It's nesting season

The mountains are heavy with snow but spring is officially here. The robins, doves, and bluejays are back, and already busy building nests. I suspect they are the same pairs we saw last year and the year before that. The bluejays immediately attacked an artistic dry branch, greedily pulling off twigs and carrying them to their new site high in a nearby pine. Twigs, apparently, make excellent housing material and are much in demand. I wish they would carry away some of the millions of pine needles in the yard, but there's little sense in wishing that, they are not favored. I will have to rake.

Like the birds, we too are looking for a new nest. Our house sold before it was officially on the market and if we had any doubts about whether this was a good idea they were washed away by the speed and ease of the sale. Surely this was a sign.

We are now earnestly looking for a place in Portland and I spend a good deal of time on Zillow and Redfin but without much luck. I know what I want but I can't find it—that is, I can find it but I can't afford it. Champaign taste on a beer budget comes to mind. So does don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Unlike the birds, who have only to choose a snug little branch from an abundance of trees we must choose from a few, all in high demand. Everyone, it seems, wants to be in Portland.

Moving is always a challenge and this one will be no different. But a new roost is also exciting, with new views out the windows, new neighbors to meet, new friends to find. I will miss Sisters and the friends I've made here, but life doesn't stand still and there's no sense resisting. It either carries you along in its stream or leaves you standing on the bank with a toe in the water. I'd rather be in the stream, gazing forward, toward the next sunny sandbank.