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Deep Presence Essay

Rivers are the circulatory system and life blood of the Puget Sound Basin. That’s why I chose the three great river deltas that flank Whidbey Island to the east as the destination for my first Circling Home walkabout. I’ve included David Whyte’s fine poem Where Many Rivers Meet, written from his own home on Whidbey Island, as a portal into the journey.

Where Many Rivers Meet

All the water below me came from above.

All the clouds living in the mountains

gave it to the rivers

who gave it to the sea, which was their dying.

And so I float on cloud become water,

central sea surrounded by white mountains,

the water salt, once fresh,

cloud fall and stream rush, tree roots and tide bank

leading to the river mouths

and the mouths of the rivers sing into the sea,

the stories buried in the mountains

give out into the sea

and the sea remembers

and sings back

from the depths

where nothing is fogotten.

David Whyte

from Where Many Rivers Meet

Copyright 1990, 2004 by David Whyte

uses by permission of the author and

Many Rivers Press

Like any real life pilgrimage, this walking trip started as a pretty good blend of the ridiculous and the sublime. Here’s a beginning at describing where I went and why I went there.

It might help to zoom out for a moment, and get the big picture. If you follow the Cascade Mountain range north from its inception in southern Oregon, the range unfurls itself from the North American Plate like a storm gathering fury the further north it goes. Part of the Pacific Rim’s Ring of Fire, the Cascades are dotted with volcanic peaks at regular intervals along the way, some of which (as Mt. St. Helens recently proved) are still very much alive. Just north of Glacier Peak in central Washington, the Cascades go on steroids, expanding east and west in a widening wedge that climaxes in the North Cascades, a range that has been aptly called “the American Alps”.

These are the mountains I see on the eastern horizon from my home on Whidbey Island. Looking east from the shores of Saratoga Passage, the skyline is dominated by a wall of granite that rises out of the Puget lowlands from sea level to a height of over 10,000 feet. Monte Cristo, Whitehorse, Three Fingers, Pilchuck, and Index and are among the first wave of sentinels that greet the eye from this vantage on a clear day. The glaciated volcanic domes of Mt. Baker (called by local native tribes Kulshan, or Great White Watcher), and Glacier Peak rise above them all, and both are easily visible further back in the range. These two volcanic summits stand exactly 100 kilometers from my house, crown jewels in the circle that I have chosen to define my year of local exploration.

Everett, WA, framed by the Central Cascades as seen from the Whidbey Island ferry

A very young range geologically, the Cascades create a stunning ecological rift between the eastern and western slopes, making Washington one of the most diverse climatic zones in the world. It is a place of stark contrasting extremes. On the western slope, temperate moisture-laden weather systems sweep in off the North Pacific and pile against this wall of peaks, dumping their load of rain and snow as they rise to pass over the mountains. Emptied of moisture, the water feast quickly turns to famine on the eastern slope, yielding some of the most parched landscapes in the continental United States.

The transition from temperate rainforest to Ponderosa pine to parched sagebrush desert happens breathtakingly fast as one moves east across the mountains. It is a bio-regional potpourri that could scarcely be more diverse. As a Northwest native, I revel in this diversity of climate and terrain. But always in my heart I am a child of the western slope. Strictly speaking, the Northwest Coast temperate rainforest extends from the redwood groves of San Francisco Bay all the way around the arc of Alaska through Prince William Sound and the Kenai Peninsula. It is far and away the largest temperate rainforest on earth, with much smaller versions occurring in southern Chile, Norway, New Zealand and Tasmania.

Puget Sound lies mid-way in this long, narrow band of ecological exuberance, sandwiched between mountains and sea. As it happens, Western Washington brings the biological productivity of the region to its apex. The greatest mass of living matter per acre anywhere on earth occurs on the west slope of the Olympic Mountains, just over the hump from Puget Sound, where annual rainfall tops 200 inches and the temperature rarely drops below freezing. The world record for annual snow pack also occurred here on the slopes of Mt. Baker. The Puget Sound Basin is the very definition of rain country, a hydrological poster child, and a place where countless rivers converge on one inland sea. There are more than a dozen major river systems and thousands of tributaries and smaller streams that flow into Puget Sound from the Cascade and Olympic Mountains. Three of them, including the two largest, originate in the North and Central Cascades, and enter the Sound in the eastern embrace of Whidbey Island. The estuaries of these three great rivers - the Snohomish, Stillaguamish and Skagit - interlock fertile fingers in a near continuous delta of superb productivity that stretches from Everett north to Mt. Vernon and beyond.

