This Is Here. This Is Home
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| Cascades, North. The water up north can be a clear turquoise blue due to the sediment run-off from the mountain's glacial waters. I only go North of Seattle for places like this, for the raw beauty of Washington. |
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| Riverton view of South Cascades in winter. Beyond those trees is the Tukwila Valley, Renton and Kent. In winter this place really is a hilly death trap, but it's beautifully quiet in the snow. This is my home. |
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| Downtown Seattle, Needle. I spend some of my free time down by the Bay, in the mystic scene. Beyond that summer smog and dark blue bay is a volcano waiting to destroy the valley of Takoma, Tahoma, Puyallup, Enumclaw, Kent, Auburn and probably South Renton too. We Tukwilians and Highlanders are poised for survival, while some of the Downtownies will probably slough off into the Sound. Adios fam... |
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| Skagit River, the coldest damn waters I've ever known. |
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| Across the Sound are the San Juan Islands, Neah Bay (Makah territory) and the Olympic Range. You can see for miles from Downtown Seattle, especially if you can get up to the Needle or Columbia Tower. |
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| Lake Union, Gasworks, Fremont, Mt Baker and the U-District are out beyond those low strange buildings (our pop culture museum). Over the hills on the right is Lake Washington and Bellevue (where the rich kids live), and to the left is Queen Anne and Ballard (where the rich kids live). What you don't see is the copious amounts of homeless people, the parks filled with transients living among refuse, the endless lines of people waiting for work, for homes, for hope. Yes, it's a beautiful place... ruled by a sneering elite who spend more on sports arenas, Starbucks and beautification programs for the upper-class neighborhoods than they do on opening up land and buildings and opportunities for our swelling population of impoverished peoples. It's easy to ignore on your commute ... tent-city bridges and makeshift favelas beneath every bridge in Georgetown, under every overpass in the I-District. |
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| This is the actual coast of Washington; not an estuary like the Sound or a massive lake like Lake Washington. This is down in Quinault territory. The national rain-forest a few miles north of this beach is a mossy wonderland, with springs and marmots and nursing logs bigger than school buses. |
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| Skagit country. Too far north for my tastes, but there's no better place to find eagles tearing salmon from the chilly rivers, deer leaping from trail to trail. |
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| South Puget Sound. This is my territory, where I do my green work, beside the Sound and Rivers and Hills and Wetlands, in the shadow of the the God-Mountain. |
helpful tips..
Tukwila- Tuh-QUILL-uh
Puyallup- Pew-Al-up
Skagit- SKA (short A as in Ash)- Jit
Quinault- Quinn-ALT
Makah- Ma- KAH
Takoma- Tuh-Coma
Tahoma- Tuh- HOME-uh
Enumclaw- EEn- Uhm- Claw
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