Paintings and Travels

The ring of an old time fiddle accompanied on my most recent quest(s). I will admit, I have a soft spot for Nickel Creek. Their quick stuff just has the air of setting out, and really gets you in the mood to see new things.

I've been out and about thinking a lot about the "Why" and the "How" of the "Where" part of the equation. It occurs to me that many of the times people always ask me why I am doing what I am doing, usually when I am caught in the exploration of the "going" part of my spirit.

It seems as though I've been residing in a culture of the "why" to get some place. It is probably my naivety, but I think people need more of a lack of why. It seems we are always quick to get as quick as we can for a meeting, to move on with our lives after checking off task #1 on our list, with task #2 quickly in tow.

What about children? What about jobs? What about making money, shopping, keeping up agreements and being punctual?



I seem to have blown a couple minds recently. I was talking with some folks about a new program, and if/how we could go about it. It involved using Design Thinking, and participating in a bunch of these seemingly unrelated modules to come out with an executable plan for new things. I think it's awesome.

Through talking about design, we wound up getting to the heart of the issue, which is that there is an underlying paradigm about systems in place, and that I believed this new program could help shift this paradigm, and help more people because of its shift.

There was a pause in the conversation, and both of the people I was talking with looked at me with a stunned silence. It's like their eyes were opened onto a taller level of thinking. They had not only seen the next story the escalator led to, but they rode it up there.



So what about a new paradigm shift towards slowing down and wandering? What if we came up with this idea that we create this mindset that allows our cultures to not have such a well defined, tight, and strict rule of the "why" and "how" of the "where" equation.

Let's build systems to take care of those we love, or hell, bring them with us when we wander!

Let's respect and allow the time to meander a bit, and give ourselves moments to relax.

The system we have now is focused like a belt around an already wound telescope. Society is getting to a point where we are simply crushing the tool we are using to examine things up close. The mind is stressed enough as it is. It needs time to flourish.

I hate to carpool with people to events. There is a focus on getting there, getting back, and not appreciating the scenery or what is to be discovered in between along the way. There is always talk of the goings on at work, the blatant disregard for where you are. The "where" is simply a place to do the thing, and move on.

There doesn't have to be stopping and learning everything. There should just be an acknowledgement of the land around you, it's shapes, forms, and story. This is really seen in the disregard of middle America as having nothing, being boring, and a "drive-through" type of place. Yeah, I've done that drive too, but just think of all the stories, people, times, towns, life, that lay in those plains.

The best part of carpooling or not driving is being able to simply observe, and take it all in. Eventually it all fills so much you drift off to sleep, much like has happened with me on road trips where I'm not driving. And if I am driving? I have to stay awake, and it makes me write things like this.


Today I decided to go somewhere I haven't been before. I took the long way home from Hood River. I didn't need to work in the existing paradigm of punctuality or efficiency, so I took the rest of the day for a drive for simply no other reason to see what I could see.

I was literally driving in a painting above the ground, and it was phenomenal.

Jagged Edges of the Geographic Puzzle

Today I traveled to the elaborate and serious urban landscape of Seattle. It lines up perfectly with the Puget Sound.

Rugged; Unorganized; Messy

Jagged.

The whole city was under construction, billowing out its reverse beeps and diesel laden construction prowess. Ever updating. Ever under improvement.

The view from coming in from Interstate 5 is amazing in it's own right. In the middle of morning rush hour, a orange haze hangs over the city with it's two stadiums and massive ports lining the water to the west. The Space Needle rises ever so slightly to the east, with no clear boundary of a shoreline or growth.

This is a different kind of Sound. Not one of natural beauty, but of churning productivity. Seattle is a place where you walk up and down the street, and people simply have a mystery to them that makes you want to ask more. The city is grown up. Established. Diverse.

So diverse! The amount of difference in the place amazed me! I don't think I've ever seen such a concentrated population of Asian heritage Americans! They were everywhere! I could literally read the history of the city as I walked around, and what I found was a mixture of ethnicities I have never even fathomed.

The geography of the Seattle metro area literally matches it's character. The city is so oddly shaped. It's flanked on either side by water with a clear discernible encapsulation of land upon the opposite shore, yet the hills within the city yield neighborhoods, not apartment blocks. There is a fishing village quaintness to East Seattle. As the conjoined buses clank down the floating bridges of Interstate 90 and State Route 520, a quaint set of houses appear in the distance with their boats moored on Lake Washington.

The city also has strangely laid out streets. The numbered parallel the water front, instead of the named streets. Also, the Alaskan Way Viaduct dominates over the waterfront park, and being the one of the many prides of the Seattle landscape, was also filled to the brim with rush hour traffic. The wires above the many paths for cars instead carry electrified buses, and weave on top of the underground transit tunnels where both trains and shuttles run.

Being in classic tourist fashion, I did not see the Space Needle or the first Starbucks, or Pike Place for that matter. I not only don't flock to the main points when I first get there, but I simply have the time to do so. Instead, I oped for a local Italian Pizza Place, which had what looked like a man with Asian heritage serving.