Pouring over maps of my home region through the lens of ecological significance, it soon became obvious that this is where I needed to start my own pilgrimage back into the geography of home. These rivers were the summer homes of Whidbey Island’s first inhabitants - the Snohomish and Snoqualmie peoples, and the tribes of the lower Skagit basin. The Tulalip and Swinomish Indian Reservations - home to the contemporary remnants of these tribes - lie within these three deltas. Some of the first cities of the American Northwest located here, for the same reasons that the Indians were here before them; for the bountiful salmon runs, huge conifer forests in the valley bottoms, rich soil for farming and gathering in the flood plains, and ready made transportation corridors into the interior of the region. Today these rivers struggle to do their essential work beneath the competing layers of urban sprawl, heavy manufacturing, industrial logging and farming, and international shipping and trade. Icons of a resource-rich past, these deltas are symbols of an older Northwest left behind by the rise of modern high tech industries that could just as easily exist any place else as here. Yet estuaries are the repositories of natural capital that we dismiss at our peril. Estuaries - the intertidal zone of bays and rivers where fresh and salt water mix - are the most productive habitat on earth. 75% of all species depend at some point in their lives on estuaries like these. An even higher percentage of commercial and sport fisheries could not exist apart from estuarian habitats. The way of life of coastal communities has been rooted in this dependence for millennia. In the era of global warming and species extinction, these local rivers and estuaries are reasserting their place as essential guardians of economic as well as ecological health. The recent listing of Puget Sound chinook salmon on the Endangered Species List has raised the public profile of estuaries, water conservation and spawning habitat as top level political issues.

A series of catastrophic “500 Year floods” over the last few years in Cascade Rivers has reminded us also of the awesome power of these rivers, and how impossible they are to control when that power is unleashed. Rising rainfall, shrinking glaciers and diminishing snow pack have emerged as early warning signs of global warming in the region, and have seriously altered the water cycle already. Our legal obligation under the Endangered Species Act to restore our threatened salmon runs, and the catastrophic impact of recent floods, have awakened the Northwest to the need for big changes in the way we manage growth and ecological health in Puget Sound.

I am drawn to explore these particular watersheds because they are my own neglected back yard, because they remain indispensable building blocks in any kind of sustainable future for the region, and because I know that my continuing ignorance about them contributes to their decline. I also know these rivers are forces of immense spiritual as well as physical power, worthy of our deepest respect. Though I have lived here all my life, I have never made these rivers my own by giving them the gift of my careful attention. I’ve never explored them at the level where it counts, on foot and by kayak. This trip will be a first attempt to remedy that situation.

