In the national perception (which increasingly operates under single-bit binary logic), Oregon is anointed the title of Totally Bluest State.

In our polarized nation (most of whose people have never been to Oregon, or if they have, have never been outside Portland), this supposedly means that:

• …tree-hugging polyamorous granola girls womyn shame all women who attend a Christian church, shave their armpits, or refuse to have compulsory annual abortions
• …soy milk-sucking Antifa terrorists lynch anyone who displays the US flag or attempts to pump his their own gasoline
• …the only capital crimes still listed on our books are littering and using the world ‘retard’ in any context (including when saying one is late in French)
• …no one goes to the smoking ruin of downtown Portland any more unless they want to be ganged up on by regiments of homeless people and fentheads who have taken over all the buildings
• …it rains constantly throughout the state, except when wildfires are wiping out entire towns, at which time the rain somehow stops just long enough to allow serious devastation
• …strict gun control laws prohibit all firearms and that slingshots, air rifles, are tightly regulated
• …throwing-size rocks are allowed only with compulsory registration of your rock, intensive background checks including a colonoscopy and your DNA (usually done at same time), and mandatory safety training.

All that might sound good or bad to you depending on your outlook, but those resemble (in hyperbolic form) what I hear from people who have never been here. And yeah, that’s how ignorant they sound.

All right. Let’s light a candle rather than curse the darkness.

You might move to Oregon if you:

1. Enjoy a dry climate. Yes. You wouldn’t move to the west side of the Cascades, but you could move to Pendleton or Burns and experience a lot of sunshine.
2. Have a far-right political outlook. Yes. Outside of the Portland and Eugene metro areas, political opinion skews far right, pro-gun, and anti-government. There are even renegade sheriffs who just outright defy the state government, because Oregon’s favorite governmental pastime is issuing decrees it won’t and/or can’t enforce.
3. Like trees. We’ve got a lot of those.
4. Like deserts. About a quarter of the state is high desert–maybe more.
5. Want to be left alone. In the southeastern quadrant of the state–an area some 150 miles x 130–there are only ~47,000 people. That’s an area a little smaller than the whole state of South Carolina, which has over 100 times that many people. Subtract the town of Ontario, at the extreme northeast of that quadrant, and you’re down to about 35,000 people. This is Wyoming-level leave-me-the-hell-alone distance. And since this is the West, people are inclined to stay out of your face anyway.
6. Like oceans. Just about our whole coast is an Oregon State Park. There are even places with surfing, at least with a wet suit (water’s pretty cold).
7. Like dead or dormant volcanoes. We have a number of these. Caveat: not all are that dormant. If you love geology, we have many ways to live that love.
8. Like large rivers and fishing. Most of the northern  border with Washington is the Columbia River, which runs from a little less than a mile wide (at the point where it becomes the border) to about three miles wide where it rolls under a really long bridge then empties into the Pacific. The Willamette is not small. Fishing is very popular all over the state.
9. Like weed. In much of urban Oregon and some of rural Oregon, cannabis stores are more common than gas stations. It’s not even very expensive.
10. Like switchblades and U-turns. Both legal in Oregon unless otherwise prohibited. For example, in a courtroom, nope, no sharp stuff. When a sign forbids U-turns, you can probably guess the intent.

It’s not for everyone. You would avoid moving to Oregon if you:

