Springtime comes creeping like hope. I walked to lunch at noon and could see in the soggy black ground the beginnings of the very first blades pushing from the earth. The world turned green over night, flush green moss blooms on every surface, telephone poles, sidewalks, tree branches, automobiles.

This is a dirty old town, dreams drowned in the rain and fortunes buried like cigarette butts in the mud. Eugene is the first name of the man who settled here, built a cabin on a hillside overlooking the river. A chimney made of river rock and basalt still remains. It was once called Skinnerville and I think that would be a more appropriate name for this grimy old lumber-industry farm-community college town.

Gravel alleyways creep between the narrow crooked potholed streets. Mill houses built 200 years ago and monstrous maples and fir trees, ramshackle barns converted into houses or garages stacked between the tiny apartment complexes give the yin-yang feelings of suffocation and safety.

Everything rots in the rain. This is the land of shadows and rainbows, and the sunshine blares brilliant in brief gashes through the clouds and fog. The water reflects prisms and ribbons of refracted light onto the dark clouds. I saw a double rainbow yesterday to the north and had no time to chase it.

Today is a sunny day, the bright blue sky alone hurts my eyes. White clouds chase their dark shadows east across the valley where they meet the big mountians, which are purple and jagged and pale against the sky. And from the west I can smell just a hint of the coming spring in the smoky damp air.