Marooned

I had a peculiar dream a few days ago that went something like this:

I've reached adulthood and I'm successful. I have a really nice big house. It's comfortable. Life is good. Then, on the tv, there are reports of an as-yet-undetermined natural disaster about to strike my very neighborhood. I call loved ones, tell them I need shelter for a while. I pack up the important things in the car (you know, health records, old pictures of family, my laptop - stuff I'd rather not lose), and hit the road.

Then the dream really started getting weird.

Instead of traffic funneling at least somewhat smoothly onto the highways, its total chaos just beyond my street. No one is moving, horns are honking, and I'm sitting in deadlocked local traffic for hours. There is no way out. Inevitably, the as-yet-undetermined disaster strikes, and everything in its path is obliterated.

Then I woke up. It was just a dream, I told myself.

The next day, I realized that this was no dream - for some, this could be an unfortunate reality someday. I got stuck in traffic in my dream because there were no highways to take people away. No airports. No trains.

Citizens of the islands of the Northwest, be warned. It could happen to you.

What happens when a modestly populated island has to evacuate in the face of natural disaster? Some of these islands have thousands of people. Many islands have no highways, and only one road through to the mainland.

Some, like Block Is. (Rhode Is.), the bulk of the San Juans (Wash.), or Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket (Mass.), don't even have that.

Sure, maybe they have small airfields, but how many people have airplanes? Commercial air service at small airports is a dying industry, so that's not exactly a safe bet.

So, get on the ferry. The slow, lumbering ferry.

How do thousands of people get off a ferry-access only island in a short period of time? It seems like its asking for trouble.

Now, people living on islands without a reliable link to the mainland is hardly new, and certainly not a northwest-specific trait. But Northwest Islanders take pride in their self-isolation and cutoff from assistance from impending disaster. The Washington St. Ferry System is huge, but its still ferries. They're slow, weather-dependant, and can't hold thousands safely at once.

I even heard that Vashon doesn't even have a real hospital, only an emergency clinic.

And it's not like the Northeast, where the only real imminent natural threat to population centers is the occasional low-level hurricane making its way up the Atlantic coast. (Oh, and did I mention what happens when the oceans rise due to global warming? Wait. That's not natural. We did that. Never mind.)

The Northwest won the geological lottery, situated strategically on the national capital of tectonic activity. We have earthquakes, volcanos, mountains, avalanches, and unusally depressing weather.

Why do people do this to themselves? What is so alluring about living on a low-access island? I would equate it with something like living in Iowa without the cornfields.

But I guess I'll never really understand this one.

Is The Grass Greener On The Other Side?

Well, yes and no. It really depends which side you choose.

I'm fresh off a short vacation in which I covered all three Pacific Northwest climates: The constant gloom that haunts the Pacific coastline towns of Oregon (west of I-5), the dry oven that bakes south-central Washington (east of I-5), and the pleasant weather stuck in between (anywhere on I-5).

Of course, this is only true during the period of time commonly accepted here as "summer", as the definition that I was brought up on (summer is Memorial Day to Labor Day on the East coast) doesn't seem to apply here.

Especially on the North Oregon coast, where the weather was startlingly reminiscent of what I've come to expect of late September or early October, even despite the warm temperatures. It was a little difficult to enjoy the natural beauty of the dramatic Pacific coast in thick fog and mist.

Or in the Cascades, which have clearly been baking in high and dry weather for quite some time, despite the patches of snow at the Mt. St. Helens observatory some 4,300 feet above the sea level I had just driven up from. (For the record, the views there are spectacular and give pause to the incredible power of the events of 1980, but I was very glad to get the heck down from there and back on the highway. I'm not afraid of heights; I'm just not used being in open space quite so high up.)

The drive west on Oregon Route 6 through the Tillamook (rain)Forest was a lush dark green, through to the quaint little town of Tillamook. Washington Route 504 from Castle Rock up to the Mt. St. Helens observatory at Johnston Ridge (52 miles of rolling hill climbs - my '99 Taurus is a tough little trooper) was different, through high forest of a lighter shade of green. And I must not forget the crown jewel of the city of Portland, the overwhelmingly gorgeous International Rose Garden for which the city is nicknamed, although green grass faces some tough competition from the bright hues of the roses. (In full bloom right when I visited, no less. July 4th was the right day for it.)

Here in the Northwest, it really is greener. But there's a catch: I miss out on my favorite time of year, Autumn in the Northeast. Here, the green just keeps going. Back east, the leaves on trees explode into hundreds of reds, yellows, and purples, all at the same time when September blows in. It's natural beauty in its own right.

It may not be a towering mountain range that dominates the landscape there, but that's not what people go to see.

So is the grass greener on the other side?

That all depends on what side you started on.

Sometimes, There's Places I Don't Miss

If you build it, they will come.

The kids built it, and just like that Iowa cornfield, they certainly came.

Sad.

I read the New York Times quite a bit to get a taste of the news from back home. Now, this sort of thing wouldn't happen in the specific town I live in or its surrounding towns (they're actually fairly liberal and this sort of issue could be resolved with a chat in the town administrators' offices). I love baseball; I've said that before. So when I read something like this, it is infuriating. Parents have a knack for screwing up a good thing; this is greatly magnified by the fact that this dispute occurred amongst the uptight, antidepressant-popping control freak adult citizens of Greenwich, Connecticut.

The question: would Northwest parents have the sheer arrogance to repeat something like this, or would stopping kids from having their fun cause them to think twice?

There are plenty of good, legitimate times for parental interjection. Drugs, unacceptable public behavior, teaching responsibility, and so on.

But I often wonder what it might have been like in the times where parenting meant giving your kids room to grow on their own. That era is long forgotten. It is this sort of story I will remember when I have decisions to make about future children of my own.

Current parents, ask yourselves: How did it get to this? Have we failed our children?

Someday, I'll be a parent too. If they build it, let them come. Maybe a little bit of the magic from that Iowa cornfield will rub off on them, too.