A Glance Backward

We’ve just spent our second overnight in Bellingham, Washington, a small city between Vancouver and Seattle that’s home to Western Washington University. Our host Scott drove us around the oyster farming bays with views westward to the San Juan Islands yesterday. We stopped in the tiny village of Edison and ate fried oysters, reminding Scott and I of a similar trip on the east coast when we sought out and devoured fried clams.

I’m in downtown Bellingham this morning to get an oil change for the Nissan Micra that’s carried us 4,700 kilometers already. Later, we head for Seattle, the destination that inspired this trip – completing the re-tracing of the route I drove in May 1993 with my new wife, when I moved from Seattle to Toronto. I’d never have believed that it would be a quarter century before I returned. I had just turned 39 then, and was finishing up 12 years in Seattle. Now I’m 64, much changed in some ways, not so much in others. I expect to find Seattle the same – altered yet familiar.

Some things are already familiar, being this close. The West is easier than the East. People are better at taking their time, they move with less … what’s a good word that falls between determination and desperation? It feels right to say that there’s less gravity here and more space. It seems there’s less obesity. I think that here one feels more free and open in ones body, has a more balanced relationship with time. Our brief time in Vancouver has already confirmed my memory that even the big cities feel less removed from nature, from wilderness, from Wildness. And this too is a kind of freedom.

This time in and around Seattle will mark my deepest brush with memory, with nostalgia. I did so much growing up and exploring here. I’m excited to walk Capital Hill and Fremont, the U-District and Beacon Hill. The handful of visits will be bitter-sweet. These relationships were interrupted and for the most part, I haven’t been a good long-distance friend. I’ve completely lost touch with most of those who shaped my life back then. But I’m so glad to be here, to reconnect where I can, to feel gratitude for what my time here brought me.

Hello Seattle and  Goodbye again. Thank You, Great NorthWest. It was a great Blessing to have this place as Home.