"Life is meeting" was the slightly odd title of the autobiography of the late Sir John Hunt, leader of the British Everest Expedition in 1953. But it got his point across - that the people he met on his travels had pride of place in his memory, over and above the destinations themselves. And so it is that I always associate Oregon with the photographer Bill Stormont, even though we didn`t meet on his home turf, but instead in some, to me at least, obscure corner of south-east Arizona. There we chanced upon each other, as he was seeking to capture vermillion flycatchers on 35mm emulsion, and I was "documenting anything that passed for the West". We later "traded condensed biographies" over a beverage.
Bill`s writing skills, once used in a professional capacity, are evident in his very tasteful blog, with interesting musings on a broad range of topics. It`s called Listening for Thunder.
Oregon`s appeal is slightly more subtle than the perhaps more obviously glittering Pacific Coast neighbour-states that it borders. Mount Hood doesn`t quite compete with Washington`s Mount Rainier for majesty, and the annual visitors quota at the national parks here are not quite in the league of California`s Yosemite. But that`s just how Bill would have it.