Buck — and four carts, the service ran until 1900. It never profted during its nine years of operation. Te service was at a standstill most of the time during the rainy season.
In 1907, the Eugene & Eastern Railway Company fnished construction of a new electric streetcar line that was popular among locals.
“Everyone rode the trolleys before cars came,” Gudeika said. “It was when the community wasn’t separated. Everyone rode together.”
Te Springfeld line was especially popular among students eager to drink. Eugene became a “dry” town in 1908 when alcohol was banned in the city. Springfeld remained “wet,” continuing to supply alcohol, making the rail line useful for students wanting to skirt Eugene liquor laws.
“It went out to Springfeld because students demanded it,” Gudeika said. “On Friday nights, the last trolley from Springfeld was called the drunk special.”
Te last streetcar ran in October of 1927 after the Eugene City Council voted to replace the transportation system with motorized buses, which were deemed better for congestion on city streets. Now, only the rails remain —
Some people wish the streetcar system still carried students to campus. Others miss the canoe fêtes on the millrace. While they are unlikely to make a comeback anytime soon, their memories live on through their impact on Eugene and the historians who work to make them known.
Looking south on Willamette Street toward intersection at 7th Avenue. (c. 1910)
A large crowd gathers at the banks of the Eugene millrace to watch students paddle a decorated canoe raft. The raft is decorated with a large model birthday cake.
CONDITIONS
Nurses across the region have faced hardship, loss and struggle in the workplace. Despite all of this, they still fight on, providing patient care in the midst of the chaos.
Story by Sylvia Davidow and Anna Ward
ICAL
Kevyn Paul stands outside PeaceHealth Sacred Heart Medical Center RiverBend on her last day in the emergency department.
PHOTO BY EVAN SUSSWOOD
A
AAt 5:30 a.m., Heather Herbert rises with the sun. Te pop hit “About Damn Time” by Lizzo plays as she gets out of bed.
She shufes to her kitchen, brews a fresh pot of cofee and prepares some oatmeal; a meal that will sustain her throughout the busy day of meeting with patients. Herbert is a hospice nurse with PeaceHealth Sacred Heart Home Care Services. It is her frst week back with her patients since the Eugene-area nursing strike ended.
After breakfast, she bundles up and signals to her schnauzer Harley it’s time for their morning walk in the brisk, winter air. Upon returning home, Herbert squeezes in 15 minutes of guitar practice before her shower.
After selecting her favorite work outft — a fowery, everyday blouse paired with red scrub pants — Herbert grabs her lunch and says goodbye to her pets, heads out the door and drives of in her 2002 Volkswagen Golf.
Busy, early mornings don’t bother Herbert. She would do anything for her patients. She self-identifes as a “mama bear” and treats her patients like her kids. It was painful for Herbert to leave her patients in the hands of temporary nurses while chanting for better working conditions in front of the RiverBend Annex building in Springfeld. A strike that lasted two weeks.
“You feel like you left your kids with an unknown babysitter,” Herbert said.
Nurses across Oregon are facing major shifts in their workplace. Between the closures of low-stafed hospitals and the inability to make a living wage, it’s hard to remain positive in a job that is about providing care for patients in need.
Tis shift is not specifc to Oregon. All around the nation, nurses experiencing burnout have opted to move to diferent hospital-level positions for better pay. Others have decided to leave the healthcare industry altogether. To date,“88% of nurses
voice concerns about the detrimental efects of stafng shortages on patient care,” according to the Incredible Health’s 2024 State of US Nursing Report.
Te main contributor is burnout, especially after the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the National Institutes of Health.
Despite the hardships they face, nurses are still holding on, fghting for a stable career in the healthcare industry. Nursing, a job that is about giving essential care to people who need it most, has become a fght to stay positive in the midst of corporate battles, abrupt closures and stafng shortages. Above all, it’s a fght for nurses to maintain their humanity.
Around fve miles away, in the PeaceHealth Sacred Heart Medical Center at RiverBend emergency department, charge nurse Kevyn Paul is dealing with patient backlog. Paul yearns to be more proactive with her staf, but due to a crowded ER lobby, she’s reactive to dealing with situations as they come up.