Day One: Beginning the Journey Saturday, January 19, 2008 I chose a terrible day to start my inaugural Circling Home walkabout. It was 37 degrees and pouring rain when I hoisted my pack, left my house and headed for the ferry this morning. For the first time in the fifteen years I’ve lived on Whidbey, I walked the four miles to the ferry, and that was just the beginning. My hiking boots were soaked before I even reached the ferry landing, my hands were numb, and my mind was rebelling against the whole idea. What was I doing this for, again? Something about global warming? And my grandchildren? What was the question again? And how does freezing in the rain constitute an answer? I thought about turning back and waiting for a more auspicious day to begin. But I’d been thinking about this moment for so long, I wasn’t going to admit defeat quite yet. I got on that ferry to the mainland, and a half hour later I was trudging through the affluent neighborhoods of Mukilteo, skirting the bluffs north toward the working class city of Everett. It would be awhile before I saw any rivers. For several hours it seemed like all I was ever going to see was expensive houses and cars. I’ve done my share of lugging a backpack in the rain, but always on remote backcountry trails far from the congestion of the city, never on busy urban thoroughfares. There are hoards of backpackers in the Northwest. We are an major tribe of the region. But our cherished domain begins at the trailhead. Ours’ is a sharply divided world, split between ever-shrinking natural sanctuaries on one side (where we long to be), and ever expanding fingers of urban sprawl on the other (that we long to escape). Embarking on my anomalous adventure as a lone hiker in the Kingdom of Cars, I sensed immediately that I was committing an oddly blasphemous breach of cultural etiquette. I felt conspicuously out of place on foot, hugging the narrow concrete shoulder of a busy highway, pummeled by a steady stream of SUV’s and pickup trucks that are still the vehicles of choice in this region? From the outside, this stream of traffic felt annoying and faintly menacing. I had to work to quell the voices of judgment in my head. Never mind that I’ve been inside that stream my whole life. Our cars are more than just a convenience, after all. They are also our private sanctuaries. We use them to get away from the pressures of our lives as much as we use them to travel from place to place. Inside a car I can close off the noise, close out the world, and lose myself in the important work of getting somewhere else as quickly as possible, while enjoying being away from it all. When I’m inside my car, I can plug in my iPod or tune into talk radio to hold off the nagging suspicion that this really isn’t working very well. It isn’t taking me where I really want to go. But then everyone else seems to be doing it too, so it must be unavoidable. Isn’t this just part of what it means to be an active American? Today I’ve been testing another theory, and the early results are mixed. It felt good to be walking, but my paltry three-miles-an-hour seemed silly and out of place, and not a little bit dangerous, in the face of this relentlessly clamorous train of vehicles. I felt assaulted through all my senses by the noise and fumes, and by the hard set of the faces that met my eyes in the brief moment of passing. Clearly my presence on their highway was assaulting something in them too. What was it? The discomfort went both ways. For the first eight miles of my journey, I had no choice really, because only one road went where I was going, and all the cars had to use it too. I had a new and more visceral vantage on what it means to be so deeply intwined in a car culture. Still, walking is its own mysterious balm. Before long I fell into a groove, more or less oblivious to the rain and cold and traffic, enjoying the faint inner glow of a body doing what it is designed to do. As I put some distance behind me, I could feel a quiet exuberance welling up, despite the traffic and rain. I was actually doing what I set out to do. Though I had no clear idea where I was going, or what route I’d take, it was enough for now just to see how far I could get before dark. Without a doubt, this was a strange way to begin a pilgrimage. And a strange kind of pilgrimage to begin with. But I don’t know another word that can encompass the scope of what I’m trying to do here. Websters Dictionary defines pilgrimage as “a journey, especially a long one, made to some sacred place as an act of devotion.” When we hear the word, most of us think of Mecca or Jerusalem or Rome, exotic far off places that hold the founding stories and artifacts of our cultural heritage. I’ve been on enough long pilgrimages to know that there is something to this. I’ve visited the great cathedrals and monasteries of Europe, and the famous Zen temples in Japan, and I know the feeling of deepened connection to these sacred traditions that come from the physical act of being there myself, and participating in the essential rituals and ceremonies in their places of origin. But my current pilgrimage turns this definition on its head. I am not seeking the distant and the exotic, but the near and the ordinary. I am seeking, as Emerson once described it, “the miraculous in the common”. In the end truth finds us where we are, or it doesn’t find us at all. “God is in this place and I did not know it”, Jacob declared in Genesis 28. Zen Master Hakuin said, “Not knowing how close the truth is, we seek it far away. What a pity!” I was born by the shores of Puget Sound. This is the landscape that raised me up, sank its teeth into me, and showed me what it is to be human in a world shot through with beauty. The pilgrimage I’ve begun today is focused on the path itself, and not the destination. I want to know what it means, for better or worse, to truly belong in the place that I’ve always called home. My walking route took me north along the shores of Possession Sound, named by Capt. George Vancouver on June 4, 1792 in a ceremony near present day Everett claiming possession of this new land for King George III and for Britain. I wonder what Vancouver would have made of the MacMansions that now dot the shoreline along this stretch of Possession Sound, or the industrial sprawl of Everett? The rain came in spurts through the afternoon, and the deep gullies that punctuated the bluff did not lend themselves to shortcuts. My efforts to get off the main road let me into several dead ends, so it was a relief when I finally came to the working class neighborhoods of Everett, where I could pick my way through the quiet back streets that have seen better days, but still have their dignity intact. Like Mukilteo, Everett lost the railroad sweepstakes to Seattle in its bid to become the terminus for a new northern railroad in 1893. Ever since, Everett has been Seattle’s poorer cousin to the north, with solid working class roots that are still written all over the city. The Everett Massacre of 1916 still lingers in the annuls of labor organizing, and is remembered here to this day. I made my way past the Navy Base, past the huge pulp and paper mill and the complex of marinas and boatyards that make up Everett’s working waterfront. Boeing’s 747 plant is located in Everett, and today’s Everett is a magnet for a growing immigrant population from Eastern Europe, Southeast Asia, Central America and Africa. The nature of its challenges has shifted over time, but Everett still struggles to keep its place in a changing economic reality.

