I live in Western Washington, about an hour by car and ferry from Seattle. My home is on a couple of acres of land in a fairly rural area -- I can look out my window and see sheep and horses grazing -- but most of my business is in Seattle, a tres-urban city of teeming traffic, trendy boutiques, and yuppie coffee joints.
If you live someplace else -- Cleveland, for example -- and you think Seattle is “Out West,” I suggest you think again. Around here if you want to find The West -- big, open sky lording over thousand-acre ranches -- you actually have to travel east from Seattle, over the Cascade Mountains, to places like Yakima or Omak or Moses Lake. Those towns, Pard’ner, are The West.
Leah and I made that drive this past weekend with friends. We spent our time breathing clean air, embracing the wide open country where aspen trees were crazy with fall color. We drank beer in a small town where cowboy boots serve a first life as everyday, utilitarian ranch wear of choice, then, years later, become whimsical planters.
We read books, took hikes and photographs, then went lookin’ for more food and beer.
I suppose the local folks pegged us right off as city slickers, urbanites from the West Side of the mountains who had come East to find the West.