Paul transferred to RiverBend after her old hospital, PeaceHealth Sacred Heart Medical Center at University District, shut down in December. She recalls the memories of caring for the people at University District.
“We formed a very tight community. It was a community setting before Riverbend opened,” Paul said.
She likes working with a team. However, at RiverBend, Paul is fnding her new job more isolating than before. Her days are flled with patient care, something she loves, but she longs for the collaboration and shared laughs she had at University District.
“A workplace can be a kind of a community and a kind of family,” Paul said. “A rather dysfunctional family.”
Today, Paul is busy on her feet as patients continue to fow in and out of the lobby. Tey stream into rooms and out the door or upstairs to more waiting and other stressed nurses. Running around and making sure doctors have all the supplies they need
Far left: Hospice nurse
Heather Herbert stands within a neighborhood of Springfield, Oregon. Herbert cares for three to five patients a day.
Left: PeaceHealth hospice nurse Heather Herbert stores a variety of supplies and care equipment in the back of her car for accessibility when visiting patients.
PHOTOS BY ELIOTT CODA
to treat each person is Paul’s way of ensuring patient care.
Hospice care tends to look diferent from hospital care. Herbert is on her patient’s schedule, providing end-of-life care that keeps patients comfortable throughout their fnal days.
‘“Breaking the rules” is something Herbert likes to do. If a patient is worried constantly about their blood sugar, once they enter hospice care, they’re free to eat all the cake they want. “We get to fgure out how to comfortably and safely celebrate the life that’s happening rather than think about the inevitable future,” she said.
One of Herbert’s prized possessions is a sticker saying “Don’t grow up, it’s a trap.” Te sticker is a reminder for her to stay playful and curious in life. When she is with her patients is when she is most playful, dancing around their room and singing made-up songs: a form of care.
Her time with her patients reminders her that life is precious and it’s important to cherish it.
Someone who cherishes life to the fullest is Nick Tiret, a military veteran and current operating room nurse at Kaiser Permanente Sunnyside Medical Center in Clackamas.
He served time in Somalia as his second duty station where he helped operate a makeshift hospital in the midst of the Battle of Mogadishu. In Somalia, Tiret worked in 36-hour shifts, constantly going into surgeries and sterilizing instruments, then trying to sleep before doing it all again.
“It’s one of the best and worst things that I’ve ever done in my life. What we did and how many people we saved,” Tiret said.
Days at Kaiser Sunnyside feel calmer than his time in the military. Te pinnacle of Tiret’s job is his patients. However, between being constantly short-stafed and trying to fll in the gaps while raising a seventeen-year-old, Tiret misses quality time with his patients.
He believes life is about putting love and labor into a plethora of minute tasks.
“It’s one of the best and worst things that I’ve ever done in my life. What we did and how many people we saved.”
- Nick Thiret
Tiret lives in a 99-year-old house located in Oak Grove — a lush, green suburb just south of Portland. Tiret is content with his job in surgery. He loves the mechanics of it all.
“Standing two feet from someone’s skull that’s open and you’re looking at their brain is amazing,” he said. “It’s like how many people get to do that?”
Tiret was entranced by surgeries after viewing a PBS health program while he was studying accounting at a community college. Tat program prompted him to join the military where he trained as a surgeon tech.
“I don’t have to be the best at one thing. I just need to be good at everything,” Tiret said.
Around 2 p.m., Herbert arrives home after a fairly easy day of checking up on her patients. She changes into comfortable clothes, sits at her ofce desk and types away at her computer, checking up on her patients’ families while her cat Cheesecake purrs in her lap. Herbert ofcially clocks of at 4:30 p.m. and can now focus on dinner with her boyfriend and his daughter.
She talks with her boyfriend while assembling ingredients. Tonight they’re eating pasta with Alfredo, broccoli and pesto chicken. As the two crack jokes, his daughter fnishes her French homework at the kitchen counter. Herbert loves cooking because she gets to pair one of her creative outlets with shared quality time.
As dinner comes to an end, everyone makes their way to the fold-out couch to relax. Te three watch TV and chat, and after a few hours, Herbert is ready for bed. Once her head hits the pillow, she closes her eyes, tomorrow she will do it all again.