Cities are a magical place, where mixture and condensation of culture precipitate onto a world stage. I just never realized with what different fluids one can mix with, and with what patterns one can make with them.

All of it Sounds good.

Exploration is one of my core functions. It resides in the bottom of my being. There is nothing like a good road trip. Especially when it's included in a part of your work.

Driving north has always been a thrilling experience for me. I rarely make it past Longview in Cowlitz County, so any opportunity I can get to go north, I do.

This trip took me to a training in the tiny town of DuPont, Washington, and my first acquaintance with the Puget Sound. The Sound. What a place.

First starting out I didn't quite realize how... Oceany it is.

Going north in Western Washington is strange. You're not in a valley, like in the Willamette Valley in Western Oregon. The landscape flattens out into rolling hills. The Cascades are still on one side of you, but eventually, there are no Coastal Mountains, they simply... disappear.

What you're left with is the giants of the Cascades looming in the distance, their snowy peaks popping out in the least expected places.

The little chains in the Cascades also are prominent, extending their small ridges out onto the plain like small tree covered fingers. You and Interstate 5 dart up and around these small hills on your way north, and wrap around them like a strand of ribbon or a piece of floss.

The tidewater hits you with forests greener than the thickets around the waterfalls in the Gorge. Olympia and the capitol sit at the mouth of the South Sound. (I absolutely love that alliteration). The campus is greener than green, and always misty, a sight to see. But that was a past trip. This time I went farther north.

The training was in DuPont, Washington, self-claimed "Golf Central of the Northwest" and Nick-appointed "most planned and newest town I've ever seen in my life". The town was around since the 1950's (still young in my mind!) but the neighborhood, and "downtown" part I stayed in was planned and built in 2002. There was a long haul bus terminal (for commuters to Tacoma and Seattle), everything was pedestrian planned (stores faced the front, parking lots in back, sidewalks took precedence), and military reigned supreme. (More on that in a future blog post perhaps?)

As I left the conference this morning, instead of going immediately back to Vancouver, I decided to explore farther north into Tacoma. I mean, I was going to get back at like 5 PM on a Friday, so why not? You can't see the Sound too well from DuPont, so I decided first to travel up to another small Sound town* named Steilacoom. Driving up I was a approached with a view very similar to this:

I didn't even mind the gray clouds.** I was elated when I saw that unique ocean like thing from the top of the hill I was driving down.

This view from the town was beautiful, and then I saw it in the distance: The Tacoma Narrows Bridge. I needed to see that.

You see it? Waaaayyy off there in the distance?

Off I went, to see the spot where famous Galloping Gertie was tossed in the wind and collapsed in a terrible structure failure during a windstorm in November of 1940. Here's a picture to refresh your memory:

Picture and previous caption from here.

So I went! I actually didn't cross it though. It costs a five dollar toll, and I'm not paying that one way just to cross a damn bridge. I did, however, go to a park that is adjacent, and it was there I did something that I haven't done in a while. I went for a hike. (Or a stroll, whichever you prefer.)

There is the new bridge, in all it's mile-long span and glory. The place in the foreground is the local boat club, which was obviously deserted. And surrounded by a chain-link fence that I couldn't find a way through.

So this is the Puget Sound. I never quite got what people meant when they talked about this place.

It's rugged, full of pebbles, forests straight to the water, islands; squishy and soggy. It would have been one hell of a place to settle. It is majestic, urban, outdoors, and surprisingly calm. Due to the hills and the forests, the sound from the nearby city drains out, and all you are left with is the water lapping up against the pebble beaches. One could say I fell in love instantly.

The Sound is unique. I have never been anywhere that is ocean... but not ocean. The towns fished, the forests envelop the land, the tidewater produces a diversity in life rivaled for any ecosystem. Thinking back, it reminds me a lot of the Appalachians really. In the Appalachian mountains, the tops are considered "islands" of diversity due to their high elevations and ecosystems where unique elements from the last ice age were pushed and evolved on their own rights in those high sub-alpine systems. The Sound has islands of water from ocean life. The waters are gentle, with little waves, the water is salty, the life teeming, yet different, from the connection with the Pacific so far away. But creatures can migrate from the Pacific because of this existing connection, which is amazing to think about.

The geography of the land fascinates me. Much like those ridges of the Cascades extending onto the pre-tidewater plane, the fingers of the Sound reach far "inland" to places so far removed from the Pacific Ocean proper. When I first saw it, much like the first time I saw where the Columbia empties into the Pacific, I got goosebumps and chills. This place is amazing and so... grand. The natural world here is amazing. I marvel at the natural and built worlds, and I can't help but be filled with excitement for the places and people that lie ahead.

I'm slowly learning to live my life with a sense of wonder and exploration again. I can pull myself out of this culture and environment I have become stale in. I will find a place where I resonate, where I will grow in good company with others.

I'm excited.

P.S. In Steilacoom I found the spot where the first Methodist Church north of the Columbia River was built. I mean come on. How cool is that?

This edition comes with footnotes!

*As you can tell I'm having fun with this.
**In typical "Nick fashion" the sun came out later