close your eyes and make a wish it's a saying usually uttered at birthdays when a cake comes out

covered in burning candles maybe at the edge of a wishing well or as a kid when you found a dandelion

and would blow all the little bits into the wind.

Nicole Helprin's big wish was for a place she could call home.

When I was a kid, I moved 12 times before I went to college.

I was so jealous of people who could grow up in the same space.

Now, as an adult, she's put down serious roots in the form of a tree that's become a citywide

symbol.

I'm Dela Duras, and this is Atlas of Saksira, a celebration of the world's strange, incredible,

and wondrous places.

Today, we're going to Portland, Oregon, to visit a tree that instead of leaves, holds

thousands upon thousands of hopes and dreams.

And we talk with Nicole, whose idea inspired an entire city to write them down.

More after this. Nicole lived all over Southern California,

traveling from West L.A. to Long Beach to Cerritos.

Attending college in Berkeley, California gave her a few years of staying put.

But it wasn't until later that her childhood wish came true.

I came to Portland for a weekend, for a wedding, and I just fell in love and decided that I was going to live here.

And shortly after, I moved here kind of on a whim. and I just fell in love and decided that I was going to live here.

And shortly after, I moved here kind of on a whim.

That was in 2001.

Nicole bought a house, got married, became a mom.

...