The Sun sets on Vashon Island, the namesake of the Vashon Glaciation.

Sometimes geology is destiny. The most unique feature of the state is the vast inland waterway that transformed the western half of the state. There would have been no ports, no trade and no cities, were our ring of mountains not broken by one of the most transformative geological events in the history of Washington: the Vashon Glaciation.

The city of Seattle is built on coastal hills of glacial till.

 15,000 years ago, the Ice Age was making its final push; over Seattle, the ice was 3,000 feet thick, and beneath that sea of ice, the bedrock was slowly ground to dust on that great glacial millstone. Today, the Chehalis River more or less marks the spot where the glacier slowly ground to a stop, forming the southern boundary of the Vashon Trough.

 The glacier cut between the Cascades and the Coast Range, and its deepest cuts filled with seawater as it receded, forming the Salish Sea, definitively separating the Olympic Mountains from the the interior. The retreating Vashon Glaciation left rocky mounds of glacial till, a loose mixture of broken rock and sandy soil. Today you can still see where these rounded lowland hills give way to the jagged seismic uplifting of the North Cascades, forming the eastern border of the Vashon Trough.

The industrial port of Everett is one of the busiest in the state.

 Although there are different ecological boundaries, it is anthropologically necessary to differentiate between two regions within the Vashon Trough. Generally, the boundary is I-5, the main north-to-south highway. On the water side of I-5 there is the Salish Sea, and on the inland side there is the Puget Drainage. While the ecosystems overlap, it is an important social boundary. On the water side, there are industrial port cities, on the inland side there are small towns and farmland. It is a political axiom in Washington that the farther east you go, the more conservative people get. The counties around Puget Sound stretch from the sea to the Cascade Crest, and many are split between a liberal cost and a conservative interior. In Snohomish County, there was even talk of secession, forming a new “Freedom County” in the east.

Farmland in the interior of Snohomish County

 As divided as they may be, things are changing. Crowded urbanites look east for more space, and affluent subdivisions spring up in once rural towns. These two halves of the region are as ever interdependent, as the raw materials of the interior flow to the coastal factories, and the fruits of the inland farmlands fill the coastal markets. Ultimately, the people here are united by their geography more than they are divided by it. The Vashon Trough thrives in its unique position, with both sheltered interior farmland, and bustling oceanic waterways. It is this relationship between the land and the sea that is the lasting legacy of the Vashon Glaciation.

Austin M. Kramer
Mukilteo, Washington
July 24, 2011

The heart of Washington lies in a cradle between two mountains: east of the Olympics, west of the Cascades. The Maritime Interior of the state stretches from the crest Cascade Mountains in the east, down across Puget Sound, to Hood Canal at the foot of the Olympic Mountains in the west.

 Populations have always collected in this mild green land, not battered by ocean storms, nor starved for rain behind impenetrable mountains. For the first tribes, the bounty of the region lay not only in the sea, but also in the fertile forests that produced the berries, nuts, and roots that balanced their seafood diet.

 For later European immigrants, it was trade that harmonized the communities working the land and the sea. Port towns exported by sea the inland riches of the mountains and valleys. Even today, tress are felled and rolled down the hills into the water, where they are bound together in giant rafts and towed by tugboat to the mills.

 Sometimes I canoe out to these rafts as they float off shore, waiting for processing. On top of the slippery logs, bobbing unevenly in the cold water, gulls land to watch and wait and pick at the bait fish schooling beneath. Occasional harbor seals flop up on to the raft, rolling around in the fresh air. For more than a hundred and fifty years, we have logged the same way. The mills were first built in the 1840s, and trees like these once rolled down Seattle’s infamous skid row.

 Later, the railways came, and they ran east to west, leading to these same ports. They began carrying ore from the mountains, and they still do today. Walking the Burlington Northern Santa Fe rails that hug the coast, the rails started to sing, and I got out of the way minutes before a greasy diesel locomotive trundled past, pulling car after car of jagged broken rocks.

 Nowadays, these trains just as likely carry industrial products like cars or even airplanes. Washington ports transit many of the imports that spread out by road and rail across the country. As a child, I always counted the rusty shipping containers passing by: inscribed in Chinese, Japanese and Korean, transferred from ship to train, coming from one horizon, and then disappearing over the other.

 Certain criteria define each region in the state: geology, water, weather and populations. Geologically, the Maritime Interior is an intermontane trough carved by violent geological forces. From the ancient ice of the Cascade peaks to the glacial till at the bottom of the Salish Sea, the geological legacy of the Ice Ages litters the landscape. Yet, the geological violence is hardly over as earthquakes and volcanic eruptions still rumble.