S
Kaiser Permanente Sunnyside Medical Center nurse Nick Thiret stands in front of his Portland home, a 15-minute drive from the operating room.
PHOTO BY ELIOTT CODA
With a keen eye for detail, Adam Sawyer finds joy in the simpleness of a leaf’s surface, describing it as “fine and fragile as rice paper,” honoring the small wonders that nature presents.
this must be the place
Facing life’s hardships, two environmental enthusiasts find solace in the reflective seclusion of the great northwestern outdoors.
Story by Ethan Harmon
Rushes of white water from North Falls in Oregon’s Silver Falls State Park create a hypnotic drone that blankets the rustling forest. Only the occasional bird call breaks through. Above, a pale white sky contrasts the lush greenery. Adam Sawyer scans it for birds.
A memory dawns on him.
He is transported back to the early morning beach walks he would take in Tillamook following the loss of his wife, Kara, in a house fre on Feb. 25, 2022. Cormorants fy in jagged, anxious patterns above him. Tey contrast the pelicans, who soar and coast with grace. “I remember thinking, ‘If I’m ever in a place where I have the opportunity to fy again, I’ll try to remember what I learned from the pelicans,’” he said.
Sawyer herds his epiphanies into his blog, “Collecting Sunsets.” Its meditations on grief often intertwine his loss with wide-eyed reverence for the outdoors. No detail is disregarded. Sawyer might pass a tangle of tree roots on a hike. Suddenly, that rears a revelation about persevering in defance of life’s hurdles. As Sawyer said, “You grow the way you have to grow.”
Research by the National Institutes of Health indicates a strong correlation between outdoor exposure and improved mental well-being. For many, like Sawyer, developing an intimate relationship with the natural world helps in navigating hardships.
When he frst discovered Silver Falls, it was a refuge from his old IT job. He fell in love with the whimsically-named wildfowers — salmonberries and
Photos by Danielle Lichtenstein
Adam Sawyer stands at the bottom of a waterfall in Silver Falls State Park, Silverton, Oregon, admiring the sights and sounds of dense nature surrounding him.
fairyslippers and candyfowers — and trails that wind for miles into patches of solitude. Tere he could fnd comfort in feeling “like a wonderfully useful small cog” in the world. Sawyer’s recollections of walking behind waterfalls and losing himself in spring’s “greening out of everything” reveal adoration in his voice. Every change he notes from last season’s visit uncovers something new that helped soften his grief. “ Te way I hike has changed since the loss,” he said. “I’m not really counting mileage or elevation gain anymore, or even hours spent. I’m just observing and paying attention to the cycles.”
He picks up a vine maple leaf that winter discarded. Time has sapped its chlorophyll, leaving it as frail as rice paper. Still, the leaf perseveres. Soon it will reintegrate into the soil.
Te most remarkable moments for Sawyer come when something clicks during a trek and an entire essay pours out.
“It feels almost inspired, right?” he said. “Like, ‘Oh my gosh, this just came out the way it had to come out.’” In a post entitled “My Favorite Places,” Sawyer called his home with Kara “unequivocally my favorite place on Earth.” Where can he go when that is gone?
Nature is indefnite. So be it. Sawyer isn’t interested in
“Go at different times, go at different seasons and go for seemingly different reasons.”
- Adam Sawyer
Pamela
defnite answers, he prefers to go “hunting for perspectives.”
“Perspectives, for me, give insight without the answer part,” he said. “I don’t have the answers to why Kara’s life ended, but I at least have the perspective that life continues.”
It’s uncertain how the coming seasons will alter Silver Falls’ landscape. On this spring morning, Sawyer’s eye catches the clover-green leaves of a wood sorrel. He picks it and relishes the sweet taste. For a few minutes more, his thirst for tranquility has been slaked.
Tirst enhances the sensory experience Pamela Sue Johnson seeks while hiking the moss-enveloped forests surrounding Lake Merwin in Amboy, Washington. “I like to eat the forest when I walk,” she said, bending over to pick a wood sorrel. She slips it in her mouth and chews briefy, examining the taste. “ Tat’s a nice, sweet one,” she said with a satisfed exhale.
She revels in the moment before carrying on. Gravel crunches under her weathered leather boots. Te echo bouncing around the forest a reminder of Lake Merwin’s remoteness.
