When thinking about those icebreaker questions they used to ask in elementary school, I remembered the one where you had to move from one side of the room to the other depending on your preference for cats or dogs, spring or fall, mountains or beaches. Well, I’m from the Pacific Northwest.
More specifically, I’m from a beach town just 40 minutes north of Seattle.
Edmonds, Washington, is a place where mountains, draped in evergreens, descend almost directly into the Puget Sound, a complex estuary of rivers, channels, and bays formed by glaciers that melted into the sea thousands of years ago. In Edmonds and much of the greater Seattle area, you don’t have to choose between mountains and beaches, because both can be seen at once, and you can go from one to the other in about an hour’s drive. Washington is where I grew up, but fundamentally I grew in it. Like a plant molding to the shape of the structure it grows around, I grew into the shape of evergreen trees. Into ripples in the wake of a canoe. Tranquil mountains, epic waterfalls, and solemn fog that have melded with my DNA.
But I don’t live in Washington anymore. I’m a student at the University of Michigan, so basically the opposite of where I’m from.
I’m so homesick I cried while watching Twilight with my roommates because I realized I didn’t know when I would see old-growth evergreens like that again. The worst part is, I don’t know if I’ll ever move back. Unfortunately, a lot of people have realized how extraordinary Washington is. All the billionaires want to live there. Amazon, Microsoft, Boeing, and even Nintendo of America have set up shop. You’ll find more L.A. transplants than Starbucks lattes, and believe me, there are too many of those as well. Most of my immediate family has left the PNW because of the atrocious cost of living, and it seems I’m the only one holding onto hope that planting my roots there postgrad is still possible. And really, there isn’t a thing I can do about that. I can’t lower the cost of living or raise the median wage.
So instead, I wrote a poem about it. I think it sounds better when spoken aloud, but since I hate public speaking, sharing it here in writing will have to suffice.
What it feels like
to be towered by mountains
to have the earth itself hold you down, to be so grounded
by airy hues of grey and blue
Protection, from the sky and its vastness
Connection between you and the endless
Shade of evergreens that stood long before industry
You can hear history in the crashing of a rushing stream
The story birds seem to sing, hidden in cone-ridden trees
You can stand in a symphony baptized by a chorus
feel it in your soles, roots rising from the ground
be embedded in the forest
I don’t rest as well when I’m in someone else’s mold
but moving back home
maybe, something I simply can’t afford
I am scorned,
I’m the only one still hoping to return
the weight is endless.
It’s an Olympic Forest of burden
I am scared and feel the roots are dying, the connection fleeting,
and I’m worried I’ll become a tourist and
my children will be tourists in our home,
for generations now just cut off circulation
devastation, they won’t understand
what molded me into who I am
it won’t be there
feels like eroding sand
like grieving before it even ends.
I’ll leave you with a request, though you’re under no obligation to follow it. What I ask of you is this: If you ever get the chance to visit Washington, don’t spend your entire trip in Seattle. Sure, the city is lovely, but there are plenty of cities in the U.S. that are just as special, if not more so. Go to the mountains. Take the ferry across the Puget Sound to see the orcas on your way to the San Juan Islands. Visit the Olympic National Rainforest and see for yourself what’s so remarkable about the Pacific Northwest.
Photo by Joe Gardner on Unsplash
