JulieLeung.com: a life told in tidepools

Lisa Williams this week wrote an elegant defense and description of her home state and also asked the question where would you live if you could live anywhere?

I’m not about to attempt an essay as eloquent and passionate as hers. But after Reading Seattle and living here now four years as an adult, I’ve come to appreciate more this state where I was born. It’s a strange two-headed creature. Cross the Cascades and you’ll find yourself in another land, with weather, economy and politics opposite of the West. How the two sides marry into the state called Washington and keep their relationship functional is a sensitive matter.

But I love this strange state. We have not one but two mountain ranges that can be viewed over a myriad number of bodies of water, lakes, rivers, sea. Got desert? Got farmland? Got volcanoes? Got rainforest? Got lakes? Got rain? Got sun? We’ve got them all in Washington, in contrast and in abundance.

Many of the people who call this place home, at least the area where I live, are not natives. We born-and-raised-Washingtonians can be a bit rare these days. I know I almost renounced my citizenship of this state. Come to think of it, I did. I escaped to college in exotic New England. I lived out East. I lived in California, an unimaginable fate when I was a Seattle girl.

When I married Ted, I felt I was giving up the Northwest. I figured I’d never get Ted to move to Seattle. He was an East Coast boy, used to snow and cold, a lover of ice-skating. And somehow I loved him, even though I thought it meant we’d never move back to the land I loved.

Somehow God worked out the details and I was only too happy to move up here a few years ago. I miss the sun. I miss the diversity of Silicon Valley. I miss my friends. But it’s hard to match what I have in my heart for this circle of land that surrounds Puget Sound.

It’s a land of abundance. The natives here were fat from the bounty. They only needed to reach into a river to grab a salmon. Food was plentiful. It is a blessed place.

Some might say that Seattle – Redmond in particular – has ruined the world. I disagree, even at the risk of offending my Open Source spouse. Seattle has been a base of creativity and invention and I think that has only increased as the area grew.

It was a land built by pioneers, seeking gold or a place of their own. It’s younger than East Coast culture, more malleable, flexible and casual. It changes fast. It seems to have changed a lot in my absence. But I still find what I love here.

I like walking on the beach. Seeing the sun set late on summer nights. Hydroplanes and Blue Angels in August. Sourdough bread and clam chowder. Salmon. Riding the ferry into Seattle. Skyscrapers reflected against the ocean. Sea anemones in the sand. The history. The hills. Washington State Apples. Seeing the forest for the trees, the tall cedars, hemlock and fir. The people who have lived here and who live here now, who have written down their dreams and hopes for this place, who have labored and made it home.

Now again it is my home. My childrens’ home. This place that Manifest Destiny made manifest has become my destiny, at least for now.

I can’t pretend this is Disneyland. It’s no Garden of Eden or perfect paradise. I have my complaints about this place. Sometimes I think I’d like to move back to Silicon Valley. Or I think I might like to live in Boston. The things that brought us to Bainbridge Island are gone. But we don’t sense this is the right time for us to move.

The more I think about where I would want to move, the more I realize:
I wouldn’t want to live anywhere but here.