By the time I got to north Everett I’d walked fourteen miles, it was getting dark and I was tired. I took a room in a cheap motel on Broadway, stripped off my wet clothes and enjoyed the most satisfying bath in recent memory. Afterwards I did some yoga stretches to relieve my strained muscles, did a period of sitting meditation, then rustled up a teriyaki dinner from a take out joint in the deserted mall across the street. I had survived my first day on the urban trail. I wrote awhile in my journal, then fell into a deep and satisfying sleep.

Day Two
Sunday, January 20, 2008

I woke in the morning at 6:30, did my usual morning meditation practice for a half hour, the headed out at first light around 7:30 AM. Yesterday’s rain had passed over, and the temperature dropped during the night. But for hiking, I’ll take the cold over the rain. Within a mile I’d come to the edge of the Snohomish River delta, one of the largest and most complex estuaries in Puget Sound. The Snohomish results from the joining of two other great Northwest rivers fifteen miles inland; the Skykomish and the Snoqualmie, which drain Steven’s Pass and Snoqualmie Pass respectively. The four mile wide Snohomish delta separates Everett from Marysville to the north, and is crossed by three sets of bridges - one railway, one interstate, and the old Highway 99. Lacking a boat, Highway 99 is the only way through for someone on foot.

As a kid my family lived in Vancouver, B.C. for several years, and we’d drive the 150 miles between Seattle and Vancouver on Highway 99, before the interstate was built, passing tediously through each of the town centers along the way. Everett and Marysville were two of those towns, separated by a maze of wetlands and sloughs. Memories from those trips came flooding back as I made my way on foot across the islands and sloughs whose names I had never known until now; Smith Island, Spencer Island, Union Slough, Steamboat Slough, Ebby Slough. I passed the rotting docks and weathered fishing boats huddled in the sloughs, smelled the pungent blend of salt marsh and sawmill, mingled with the distant plumes of the pulp mill. Over the light Sunday morning traffic I could easily make out the flutey call of redwing blackbirds in the cattail marshes, and I paused to enjoy the antics of buffleheads and mallard ducks and mergansers feeding in the wetland ponds. These glimpses of a vibrant nature still thriving in the shadow of industrial neglect made me yearn to come back in my kayak later in the spring to explore these channels and wetland sanctuaries farther away from the commotion of the highways.

When I got to Marysville, I found the only cafe on Main Street that was open on a Sunday morning. Don’s 24 Hour Cafe is festooned with American flags inside and out, and declares from its sign on the highway that “The Lord is near for all who call on him.” The parking lot was full of pickup trucks, and the restaurant was packed with locals who seemed to have their own assigned seats. It would be an understatement to say that I was a conversation stopper when I walked in and hoisted my heavy pack to the floor. I found one of the few empty booths where a waitress filled my mug with coffee while I looked over the menu. It was the kind of old style, rot gut restaurant coffee that would get you excommunicated in a heartbeat from Seattle’s Starbuck Nation. My impression was that they served it with pride for just that reason. Antique kitchen implements hung from every beam and wall. A neon sign behind the counter sang the praises of Mountain Fresh Rainier Beer. My eye was drawn right away to the pies in the pie case, which looked grand. There was something unapologetically nostalgic about the place that made me miss the working town atmosphere of my other home in Petersburg, Alaska.

The plump, middle aged waitress was less than friendly as she took my order of pancakes and eggs, over easy. She was in a hurry, and ignored my attempts at cheerful banter. The conviviality of the place just didn’t seem to extend to me. So I sat back and enjoyed the scene while I devoured my breakfast and suffered through my coffee, undeterred by the fact that no one seemed remotely curious about who I was, or what I was doing there with my backpack on a Sunday morning. I was a foreigner, that much was clear, and not much more needed to be known.