1. Can’t deal with moderately right-wing overlords (Democrats). Our far-right folks feel so much this way that they’re talking about seceding and joining Idaho. Not all their complaints are illegitimate; it’s true that, just as the rest of the country thinks Oregon = Portland, much of Portland thinks Oregon = Portland. It’s like the scaled-up version of the New York City dynamic, where some New Yorkers seem to think that whatever happened to New York happened to America, and that ‘flyover states’ are Cletus repositories of no consequence. Anyway, given our demographics, it’s unlikely we’ll ever have far-right state government here.
2. Dislike inefficient government. This is even worse than Idaho’s, and it’s not political gridlock; it’s an institutional culture of crappy. State agencies are inept. Police (especially State) aren’t here to protect or serve, with a few exceptions. We just have an inept bureaucracy that lives down to every governmental stereotype most people imagine.
3. Think a little bit of pollution is no big deal. Rural Oregonians don’t like litter any better than most urban residents. As I write this, and in spite of all the associated property crime, Portland’s municipalities are still looking for ways to keep making nice with the homeless–but if there’s one flaw that’ll turn even the homeless lovers (none of whom are willing to actually give homeless people homes or let them camp in the back yard) into detractors, it’ll be the garbalanches along the freeway, the turds on downtown sidewalks, the overall desecration of the landscape.
4. Are bigoted toward Asians. As a coastal state, many Asian cultures are well represented not just in Portland, but all over. If that bothers you, this ain’t for you. If people insist on missing out on superb Korean food, great; I’ll pick up the slack.
5. Are black. While the state was originally founded as a racist Utopia and was a strong state for the second KKK, with plenty of sundown towns (much like Kennewick in SE Washington), as late as the 1940s one predominantly black Portland neighborhood was flooded out and the city shrugged. Many in Albina, the closest thing Portland had to a black neighborhood in the following years, suffered from general neglect in poor living conditions and some were driven out through ‘urban renewal.’ There are very few black folks anywhere in Oregon but Portland, and even that percentage is far below the national demographic average. I would not say that most of the state is black-hostile; I am taking the word of a homegrown local friend that you might have trouble making connections that truly understand your experiences. They definitely did.
6. Despise hippies and their mentality. While most of the old school hippies moved into middle management and became boomers who basically ate the whole economic buffet and left little behind for following generations, the tie-dye spirit remains strong in Portland and isn’t exactly rejected around the state.
7. Fear geology and tsunamis. While Bend is pretty safe from a tsunami, most of western Oregon is at high earthquake risk (enough that we pony up an extra $550/year for earthquake insurance) and the coast is at high enough tsunami risk that you see signs showing evacuation routes. Volcanoes are not all inactive, and while St. Helens didn’t do much to Portland, it took a major ash dump in eastern Washington. An eruption in the Oregon Cascades would do much the same to eastern Oregon.
8. Hate the timber industry. It’s one of Oregon’s major economic sectors along with agriculture, and believe me (my father was a forester), forest management is important in our modern time. Clearcuts are hideous, but judicious thinning and removal of biomass are important for forest health. And without them, that brings into play…
9. Fear fire and wildfire smoke-related pollution. All three continental coastal states experience very serious fire seasons, thanks to decades of legalized neglect. We’ve had whole towns more or less wiped out by wildfire. At times the air is awful. There are few if any places in Oregon that are absolutely safe from wildfire and associated smoke. If you’ve got really sensitive lungs, give that some careful thought.
10. Are or will be underemployed. The cost of living in Oregon is high, in Portland especially. However, the state has a very high minimum wage–not enough to live in Portland, but plenty to live in less expensive towns. The waitstaff won’t thank me for telling you this, but they get the same minimum wage as anyone else making minimum. If you’re a server and can get a job in someplace good in Portland that tips well, you could do fairly well.

So that is pretty much how it breaks down. It’s a more complex place than single-bit binary logic can process without shorting out synapses all over the brain.

And my take? I like a lot about it. Oregon has diverse and stunning scenery with adventure options from fishing to skiing to world-class links golfing–and much more. It offers big-city stuff, tremendous agricultural diversity, a friendly outlook for the most part, a tolerant live-and-let live perspective, at least some ethnic diversity, and a lot of good food. I could wish for better government, better primary and secondary education, more honest/fair policing, less subduction, and better government. But I have also met and worked with some of the best people of my life in Oregon, and it is very hard to beat one hour to fishing, a little longer to the coast, less than an hour to wild mountain country, two hours to the desert or to a volcano.

It is a more complex place than most of the country realizes. One could probably say that about every state, but this is the one I live in, and this is my way of lighting the proverbial candle.