 Water is the dominant feature of the Maritime Interior. The relatively calm saline waters of the Salish Sea run deep and dark. They are refreshed by roaring rivers that crash down from the mountains above, surging with milky, jade-green water melted from the high glaciers. The lowland topsoil harbors deep pockets of water, either trapped in layers of porous rock or in wetland watersheds. The water always returns from the sky: while sheltered from the brutality of the North Pacific by the Olympic Mountains, the Maritime Interior soaks in the gentle rain trapped by the towering Cascade Mountains.

 Today, the majority of Washington’s population lives and works here, along the I-5 corridor, running from Bellingham in the north to Vancouver in the south. They were drawn to its sheltered, deep-water industrial ports, which evolved into thriving cities like Seattle, Tacoma, Everett and Bellingham, with busy docks and steaming factories. In the last 30 years, new technology industries made this one of the wealthiest areas in the country. Trade and prosperity have drawn diverse immigrant communities, especially from Asia, whose culture left a significant imprint on the region.

 This is where I live, and so here I begin, for reasons of familiarity, convenience, and the price of gas. However, the Maritime Interior cannot stand alone: although it may be populous and prosperous today, it is a product of a complex symbiosis with the rest of the state. As divided as Washington may be, its parts remain inseparably interdependent.

Austin M. Kramer
Everett, Washington
July 24, 2011

What is Washington? Our political borders show little regard for the people and land they encompass. Although they bind us together, they have not severed our connection to places that share our history, culture and geography, from the icy peaks of British Columbia, to the canyons of Idaho, to the Willamette Valley of Oregon. Different boundaries divided the original tribes of Washington – logical natural features like mountains or rivers, which still affect us today. Immigrants leave trails leading to their homelands. My journey through Washington may well spill over into a much wider world, but for now, I’ll use Washington’s borders as a place to start.

 While the borders of Washington may not be big enough, sometimes they seem too big. Not all parts of Washington are on the same page culturally, climatically, or even geographically. No one community represents the whole state, so I will need to take the state apart, like a machine, and see how the different pieces work together.

Washington is divided east from west by our deep waters and towering mountains: turbulent channels and stone citadels that are challenging in the best of weather, and in Washington, the weather is seldom at its best. When snows are too deep or seas are too high; when the passes close, and the ferries stop running, east-west travel can cease entirely. These barriers create three distinct “Ecocultural” macro-regions: the Oceanic Highlands, the Maritime Interior, and the Highland Interior.

 The Oceanic Highlands are Washington’s newest mountain range. Formed by the subduction of the Juan de Fuca plate, they are young and growing, and will someday surpass the Himalayas. The people here earn their living from the vast forests and gray oceans, logging and fishing. These hardscrabble communities are linked by Highway 101 which winds through dark forests and jagged ocean cliffs down the coast as logging trucks rumble to and from the bustling ports.

Between the Coast Range and the Cascade Crest is the Maritime Interior: a vast trough, glacially carved, that holds a sprawling inland waterway, the Salish Sea. Here, the salty waters of the Pacific Ocean flow into a maze of islands and fjords carved in the last ice age. Along its sheltered shores are deep water ports that have long been the heart of Washington’s population. Today, the I-5 corridor is the artery along which most Washingtonians commute into cities like Seattle or Tacoma for urban jobs in technology or heavy industry.

East of the Cascades but west of the Rockies is a dusty plateau, drained by the Columbia River, that is the Highland Interior. In the rain shadow of the Cascade Mountains, the sunshine, fertile soil and convenient irrigation make it the agricultural heartland of Washington. Although the rolling grasslands and arid scablands couldn’t seem more alien to the rainforests of the Pacific Coast, for thousands of years people have crossed the passes and navigated the rivers to trade and share the bounty of diversity.

 Although they may seem disparate, the three regions of Washington work together as a system, each one providing something that enriches the others, together making Washington our land. 

Austin M. Kramer
Mukilteo, Washington
July 14, 2011

 Ich lebe mein Leben in wachsenden Ringen,
die sich über die Dinge ziehn.
Ich werde den letzten vielleicht nicht vollbringen,
aber versuchen will ich ihn. 

I live my life in ever expanding circles,
Spreading out over everything
Perhaps I will not complete the ultimate circle
But I will try.

-Rainer Maria Rilke, Das Stunden-Buch

 Like ripples on the water, spreading out from a singular epicenter, there are worlds, and worlds within worlds. Contexts multiply the closer we look, layer upon layer: concentric circles of space and culture tightening around the individual and his place in space. Washington State is as diverse geographically as it is culturally. Although the land and the people of Washington are a singular whole, we need to draw boundaries in order to understand them one piece at a time. These should not, however, be boundaries that divide us: instead they illustrate the ways we relate to each other.