Jonathan Raban, a British born writer based now in Seattle, was asked in an interview once how he, as a Brit, could be such an astute interpreter of Seattle’s cultural scene. He replied, “North Bend is further from Seattle than London.” (North Bend is the first rural town you come to as you head east into the mountains from Seattle.) The same could be said about Marysville, a timber and farming town with a fierce working class ethic, just outside the growing ring of suburban development. The sharp line between Red and Blue America is alive and well in this town.

After breakfast, I shouldered my pack and headed west beneath I-5 and into the Tulalip Indian Reservation. The public face of the reservation is a lavish casino-hotel complex along I-5 that makes a big visual splash and does a lucrative business. Until today, that was the only face I’d seen, whizzing by on the freeway. The life of the reservation is a life hidden away from mainstream view, separated by another sharp line, this time between affluence and poverty. The Tulalips share a common legacy of social dislocation with tribes all over North America, and this was evident as soon as I entered the tribal land. I’ve always felt there is a defiant streak that lurks beneath this surface poverty, when I’ve been privileged to attend native gatherings in the Northwest. One senses an invisible but resilient thread of living connection to the world of their ancestors and to the spirit of the land that is starkly absent from the rest of our culture.

The highway through the reservation hugs the shores of Port Susan for fourteen miles before it leaves the reservation and drops down into the Stillaguamish River flats south of Stanwood. There are no services, lodging or campgrounds inside the reservation, so I had no idea where I’d sleep for the night. I made it the six miles to the Tribal Center on Tulalip Bay, with

its large ceremonial smokehouse, tribal headquarters, and marina filled with the tribal fishing fleet, but it was almost deserted on a Sunday afternoon. The huge cedar canoes used to transport tribal members to the annual Canoe Rendezvous of tribes up and down the Northwest coast, held at a different native community each summer, were here as well. While there were few humans around, several ravens held council on the beach in front of the smokehouse, and a mating pair of bald eagles landed in a large Douglas fir tree by the tribal headquarters - the only bald eagles I saw on the trip. These birds are prime clan emblems that have defined the lives of these people for millennia. I never saw another raven or eagle on the trip.

With no place presenting itself as potential lodging, I pushed on, resolving to get as far as I could before dark. I walked another couple hours north in the fading light, then tucked myself away into the forest to camp when there was barely enough light to see. It was obviously going to be a cold one. With no camp ground or fire pit, I didn’t build a fire, and I had only the crackers, cheese and water I was carrying. I put on all my layers of clothing, wrapped my sleeping bag in a tarp, and settled down to make the best of the long darkness. A full moon shone its spotlight on the forest all night, and the owls and coyotes let me know they were here too. I slept fitfully, and though the temperature dropped well below freezing, I stayed tolerably warm. With the first glimmers of dawn in the morning, I shook the ice off my bedding, chewed on a few more crackers and raisins, and headed back out onto the highway.

Day Three
Monday, January 21, 2008

A beautiful sunny morning dawned as I walked the cold highway, laced with frozen puddles and frost. It took a couple hours to pass out of the reservation, and I stopped at Kayak Point Park

on Port Susan for - you guessed it - more crackers and cheese. Still no stores or restaurants anywhere along the way. Not even a place to get hot water for tea. I really hadn’t expected to be caught so short over such a long distance, thought the brightness and clarity of the morning made up for it. The view west over Port Susan and Camano Island with the Olympics in the distance was stunning, and a whole new perspective on the Sound.

