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It’s a scientific fact (which I just made up) that every winter day spent indoors reduces the square footage of your home by one inch. The only way to break out of this seasonal trash compactor is with a long walk, preferably in a chilly forest of firs.
But getting to the woods isn’t always easy, and it’s harder if you don’t have wheels. Fortunately, we live in a city where a chauffeur service will whisk you to nature for as low as $2.80 a day. Yes, it’s a public bus. But if you can brave an hour or two with your fellow citizens, you’ll be deposited on the doorstep of big trees and rushing water.
The three mellow hikes that follow are low-key affairs: not too physically taxing, with no postcard payoffs at the end. They’re just small ventures out into the world. I tested all of them over one dreary weekend, and found myself feeling just a little lighter that Monday. Baby steps.
Newell Creek Canyon Nature Park
Oregon City
What greets you when the bus reaches Oregon City—a stretch of Molalla Avenue lined with self-storage lockers, Wendy’s, KFC and a weed dispensary—hardly announces a waterfall hike. But the regional government Metro is caretaker for a woodland canyon where several creeks trickle under bigleaf maple and red alder.
Follow a gravel path past a metal gate, and the Tumble Falls Trail soon drops steeply into the forest, whipsawing back and forth until depositing you at a wooden bridge at the base of the namesake falls, a pretty little cataract. (Ignore the enormous warehouse looming on the cliff above; it’s just a cheerleading gym.) Keep going and, if you’re lucky, as I was on a crisp November evening, you might happen upon a white-tailed doe bounding through a redcedar grove. Either way, you’ll walk down an aisle of electric green ferns—Oregon’s natural antidote to a season of gray.
Get there: From Pioneer Courthouse Square, take the MAX Orange Line south to Milwaukie. Get off at the SE Park Avenue MAX station. Walk to the SE McLoughlin and Park Avenue bus stop. Take the 33 bus to Oregon City. Get off at the Beavercreek and Molalla stop. Walk north on Molalla Avenue for a quarter mile and turn right on Warner Milne Road.
Hoyt Arboretum Winter Garden
Southwest Portland
A little weather hack to remember: When it’s 36 degrees and raining across most of Portland, Washington Park often gets a dusting of snow. Ride the elevator up from the MAX tunnel under the West Hills, and you’ll emerge into a Rankin-Bass holiday special.
Nearly every part of the park looks magical in these conditions (and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial gets put to use as a sledding hill), but head north from the Oregon Zoo and find the Overlook Trail to Hoyt Arboretum. From there, look for trail markers that point to “Gardens.” After a couple switchbacks, you’ll arrive in the Winter Garden, a modest bower where park volunteers have planted shrubs and flowering plants that flourish in the cold—the snow sprite, the lemon beauty and several varieties of camellias that bloom in the darkest months. Beneath a western redcedar, there’s a bench for contemplation, or to break out the thermos of cocoa.
Keep following the same “Gardens” signs, and you’ll come to an overlook that offers a view of the Portland Japanese Garden otherwise available only to paying customers and birds. Follow paths past the Rose Garden and down through a Narnia-like avenue of street lamps called the Cloud Forest Canyon, and you’ll emerge onto West Burnside Street, where the 20 bus can carry you to your connection home.
Get there: From Pioneer Courthouse Square, take the MAX Red or Blue Line west toward Hillsboro. Get off at the Washington Park MAX station.
North Bonneville Heritage Trails
North Bonneville, Wash.
In the late 1970s, the expansion of the Bonneville Dam displaced the workers who built it, so they lobbied for a planned community. What they got is whorls of tract housing, a 12-mile web of walking paths and carved wooden Bigfoots—as if The Truman Show had relocated to Twin Peaks. (“THE BIGFOOTS WELCOME YOU,” announces a sign near the Chevron.) It also feels like (and effectively is) a city park dropped inside a national park. The effect is surreal and, for me at least, piercingly nostalgic. This is the American childhood we were all supposed to have.
The town’s trails are flat and paved, if haphazardly marked: I recently took the Hamilton Creek Trail to the border of Pierce National Wildlife Refuge, but only knew that upon arriving at the edge of the bird sanctuary. It doesn’t matter. This isn’t goal-oriented hiking, and most of the trails loop past backyard trampolines back to the town center, where Trailhead Taproom serves cider and chicken soup Tuesday through Saturday afternoons. Those offerings only increase the one danger presented by North Bonneville: Every time I visit here, I don’t want to leave.
Get there: From Portland, go to Fisher’s Landing Transit Center by taking C-Tran No. 164 from Southwest 6th Avenue and Market Street or C-Tran No. 65 from Parkrose Transit Center. A C-Tran day pass is $6. From Fisher’s Landing, take the Skamania County Transit bus east to the Gorge. It costs $2 and requires exact change. Get off at North Bonneville. For more information about Skamania County Transit schedules, go to skamaniacounty.org.
This story is a part of Oregon Winter, Willamette Week’s annual winter activity magazine. It is free and can be found all over Portland beginning Friday, December 13, 2024. Find your free copy at one of the locations noted here or at our online store, before they all get picked up!