Washington breaks down into three major regions: the Pacific Coast, the Maritime Interior surrounding Puget Sound, and the Highland Interior east of the Cascade crest, but these regions can be further divided into more specific, related sub-regions, and to the different ecosystems at work. Within those distinct geographic regions, the actors are the same: there is the environment, and then there are people, and then there is the food that connects them, but we must break them down further if we don’t want to get disoriented, zooming from the personal level out to the bird’s eye view of orbiting satellites.

 The Environment consists of three basic parts, each necessary for life, collectively called “habitat,” individually they are: sustenance, water and shelter. Food can be divided into four groups based on how we obtain it: fishing, hunting, foraging and farming. People form two groups: the First People, whose cultures developed in the context of this natural environment, and Immigrants, whose cultures developed elsewhere, but have since adapted to the environment of the Northwest.

 Across these boundaries, we will follow natural resources from their origin through their extraction and ultimately to their exploitation and consumption, each step prerequisite for the next. Before we can set about collecting food, we must examine the environment that produces the food. Then we need to explore the lost arts and living traditions that people employ in their search for food, and practice them ourselves.

 Just like any experiment results should be repeatable. Whatever I do, I gather enough details so that you can go out and do it yourself, as we recover our collective heritage. Each skill explained tears down a barrier that divides us from nature, and as the pool of knowledge grows, and more and more people come to know, practice and share these skills, then the greater chance we have of preserving both our way of life, and the environment which supports it.

 And in the end it is food that brings us together. What better way to observe our shared humanity than by cooking and eating together with friends? All around the world, the kitchen is the most important part of a home, just as food is the most important part of our lives – companionship, art, philosophy, science – none of these are possible on empty stomachs. So together we cook and eat and fuel our imaginations, the engines of culture, in order to better understand the expanding rings which connect us all to each other and to our planet.

 Austin M. Kramer
Mazama, Washington
July 11, 2011

 Ἡροδότου Ἁλικαρνησσέος ἱστορίης ἀπόδεξις ἥδε, ὡς
μήτε τὰ γενόμενα ἐξἀνθρώπων τῷ χρόνῳ ἐξίτηλα γένηται,
μήτε ἔργα μεγάλα τε καὶ θωμαστά, τὰ μὲνἝλλησι τὰ δὲ
βαρβάροισι ἀποδεχθέντα, ἀκλεᾶ γένηται, τά τε ἄλλα καὶ
δι᾽ ἣναἰτίην ἐπολέμησαν ἀλλήλοισι.

 Here Herodotus of Halicarnassus presents his research, so that the memories of men will not fade with time, nor will the great and wonderful deeds of Greeks and Barbarians be forgotten, including among other things, the inglorious reasons they went to war with each other.

 -Herodotus, The Histories 

On my desk is a pocket watch, found in a dusty Chinese market. Made in Switzerland, sold to a railway conductor, it must be wound every day. Through the open back, I watch the cogs interlock, and one twist sets each gear spinning, moving another, spreading rhythmic ripples through the mechanism in delicate synchronicity, and steadily moving the hands in minutes and seconds. Peering into these delicate gears reveals a map of our lives. We may not realize that our modern conveniences are the product of countless cycles, interlocking like the gears of my watch. My life is linked through these cycles to countless other lives, and each must be lived to be understood.

 Sit down at a window table in a downtown café, listen to the rain dripping from the awning as cars and people pass by outside: imagine how many hands the meal on your plate has passed through: the waiter, the chef, a delivery driver, a market monger, a farmer or fisherman, and don’t forget the earth, the water, and the weather that are the silent partners of anyone who works the land. If you are not too hungry and just curious enough, slow down and you will find traces of each of these in the final product: each set of hands leaves a mark as our food passes through them.

 My imagination always calls me farther down each step in the process until I arrive at the primordial source of it all, so now I am setting out to travel through this vast landscape of interlocking lives, and discovering that the strangest beauty of this epic natural mechanism is that it is not purely utilitarian. Although each person does their job, vestiges of their own cultures seep into these simple, repetitive tasks. It is culture that leads us to treasure our work: the way we do things becomes not simply a necessary act of material fulfillment, but also a personal act of spiritual fulfillment, a statement of our identity, our signature on the fabric of society.

 There is only one way to travel this chain of dependent vocations and intertwined lives, and that is by living each step in the process. It is not enough to simply listen to people’s stories, because when it comes to work there are things that can only be understood through the hands. Only by living it will I be able to honestly relate to these people. Before I can be objective, I must first live subjectively: I must let my humanity erode my objectivity just enough so that I can understand the people around me. The time for analysis is only after my understanding has been informed by experience and sympathy.

Now I write to present these visceral, unfiltered experiences as completely as I can. So much of what we learn has been simplified for our own convenience to the point that we no longer know how to do things ourselves. Cultural knowledge is dangerous when forgotten. The less we know, the less we respect. The more insulated we are, the more careless and callous we become. I want to strip away these layers of insulating simplicity and lay bare the complex reality in all its detail so that, by learning from the lives and cultures of others, we may all become better stewards of the world around us.