From Kayak Point I walked the beach for several miles beneath the bluffs, then rejoined the highway at Warm Beach, where I had gone to church camp as a teenager. The Stillaguamish mudflats filled the north end of the bay at low tide, then yielded to rich farm land across a wide expanse of delta leading up to Stanwood. By this time I had blisters on both feet from three days of walking, and my lets were telling me I’d had about enough for this first round. I decided that Stanwood was as far as I’d go today.I had to push myself down to the bridge over the Stillaguamish River, then along was seemed an interminable slog through the flats before I finally reached the outskirts of Stanwood, a farming community settled by Norwegian immigrants who really knew how to pick their land. Here the Stilliquamish delta to the south presses up against the Skagit River delta to the north, creating a land bridge all the way out to Camano Island, and soil of unsurpassed fertility. At a bus stop outside Stanwood I approached an elderly woman at the stop, one of the only people I’d seen since I left Marysville the day before. I asked her where the nearest lodging and restaurant might be. She said there weren’t any motels between here and the freeway, several miles away. It was also some distance to any kind of eatery. I was seriously ready for a room and a hot bath, but there was no way I could imagine getting any more miles out of my body today. I took off my pack and eased myself down onto the bench. The woman looked me up and down for a long moment, then said, “My ex-husband used to say about people like you out walking with a pack, ‘There goes a person on vacation.’” I took in this bit of wisdom as gamely as I could, then looked at the schedule by the bus sign. As it turned out, there was a county bus all the way to Everett Station leaving in a half hour. This got me thinking. That would get me home easily by dinner, and I could take the same bus back here to resume my walk next week. I was proud of what I’d accomplished on this trip, and figured I just needed to scale back my expectations a bit about how far I could walk in a day, if enjoying the trip is one of my objectives. Over the next half hour waiting for the bus, I learned a lot about this woman’s life. I learned, for example, that when she got out of prison she’d had a hard time finding a place to live. She ended up out here on Camano Island. I learned that her neighbor on one side plays the guitar really well and is drunk a lot, and that her neighbor on the other side has a “problem with his sexual orientation”. I learned a fair amount about the plight of her children as well. After I’d heard as much as I needed to hear, I decided to take a risk and talk about what I was doing. I told her why I was out walking, and about my vow to stay car-free for a year. I even told her it was my way of responding to global warming. To my surprise she shook her head approvingly and said, “I know what you mean. I’ve lived without a car for years. They’re a lot of expense and hassle, and the buses take me most places I need to go. Sometimes I get stuck, but I then I just walk. It works out okay most of the time.” I didn’t ask her the question that was also on my mind. I didn’t ask her where she finds hope in her life. That just seemed like too much of a stretch. But I wish now that I had. I think her answer might have surprised me, and I probably would have learned something. Next time I think I will.

Circling Home Boundary - 2008

Tuesday, January 15, 2008

We had one of those slashing, ripping winter windstorms last night that has become all too common in the Northwest lately. My house is nestled in a thick stand of conifers, and the fir boughs were flying past my window like rain. The roar of a gale whipping through this kind of forest is one of the more humbling experiences I know - exhilarating and scary at the same time. A storm like this on Whidbey Island means that it’s not a matter of “if” but “when” the power will go off. Last night the lights went out at 6:00 PM, just after it was thoroughly dark. In my neighborhood that means DARK. There is part of me that loves this kind of storm surge, even if the other half of me is waiting for the first Douglas fir giant to crash down on my house.

Soon after I’d gotten the candles lit and the fire going I heard a knock on my door. It was my next door neighbor, who needed help getting her smoke alarms turned off. She lives alone, and of course I was glad to help her. While I was there our neighbor on the other side showed up to help also. Once we’d disarmed the smoke alarms, we sat down and had tea together in the candle light, catching up on news from the neighborhood, our kids and our own lives. It was a sweet moment, something that I rarely make time for these days. So often it takes something out of the ordinary to get neighbors together like this, but I’m always struck by how satisfying it is to step back from my far-flung virtual community in cyberspace and actually get together with real neighbors. I’m also struck by how pleasant it is to spend more evenings at home with a good book or home movie. Being without a car has meant that I’m much more likely to cash in on the down time of an evening at home. I have to think more carefully about the constant stream of options for going out at night, because it is no small assignment to get around in the winter darkness by bicycle when there are no buses running. Last night that paid off with an unexpected good visit with my immediate neighbors.

My wife Sally was in Seattle for the night. A dear friend of ours’ died early yesterday morning after a three year fight with breast cancer. Sally has been holding a vigil with Sue at the hospice center for much of the last week, and stayed over last night to help get Sue’s body ready for burial. I was able to see Sue one last time a few days ago, and both Sally and I are sitting with the poignance of this moment - Sue’s passing, the frailty of all our lives, and the tragic upsurge of diseases like breast cancer that are the result, at least in part, of our toxic lifestyles. In so many instances, from breast cancer, auto-immune disease and birth defects to global warming, the bills are coming due on a culture that plays fast and loose with the life support systems of our planet. Sue’s death brings it home to us in a very personal way.