On the way to her favorite kayaking spot, her enthusiasm for the scenery reveals itself in keen observation and freewheeling humor. She notes the “tall, striking blooms” of nascent lupines, bending the adjectives to give them form with her voice. When a big leaf maple tree catches her eye,
she mimics its contortions almost instinctively. “Look at her, she’s voluptuous,” she said. “Look at her, man. She’s sassy. Tat’s a good-looking tree.”
Johnson’s family once owned a small residence by Lake Merwin. Te bond she’s developed with Merwin is years in the making. “Lake Merwin is my favorite therapist,” Johnson said.
Te reservoir is now an essential part of Johnson. In turn, she too has become a part of it. Te lakebed contains several mementos Johnson has cast into Merwin over the years in the pursuit of fnally letting the past go. A necklace an ex-boyfriend made her now lies somewhere under Yale Bridge.
At the tip of Johnson’s favorite trail is a boneyard rich with animal remains. She brushes her hand through a thin layer of leaves with an archaeologist’s precision. A few vertebrae surface. “I just feel so much life force, so much energy,” she said, assessing her discoveries. She tucks her selections into her backpack.
Tey will end up adorning the “Wishing Tree” outside her home. Passersby are encouraged to write down their desires and tie them to the evergreen’s branches. Backwoods bones rarely fnd themselves engulfed by strangers. But Johnson thinks it’s the least she can do to give back to the place that has so empathetically enveloped her. K
Johnson, hiking in a secluded part of Amboy, Washington, near Lake Merwin. She pauses to catch her breath and admire the trees.
PEACE WAR is more difficult than
I’d be remiss if I didn’t address the violence engulfng our world today. Whether in countries 7,000 miles away or in our own backyards.
Humans are unique in the animal kingdom as we have the wherewithal to recognize the pain and sufering we’re experiencing but still actively choose to infict it upon others — our future leaders, our neighbors, our fellow Homo sapiens. Te cycle of abuse, hurt, violence and hate is passed on. Tere isn’t an efortless fx.
Recognizing how that cycle destroys the world around us and taking a stand to no longer perpetuate it is the only way to stop it permanently.
It’s easy to make these observations while in a multimillion-dollar building, thousands of miles away from any active war zone, surrounded by creature comforts and fresh air in Eugene, Oregon.
I recognize we’re not on the front lines, however, I also recognize that I have a platform to demand change. Not using it would be a disservice to those in need without their own bullhorn from which to shout.
Martin Niemöller summed up this sentiment post-WWII. “ Ten they came for me — and there was no one left to speak for me.”
Apathy is the silent companion to bigotry, hate and fear. Fear is a powerful instrument. It is easy to wield against our natural instincts.
We’re built to seek out our tribes in life. Coded in us is a desire to be a part of a pack, a cohort of like-minded individuals. Since the dawn of recorded history, we’ve seen people weaponize that desire and use it to justify the unjustifable.
Just as breathing is coded into our DNA, so too is our sense of desire for a community. What is lost in so many is that we’re all part of a pack from birth. Te humanity pack.
Instead of that recognition, we’re inundated with neighbor-versus-neighbor violence. Whether it be Democrats and Republicans, Nationalists and Loyalists, Protestants and Catholics, Israeli and Palestinian, Kuki and Meitei, Christian nationalism and antithetical views. By creating divisions — such as religious belief, it becomes easier to justify the horrible treatment we execute.
While we have seen many cases where violence seems never-ending, we also have cases that provide hope. Look no further than ‘ Te Troubles’ of Northern Ireland. Decades of violence and hate ended through two referendums– the Good Friday Agreement. Pens, not guns. Words, not car bombs. Concessions, not divisions. Tat’s what ended 30 years of torment.
To break the bonds of hate and violence we need one generation to acknowledge the sufering and refuse to pass it down to the next.
I’m not so naive as to think that one article in a magazine will change the world, rather, change can’t happen if no one makes a statement. If there are no calls for our fellow humans to behave better, care more deeply about our connections as one group, then the spread of hate and conficts of war will continue to thrive.
In the end, we are who and what we stand up for.
Story by Johnny Media Illustrations by Gillian Blaufus R