 Austin M. Kramer
Seattle, Washington
July 8, 2011

Call me Ishmael. Some years ago—never mind how long precisely—having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen and regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people’s hats off—then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can.

 -Herman Melville, Moby Dick 

 Many were surprised I returned. Gone beyond the horizon for so many years, most of them presumed I’d been lost forever. In the past, sailing across the Atlantic, my immigrant ancestors never had a chance to look back once they made America their home. Now, flying farther across the Pacific, I didn’t face the same dilemma. Ties are not severed as easily as they once were: transportation and telecommunications have created a world unbounded by the invisible borders of nations. Many fear this will lead to a loss of identity, yet my experience says otherwise. As I grew to know new places, the memory of home did not fade. One need not trade one place for another: today, our personal worlds expand, rather than shift.

 The closeness of distant worlds agitates in the soul a restlessness to return. The dust from the loess plains of northern China blows on Siberian winds across the ocean to settle, microscopically, on the forests of Washington. Perhaps this explains why there are days when I’m sure I can smell those familiar hinterlands on the wind, calling me west. But there is no scientific explanation for the sensation calling me back to the Salish Sea. It is when this pull is strongest, and I can hear the whispering ghosts of Chief Joseph and John Muir, that I run for refuge to the woods and the mountains and the sea, and I know it won’t be long before I’ll be back in the Pacific Northwest.

 Now I’ve returned to those intimate woods, where every plant has a name, and my mind’s eye pierces down to the profound process of life at work. Although this is not the land of my ancestors, I was born here, and this is my land. It flows in my blood; its rhythm is my heartbeat. This connection to the land leads me to its original tribes. I know this profound inheritance of place is lost if I don’t master it, so I must learn the ways people lived on this land long before me.

 My own cultural identity is even more complex. I represent not only the traditions of my old-world ancestors, and share a connection to the land with the original Americans; I also carry the cultures of countless other peoples, related not by blood, but by place. Living shoulder to shoulder with so many different people, their cultures rubbed off on me. I could understand and absorb their traditions because, though divided genetically, we were connected through our shared environment. Thus my own culture bears traces of all the cultures of the immigrants and tribes that have gathered here.

 I am searching for the stories of the land and the people I grew up with. Through my voice, I will tell their story, and through their voices, they will tell mine. Even on the other side of the world, I discovered echoes of home. From Mexico to China, I found familiar people, and strands of culture that braided together in Washington. From all around the world different people came, but they grew together into a single, diverse people, connected by the experience of, and dependence on, this unique environment. This is the story of what we became, and how it happened.

Austin M. Kramer
Mukilteo, Washington
June 27, 2011

Konoway tillicums klatawa kunamokst klaska mamook okoke huloima chee illahie.
All people came together, and they made this strange new land.

- Iona Campagnolo

 Before the computers, before the coffee, before the airplanes, there was the rain, the sea, the mountains and the trees. In one of the final, furthest corners of America, people have been gathering for thousands of years, long before wires and highways conquered the country. They were drawn by natural exuberance so irrepressible that even today, as much as we have transformed the land, it too has transformed us. We came from all around the world, but we were connected by the experience of, and dependence on, this land.

 For many today, the link between man and nature is no longer obvious. Yet, no matter how insulated we may become, we are all dependent on nature. As we live, we need three necessities: food, water and shelter. Although there may be many steps in the process, the ultimate source of these is our natural environment. This is why, even today, the connection between man and nature is as essential as ever. Although Washington State may now be famous for technology, the underlying relationship between man and his environment persists.

 Today, we need to understand ourselves as a part of nature, rather than as its adversary.  Many fear environmental preservation must be done at our own expense. The natural has become synonymous with the untouched. There are those who believe the only way to preserve the environment is to segregate man from nature, but they forget that man is both part and product of nature.

 Our society must not lose its connection to our natural heritage. Although the path forward does not lie in the past, our natural past is the foundation of our future. Should we erode our natural and cultural heritage in our single-minded focus on development, we would be chipping away at the bedrock beneath our feet; we would lose our ability to maintain the world around us, and even to sustain ourselves

 Hunger is a primal reality we never escape: our daily labor is to sate our daily hunger, and for this, we hunt, fish, forage and farm for food. For all our progress, the bulk of our food is still harvested in ways that have changed little over time, perhaps because the things we eat have not changed either. Food forms a cornerstone of our culture, and provides a window through which we can glimpse the connection between man and his environment and understand the way the environment has shaped and been shaped by the human cultures of Washington. Thus, I want to examine the human process of cultivating, collecting and consuming food, in pursuit of the perspective that cultural traditions associated with the production of food have to offer on nature, and man’s place in it.

Austin M. Kramer
Mukilteo, Washington
June 10, 2011