"Swift as a shadow, short as any dream ..."

"If only I could spend a year in Paris," you sometimes think. "I should have found a cheap apartment in Manhattan, right after college graduation," I've often told myself. Or, the ever popular: "A week at the beach just isn't enough!"

Sometimes, however, the most intense experiences are those compressed into an extremely short period of time. It's over before you know it, but you are left with memories that remain vivid for years to come.

Jim B., a good friend I hadn't seen for years who teaches at Purdue, is spending two weeks in Ashland, Oregon, studying how to fashion and weld titanium tubing into bicycle frames. Only an idiot would drive eight hours from Seattle to Ashland on a Friday, and drive eight hours back on Sunday, leaving only Saturday for a visit. So you might think. Idiocy is a vice, however, to which I cheerfully confess.

First of all, the drive itself, while long and tiring, was beautiful. I left behind Seattle's recent climate (see prior post). South of Portland, the weather changed to warm, sunny, delightful. The Willamette valley is green, agricultural, full of orchards. The last part of the drive climbed over a series of low mountain passes, craggy and forested. By the time I arrived in Ashland, Friday evening, I was tired but happy, and ready for a beer. And Ashland was ready for me. A string of cafés line tiny Ashland Creek, which runs through the middle of town, each equipped with outdoor tables, giving off southern European vibes of dolce vita. I downed a local ale from Oregon's own Deschutes Brewery

Ashland is known for the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Several plays, not all Elizabethan, are showing at any given time in Ashland's Lithia Park. As a result, the town is packed with tourists of a literary bent, as well as with many young people, some attending the local college, and with members of what appears to be a final redoubt of the hippie culture. Everyone -- locals and visitors alike -- appears happy and laid back, in full enjoyment of a town that's blessedly far removed from foreign wars, terrorist threats, and the grosser forms of Washington political infighting. Everyone tactfully and tacitly assumes that you have the good taste to support Obama, unless you care to insist otherwise

We had tickets to A Midsummer's Night Dream, for Saturday night. We spent all day Saturday warming up for the experience by setting out on a nine-mile hike to and from Wagner's Butte, a high crag overlooking the Rogue River Valley and the towns of Medford and Ashland. The climb was exhilarating -- initially through thick fir and pine forests, and then breaking out into open gorse and wildflowers. From the butte, Ashland appears as one small outpost of civilization, nestled in a vast sea of mountains and forests.

The performance that night was entertaining -- true to Shakespeare's text, but, according to the program, set in the mid-1950's. The play, which Shakepeare had placed in ancient Greece, opened on a pimped-out set with Theseus and his lover Hippolyta, lounging on what appeared to be a pair of gigantic white leather thrones, and hectoring each other in urban street accents. Oberon, the king of the fairies, was attended at all times by his quartet of fairy attendants, young men clad in leather shorts who sang and danced their lines in the manner of disco entertainers in a rather louche gay bar. The audience frequently interrupted with laughter and applause, which is certainly more than the usual high school production can hope for.

Nevertheless, the humor of the settings and costumes and of the actors' accents were superficial pleasures. The story and the lines of Shakespeare's play were easily transplanted from ancient Athens to 1957 (or was it 1977?) Brooklyn without damage. Their appeal is universal, regardless of how they are packaged.

I was on my way home before I knew it, but I'd had a great hike, enjoyed a wonderful interpretation of Shakespeare, and had an opportunity to catch up with recent events in the life of a friend.

Also, I learned that Linn County, Oregon, is the "Grass Seed Capital of the World," and that, as we were informed by the teenager who pumped our gas (self-service gas pumps being illegal in Oregon), the Ashland area grows the best pears outside France. As they say, travel is broadening.

Even when it's over in a flash.