Last week I had the opportunity to be interviewed about Circling Home on our Seattle NPR affiliate KUOW, for a Northwest affairs show called Sound Focus. It was fun to see how these shows are put together in the studio, and I really enjoyed my conversation with Megan Sukys of KUOW. I’m gratified that my personal efforts to respond to climate change seem to be striking a chord in the community. I know that means that I am far from alone in wrestling with these questions, and that’s reassuring to me. If you’d like to listen in on the conversation, here is a link to my twelve minute interview on KUOW.

These days it is a fair journey for me into Seattle from the island, so I combined my KUOW interview with a final visit with Sue and my weekly trip to the Veterans Hospital on Beacon Hill to teach Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR). I teach a three hour class once a week to veterans that uses meditation and yoga as components of stress management. I am privileged to teach this class with Dr. David Kearney, an MBSR colleague and a gastroenterologist at the VA Hospital. This work with veterans is an important grounding rod for me during a year when I am temporarily on sabbatical from much of my teaching in other parts of the country. The VA Hospital brings into sharp focus many of the forces in our society that are out of balance, and the long wake of suffering that our veterans seem to bear far out of proportion to the rest of us. The VA is a big shift in context from my work with professional leaders in other contexts, but I’m always surprised by how common our human experience is when we get down to the basic ingredients. Mindfulness practice is a great tool for doing just that.

The process of learning to navigate my life without a car definitely takes more time and planning, but it is also delivering some unexpected pleasures. One is the obvious health benefits of doing a lot more walking and biking. I arrive where I’m going with more energy and focus rather than less, more awake and juiced than if I’d had several cups of coffee (but without all that cafeine). I’m also struck by how energizing it is to be in greater contact with the elements. Even in our Northwest winter, the typical wind, rain and exposure are not nearly as intimidating in reality as they always seem from the inside of a building or the back side of a car windshield wiper. A dash of grit and resolve, and the simple act of plunging in, and I immediately feel a resurgence of aliveness and control over my circumstances. The extra time enroute would be spent doing what? - writing a few more emails? - worrying a little more about all the work I’m not going to get done anyway? Besides, I arrive where I’m going in a more productive frame of mind.

I’m also enjoying the serendipity of getting from Point A to Point B. For anyone who has experienced the pleasure of being footloose in Manhattan, Boston or San Francisco, try Seattle. The moment I get off the beaten path of the I-5 corridor or the endlessly clogged Seattle thoroughfares, the magic of the city opens right up. Seattle is filled with quirky, colorful neighborhoods, gorgeous vistas, lots of greenways and hideaway parks, and lively public gathering places. On foot or bicycle I can dodge my way through the neighborhoods with a lot of creative license, and I have time to notice the unexpected gems hidden in the nooks and crannies. I feel as though I have more time rather than less, because I no longer write off the time it takes to get where I’m going. The whole process tends in the direction of adventure rather than hassle, and I am nearly always more available to my task at hand when I do arrive.

And this is still the “dead of winter” in Seattle, where people tend to engage in a strange war against the water-driven climate that makes the Northwest coast so special in the first place. At this time of year, conventional wisdom (and local media) hammer on a false choice between seasonal affective disorder and flight to sunnier places. I’ve never bought it. I grew up in this bioregion, and therefor I am a creature of its version of the four seasons. When winter comes, my body still remembers the instinct to pull back on the throttle, even if my culture drives me to maintain full velocity. My choice to step outside of the prevailing car culture this year (and more directly into the elements) has helped me reconnect with what I love about our Northwest winter, rather than making it more daunting and difficult. This is for me an encouraging confirmation of the wisdom inherent in place.

Tags: circling home, Circling Home Map, Inside Passages, map

I had my first serious travel adventure of the year this past weekend, and a chance to work out some of the bugs in my car free diet. For fifteen years now I’ve been part of a men’s group that meets once a year on the Olympic Peninsula on the first weekend of January. It has become an annual ritual that we plan our year around, and it is rare that any of us is absent. Our group of eleven includes a range of professional backgrounds, including an attorney, two ministers, an architect, a psychiatrist, two commercial fishermen, a veterinarian, and a carpenter. We range in age from mid-forties to mid-seventies, so we also represent different stages of life and career. We call ourselves the “Soleducs”, named after the house on Sequim Bay where we have traditionally met. Our gatherings always include a blend of outdoor adventure and in depth conversation about the years’ issues, projects and passages. We are an ordinary group of guys who have build an extraordinary legacy of friendship that feels all too rare in today’s world.

