From coastal lights to mountain sleigh rides, make the most of the season with Oregon’s best holiday celebrations and cozy escapes written by Cathy Carroll Oregonians’ winter holiday celebrations are as diverse as its landscape, with each region offering new and time-honored traditions. It’s the perfect chance to sample a bit of both. Dive into a speed-dating comedy show, perfect for a season that often calls for a romantic partner. Let horse-drawn sleigh rides carry you over rivers and through snowy woods. Bask in the glow of thousands of colorful lights illuminating botanical gardens perched above the sea. Immerse yourself in the fun of floating parade-goers paddling upstream and city-street caroling competitions that challenge you to utter a “humbug.” It’s all here, with inviting retreats offering getaways that impart true and new tastes of local culture and spirit. Portland Fun & Flirty: A Comedy Dating Show DEC. 12, 7 p.m….

A small Oregon town’s response to this summer’s Lone Rock Fire written by Joni Kabana “It’s just what we do.” These words, barely audible, a resident of the small town of Spray spoke for everyone that morning about saving the town from a massive wildfire. His head bowed, I could feel the collective weight this fire had on him and many local volunteer firefighters. Local residents came off their farms and out of their houses and, for twenty-seven days, fought the relentless and unforgiving fires that would burn more than 100,000 acres in Wheeler County alone. From local teenagers to elders, both men and women joined at the front lines of the rapidly advancing fire, digging trenches, cutting trees and spraying flames to protect their own ranches, their neighbors’ farms and the beloved tiny town of Spray. As the fire burned on and closer to my home, we received the…