Stacked Layers of Place

Portland looks almost too idyllic in the Springtime. Everything is blooming and reawakening under the partially cloudy sky.

This spring has been tricky. It's given us the remnants of the winter we barely experienced. It is nice though to see the beautiful snowy white peaks of the prominent giants in the distance.

I have been a little less excessively welcoming of the sun and the warmth this spring season. The winter was unusually not rainy, and I've learned to deal with the rain a little better now.

Life has an impossibly intricate and interwoven design to it. Being in a metropolitan area, but not being at the core of it, has shown me a radically different view of what I thought about cities. No longer am I in the core, nor am I completely removed. Everything flows in patterns, where one relies on the other, yet not all is equal nor equitable.

The semi-periphery is full of beautiful contradictions. People work in another place, they play in another place, they go to their doctors appointments in a different place. The only consistent thing about this place is that people sleep here.

But maybe I am defining place incorrectly? I mean, in my mind a place is an entire town unto itself. It's contained, enclosed, and separate. There are no "places" that match my definition within twenty miles. There are a collection of little towns, some with their own characteristics, others without. "Carter Park" is a neighborhood within Vancouver, whereas Thurston, Ohio is the neighborhood. That's what it is. It's a simple separation of articles of speech.

I guess you could substitute "neighborhood" with "community", "location", or "place".

Stacked like an order of operations, place has an expanse to it. Especially when you bring together hundreds of thousands of people in one region. And I don't think I've ever really thought of that before.

It reminds me of the Chinookan artwork in the Cathlapotle Plankhouse. On the middle post there is a black arc of the earth that sweeps up from the ground, and a red arc coming from the heavens follows the same pattern. In the middle of the post is a black ring and within it a black circle, that form a somewhat target shape in the middle of the beam.

The outermost ring of black symbolizes the world, with its outer shell of life and vastness within the red of the heavens. Inside the ring, the red of the heavens is with those on the ground and within the earth. Finally, that black dot is your immediate family and kin. Those that you know the best.

Chinook peoples are still here today, and built and painted that house, and I think it is a good pattern to use. It is also great because it is simple. Only two layers, one within another. My view of the world is that of many layers, usually not so well organized and engineered. The core and the peripheral rarely follow a perfect circle, and do they rarely follow a two stepped process.

I try to navigate those layers, and I enjoy every second of it.

Quickening Reconciliation

My relationship with suburbs is... tepid at best.

The noise level is never a constant. It is always fluctuating, never settling on either a flood or a pasture. You stand out on a curb, waiting on the bus in the rain, and a wave of cars comes. Your mind goes into urban mode, getting ready to rev out the noise via your personal mufflers. But then there are no cars, and in front of you lies a three lane stretch of pavement; an abandoned highway in a depreciated rural town. But then the cars come again.

And the pattern is not even consistent. There may be lines upon lines of cars impeding your path, only to succeed to an empty road that you can dance in.

What baffles me more is the pattern of development in a suburb. Lines of roads, main arterials lead to dead ends. Cul de sacs that lead nowhere except in a circle to exit right back out where you came from. There are no through-ways, only walled off communities with one or two roads in and out. It's a closed system, full of conveniently placed barriers to impede your progress.

It is almost like in a game:

In a game, sometimes one of the key elements is immersion. That intense focus and feeling that you are the game. Sometimes your reality flips away in an instant, sometimes it slips away gradually as you are drawn in. Some games also have the conveniently placed barriers that make you follow the story, and prevent you from free roaming or exploring your surroundings. But some games have open world story lines, that allow you to go anywhere and everywhere you wish at first dawn.

Maybe "place" shares some of the same qualities. I usually find myself immersed in a place wherever I go. I usually am able to free roam and explore to my hearts content. Maybe Vancouver is ready to reel you back to reality in an instant, just before you become too complacent. Maybe suburbs are designed in a more linear fashion, ready to shuffle the folks who live in them on their merry way in the next chapter of their lives.

That's too complacent for me. I cannot take being offered one path, or possibly two, that ultimately leads to the same outcome. I cannot do the constant snapping back to reality, nor can I take the acknowledgement of the player in my life, or some fatalistic plan going into action.

But let's not turn this into too much of a philosophical debacle or entanglement. The thing about places is that they change; in themselves as well as with the movement to other places. Along with the fact that everywhere is a place with it's own qualities, with it's own character.

I try to not think that somewhere is nowhere, but it's hard sometimes.

I don't think Vancouver, or a suburb or bedroom town, allows me get immersed. It's always interrupting me, reminding me of the things I'm uneasy with. The town is linear, with many, if not a majority, of it's residents complacent in a path that they have chosen and are happy with.

There is nothing saying there is anything wrong with that framework. It just ins't me. I strive to be somewhere innovative and exciting; somewhere with an acknowledgement of the need to move forward and discover the heart of the issues, rather than addressing symptoms. That is why I'm searching for more. That's why I am searching for better for me.

It may be individualistic, but I believe that an area must balance, be receptive to new ideas, and have plenty of opportunity for all. Where I am at now has all of that, it just happens at a rate and method that does not agree with me. It is focused on nuclear family needs rather than communal societal needs. And with nuclear family needs change will come, with the shifting of paradigms of the children. But for those who are not quite on that track yet, other places beckon and call out.

People, Places, Seattle.

Seattle is a weird place. I like it. I think?

