My heart is moved by all 1cannot save: So much has been destroyed 1have to cast my lot with those who age after age, perversely, with no extraordinary power, reconstitute the world. —Adrienne Rich, The Dream of a Common Language I Bob Benson: Patron of Our Place by Richard Plagge During the middle years of the Great Depression, although they were both very poor, Bob Benson and his father bought 150 acres of near-wilderness land on the southwest slope of the Tualatin Mountains, 15 miles northwest of Portland, Oregon. Bob says he is embarrassed to tell how little they paid for it. Bob still lives on this land, alone now, in the house his father built during World War II, while Bob was away clerking for the army. The outbuildings are crumbling, vines have overgrown the remains of a picket fence which must once have squared off a pleasant little front yard. Just as his father did. Bob runs a few cattle and sells a little firewood—he is still very poor. The land, however, is worth a fortune. From a certain hilly clearing on Bob's land there is a dazzling view: two huge volcanic cones (Mount Jefferson and Mount Hood) punctuate the distant skyline; beneath them, 30 miles across the rich soil of the Tualatin Valley, the Chehelem Mountains snake their mild way across the low horizon. This valley—where, until the epidemics of the 1830's killed most of them, the Tualatin Indians hunted deer and gathered camas roots, where the very first Oregon Trail covered wagons finally came to a halt— is presently one of the fastest-growing areas in the state. Ambitious suburbanites—who have turned the eastern end of the valley into a typical late-twentieth century jumble of jammed two-lane roads and bleakly similar franchise outlets—have made it clear to Bob that selling his land is a duty. Why then does he remain this odd figure, part awkward hermit, part old-world gentleman, who shuffles through spiffy Beaverton shopping malls in rumpled coat and wrinkled pants, when, with a quick land deal, he could transform himself into ... a successful man ? Bob was born in 1915 in Portland, where his parents owned a rooming house at East Grand and Davis. His earliest memory is of holding his mother's hand as he toddled across the Sullivan's Gulch Viaduct. In the early '20s, wanting to leave urban life behind, dreaming of "five acres and independence," the family bought a small house a muddy half-mile from the railroad stop at Valley Vista, a tiny community located about halfway between where Bob lives now and the notorious Rock Creek Tavern. Bob's word for Valley Vista's educational edifice, the two- room Rock Creek School which he attended through sixth grade, is "palatial" : it had a concrete-lined basement, a furnace, a piano, and even a P.T.A. Bob's parents tried to supplement their income with various ventures: chickens one season, goats the next. Nothing proved to be very lucrative. But then it wasn't a very lucrative town; to be well-off in Valley Vista was to have a retired soldier's pension. On the whole. Valley Vista, a railroad development which had had the bad luck of being subdivided into existence on the eve of the automobile age, turned out to be a disappointing project for its speculator- backers. Sixty years later the place is still small and still muddy. Bob's father was a carpenter and small-time contractor who read a lot (Darwin and Kropotkin) and liked, as Bob does, to speculate on "the future of mankind." About the time Bob entered junior high the family leased out their Valley Vista place and moved to a cheap rental house in Oregon City, where his father, strapped for money, had taken a steady job. Bob discovered the nature section in the local library: all sorts of bird books, tree books, flower books. He devoured them all, and while he claims that he has never gained a profound knowledge of botany and biology, being able to identify the flora and fauna has been "a pleasure and a comfort" ever since. Many years later, speaking so softly that his visitors have to lean close to hear him. Bob will point out "lovely rare flowers" with his pudgy farmer's hand: There's the corydalis, an extreme rarity, related to the bleeding heart but quite different in the detail of the flower: it's gone to seed here, but when the whole thing is a spike of these odd-shaped flowers it's quite impressive. That little fringe of vine with the lacy flower, that's the saxifrage. And there's the native waterleaf. There is also a weed waterleaf from Europe which is very coarse-looking. As you can see the native waterleaf is anything but coarse. I didn't know about 15
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