The Pacific Northwest

I live in Washington State (in case you haven't already noticed that). While I am not a by birth Washingtonian, I do consider this state to be my home. When I moved here in 1999 I was a freshman in high school and had at that point been to over 25 states during the course of my life. Washington, out of all of them, even my native Missouri, was something special. Here the mountains were really mountains, unlike the hills they call the Ozark Mountains where I come from. The forest are green year round, animals are every where, the river is crisp and fast and beautiful to behold and nature surrounds everything. If I could choose what my heaven looked like, it would be just like the Columbia Gorge (minus the power lines).

There have been times, however, where I have seriously considered leaving. The only reason for this is that I despise anything cold and since winter is cold I would love to be somewhere where its over 70 degrees year round. Somewhere like the town of Furnace located in Death Valley. (Yes, it does exist last time I checked). But then I think about the gorge in the winter time and remind myself that although it is cold there is absolutely no view on earth more beautiful than looking out across the river and seeing the evergreens covered in a thick coat of snow.

As I was sitting at the elementary school the other day, watching my son at soccer practice I began to think about what this land must have looked like pre-Lewis and Clark. From the lower fields at Stevenson Elementary School there is a great view of the river (once you block out the courthouse, power lines and other buildings). I found myself staring at that river wondering what it would have been like to see it before all of this modernization was here. Did a forest of trees block this view or was it possible that some adventurous Native American stood there on the same hill looking at the view I now admired?

Ever since my very first Anthropology class (the one that made me fall in love with Anthropology long before it was my major) I have come to greatly appreciate the deep, long history of the land I now live on. It's a place that remembers its history, unlike Missouri where you feel no great mystery and the earth seems to have forgotten its roots. Washington has an air about it that makes you feel as though you could at any moment step into the past while maintaining a grip on the present. Its hard to explain the feeling that I get living here. I hope somewhere, someone who reads this will understand the feeling. Where I come from, its like they have it all figured out, with nothing left to explore or learn but here in Washington it feels as though there are still mysteries of our past to solve.

I decided a long time ago, when I first finally decided to major in Anthropology that if I could ever become an expert on something it would be the Pacific Northwest. I consider this to be a gateway. The earliest people to come to North America had to come through here. What were they like? Who were they? How did they adapt to the environment? What were they looking for when they came here? Where they really just following the herds of animals or had they realized that perhaps the animals went somewhere warmer, better in the colder months and followed them to find that land? Obviously this is all information we are unlikely to ever know but these are the things I think about, that I wonder about. I feel that these are the mysteries this land still holds onto.

As I being the process of deciding whether I want to go on to a masters program I have begun to think about what I might want to learn. This would definitely be at the top of my list. I wanna know about Native Americans in the Pacific Northwest before Lewis and Clark made their journey here. Perhaps the subject has been studied to death and there are no new secrets for me to find. Who knows. I have only begun the research process in preparation for possibly going back to school. I just hope that somewhere out there is something left for me to discover.