I had a pretty beautiful introduction to the city when I went to Redmond for a meeting a while back. I took the Bolt Bus up early in the morning, and I awoke after a sleepy ride to the sun rising on a shinny shimmering city; the Space Needle and the Puget Sound radiating a soft orange.

It was a rush through the city at first. Over the past weekend I got the chance to see it a little more intimately.

Driving around the actual city is not that bad for a Sunday afternoon compared to other cities I have journeyed into during the weekend.

After dropping off our belongings at an Airbnb place, we journeyed into the city to see some friends, and the sights of course.

I should stop here and say that one of the most important people in my life came to visit me over the weekend. Henceforth the "we" pronouns, and not the "I" pronouns. She has such a place in my heart, and she re-centered me, but that will/may be in another blog post.


Seattle. A strange beast.

The city lies right in the strange geography of the Sound. It's land mass really is not that huge, which has prompted it to use the space it has efficiently and effectively. It's a narrow strip in between this ocean thing, and a lake so deep they can't sink pilings in it to build a proper bridge, so it has two floating bridges connecting it to the cities on the east side of the lake.

The area is also very, very hilly. I never quite realized the actual elevation gain and loss as you traverse small one to two mile stretches. Overhead guidewires power the buses up and down the hills, which I find fascinating, being a transit nerd and all.

The city seems so... Disorganized. Because of the lay of the land (and the fact we have not learned how to easily build over water), there is no real "sprawl" to the place. The land has been developed well before the sprawl got to it, which leaves many small neighborhoods (some gentrifying, some not). There are no clear "areas" to the city, and the city proper is quite small. There are many separate cities that are within 20 minute drives of the main area, and they all have bustling economies, towering office buildings, and established residents of their own to entertain.

When the sun does come out though, it leaves quite a sight over the Sound:

The presence of surrounding cities and economic centers really detracts from Seattle proper in my opinion. It makes me want to go explore those areas, and takes away from the importance of the central city itself.

I did marvel though at the Alaska Highway Viaduct along the waterfront. I know in the eyes of many it looks ugly, gray, and is actually going to be destroyed once the main tunnel under the city is done, but it is a piece of engineering history and is something of a pesky wonder of the automobile age. I couldn't help but snap a picture of it myself:

It's got a sort of 50's suburban beauty to it.

After meandering around Pike Place for a bit, we went to a show at a local art/radio collective, which I enjoyed. I sat in the room, thinking that this was the crowd I elected to hangout with a little less than others in college, but I also ate it up because it was young people around my age, who were doing what they loved.

It's been so long since I've seen that kind of dedication to a building, artwork, and simple life as I did at the Hollow Earth Radio studio.

Gone were the stuffy grey cubicles and stale earth tones of the walls of the everyday office. The walls were messy, painted with artwork and covered with artwork. The studio was in the back, and the seating was basic and few and far between. There were no standard protocols in terms of looks, professionalism, or dress. People at the show were wearing everyday clothes, the speakers of the studio the same, and a strange but wonderful puppet show followed the anything but rehearsed introduction.

I don't know if I'd like to go to that extreme, but as my best friend put it, I saw people who cared and were invested in what they did, and I drank it in.

After the show we headed to an interesting bar/beer depot/bottle shop. Got a cider flight, had some food, and caught up and hung out. We were a part of the scene, and ever since that visit started, I felt a part of something greater; a sense of being, in some regards or another. I felt comfortable just doing, and not like I was the focal point of the outstanding difference so many people in the professional world rally against. I blended, and I absolutely loved it.

No worries about being called out; no worries about being alone in what I do. I had that sense- of place.

Maybe it was the people I was hanging out with, maybe it was the environment and culture that made it possible. Most likely a mix of both. But I felt so at ease with the world, but ready to get up, rally, and change things together.

Nostalgic Travels

I was archiving and cleaning shop with my photos tonight, and I ran across old photos.

Well... They weren't that old. But it reminded me just how long I have been here in Vancouver, WA. I found photos from two winters back; from my first arrival: from Warren Wilson.

Wow. What a time ago. I found myself rereading through my yearbook with my and many of my friends' senior pictures and quotes in it. What a ride. It's amazing how time flies, and yet, how current it still feels.

I can't go back, and I'm slowly coming to the realization that... That is okay.

The pictures showed a much happier, but a much more different me.

It's amazing how much I've grown over this time in my life. It's amazing how fragile memory is, and how many minor events at Wilson have been lost to time. Moving forward shows the generalizations of history, and how the human mind works in that regard.

Those I love stay with me though. As I carry on, they are there from the past to help me and to prop me up. Looking through those pictures, I saw them. The ones that are there.

Pictures are unique time capsules as well. They allow people to return to their consciousness, but also allow people to remember those times that were forgotten.

I came across pictures from Barcelona too. How long ago was that? I can only remember the places I went, and the people I was with. I never really remember the smaller details. Except that one woman who worked at the cafe under our apartment. She struggled through my Spanish so many times. All with a smile on her face, and an understanding tone. I really want to go back to Barcelona.

Have you ever had those moments in your life where you simply say "Wow!" and you cannot believe your eyes? Like when you stand upon the slopes at the treeline of Mount Hood:

Or the elation you get when being in a brand new city? The world as mysterious and open to you as you will ever get at?

How about a sunset across the Ohio plains?

Greeting the western shore for the first time?

Gaping at the sand dunes that extend for miles.

Meeting the giants of the volcanic giants of the west?

Or returning home.

To those you love.

There is nothing else like it.

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