This year the sixty mile trip to Sequim Bay was my first major excursion off island since I began my Circling Home experiment. It was a stormy day, with gale force winds that nearly shut down the ferry from Whidbey Island to Port Townsend. We had a wild ride across Admiralty Inlet near the confluence of Puget Sound and the Strait of Juan de Fuca. While the rest of the guys carpooled, I made my way by bike, ferry and bus, arriving sometime after the rest of the group.

On the way I visited my friend Nathan Gilles at his carving shed in the Jamestown-S’Klallam Tribal Center on Sequim Bay. Nathan is a premier carver in the Northwest Coast native tradition. The carving shed where he works produces some of the most spectacular totem poles anywhere on the coast.

It is a highlight of my year just to be in the presence of such monumental work, which still carries within it for me much of the soul of Northwest culture. Nathan showed me around the works in progress, describing some of the differences between the Haida and Bella Coola native styles that he is currently working on.

Livelihood

So how am I going to pull this off from a livelihood standpoint? It’s one thing to decide I need to make some changes. It’s another thing to figure out how to support myself through the change. I have no easy answers here. Being self-employed with an unusual blend of skills is both an asset and a liability. It is an asset in that my time is my own to allocate as I will. I have well-honed skills as a commercial fisherman, carpenter, wilderness guide and meditation teacher. Different as they are, each of these skill sets continue to play some part in my livelihood structure, and I can configure them as necessary to meet changing circumstances.

The liability is that the moment I back off on the throttle of my work, as I am this year with my Circling Home experiment, the money stops flowing. There is no salary to tie me over. I can take a sabbatical if I want, but nobody is going to pay me to do it.

Staying local for the year means I won’t be going to Alaska for the summer. This cuts me off from my main sources of income as a commercial fisherman and wilderness guide. I could kick back in as a carpenter, but that would defeat the purpose of my primary intention to explore and write during the coming year. On the other hand, my career as a meditation teacher is on the upswing, but it pays poorly, and has been taking hold mostly outside my home region, so it rests heavily on jet travel. It is this growing weight of travel, and its indisputable connection to climate change, that has prompted my decision to stay local this year.

So no matter how I slice it, I am going to have to dip into savings to make this work. I am fortunate that my wife has a good source of income, that she supports my intention and is willing to help pull up the slack financially.

I’ll be using this year to ramp up my teaching in local venues, including work I am doing one day a week at the Veteran’s Hospital in Seattle, teaching meditation and yoga as components of stress reduction. I’ll also lead some contemplative retreats at the Whidbey Institute and North Cascades Institute, and see what else emerges.

The other leg of my livelihood stool this coming year will be a month of commercial salmon fishing next fall with my partner Dave Anderson on the gill net boat we recently bought for Puget Sound. This may be a departure from my low-carbon diet, but it’s what I have to work with, and it has the added advantage of teaching me about my home region from the vantage of working on the water. For so many years I’ve traveled a thousand miles to the north to experience what used to be the heart and soul of my home region. While many of the salmon runs in Puget Sound are badly depleted, the chum salmon run is still strong and commercially viable, and the fishing lifestyle is an excellent way to become better acquainted with the ecological fabric of the Sound. Fishing for salmon has been basic to livelihoods in Puget Sound since the retreat of the last ice sheet. It is a way for me to bridge the skills I already have with the place I actually live.

There is no point in shying away from the contradictions and points of friction that all of us will be facing in our efforts to reinvent our lives in response to climate change. There is no magic bullit. We all will have to do the best we can with what we have to maintain reasonable livelihood options, even as we strive to change the way we live and work. One of the obvious challenges for me this year then will be to strike a realistic balance between ongoing livelihood needs and an honest break from patterns of work that are no longer sustainable. My “sabbatical” will really be a number of mini-sabbaticals sprinkled in among bits and pieces of work to keep me going and keep me grounded. I hope to gain some insights into how this might be accomplished on a longer term basis, closer to home, by the time this year is over.

CIRCLING HOME 2008
An Online Journal
by Kurt Hoelting
Winter Solstice, 2007