Subject: Greetings from Olympia, Washington Date: Tue, 20 Sep 2005 01:31:14 -0500 Message-ID: <B14120EE5C432443B21102F7925DAD0202E3F583@COKE.uwec.edu> From: "Grossman, Zoltan C." <GROSSMZC@uwec.edu>
PHOTOS WITH THIS LETTER at
http://academic.evergreen.edu/g/grossmaz/enticement.html
Dear Friends,
We are settling in to our new home in Washington state, and wanted to
let you know about our move and what we've been up to in the three weeks
since we arrived. Although we are excited to finally be here, we miss
our many friends back in the Midwest. Our thoughts have also been with
the victims along the Gulf Coast, and the evacuees who did not have any
choice to move. (We'll be helping them in the months ahead, and know
that you will be too.)
We left Eau Claire early on the morning of August 13, and stopped at
Buena Vista Park in Alma (where we got married) to say goodbye to this
beautiful spot along the Mississippi River . On the way up the steep
bluff, our cats Sammy and Godzilla started yowling because their ears
were popping. (We told them to swallow, but they didn't listen.)
We crossed the river out of Wisconsin, listening to the Kasey Chambers
lyrics ?If I'm not here in the morning/I'll cry a river of tears/I'll
learn to live in a new town/But my heart is staying here.? We were off
on our westward journey in our red Mazda, with food, bedding, and feline
livestock in tow.
For the rest of our 4-day trip, the kitties were fine, sleeping in the
carriers, and sniffing up each motel room like it was their new home. On
our first night we stayed at a hotel overlooking the Missouri River, at
Chamberlain, South Dakota (where we ran into our old friend Sandy
Whitehawk and her family at a store). After we crossed the Missouri, we
started to see beef cattle grazing, and knew we were in the West.
On the Interstate, we also noticed thousands of motorcycles in the
eastbound lanes, and absolutely none in our westbound lanes. It was the
last day of the Sturgis bike rally, and of course the cats begged to go
to the rally. We relented, and drove down the Main Street to see the
big bikes. (The kitties wanted Harley tattoos, but we had to draw the
line somewhere.)
We passed by the Black Hills and the Bighorn Mountains, watching
antelope dart by the roadside, and stopped at the Crow Reservation in
Montana, to visit a friend who lives on the site of the Little Big Horn
Battle, and first saw smoke from a distant fire. In Hardin, we saw
tribal fire crews from the Great Lakes who were helping to fight the
numerous fires. We passed by the Absaroka Range, and saw the big copper
mine pit at Butte. After entering the Bitterroot Range west of Missoula
(cool town), we saw widespread destruction from the fires, and a purple
haze still in the air.
We arrived in Washington state on August 16th, passing by sagebrush
hills, vast, endless wheat fields, and the enormous Columbia River
Gorge. After crossing the Cascades at Snoqualmie Pass, we had to stop in
Roslyn, where Northern Exposure was filmed. The Main Street storefronts
are just like they were in the TV series, and the town still looked like
it was in Alaska.
We finally descended into the lush green and tall trees of western
Washington. To our surprise it was sunny, and has remained so ever
since. [THIS PASSAGE CENSORED BY WASHINGTON STATE AUTHORITIES. THE
REGION IS ALWAYS RAINY AND DREARY. DO NOT EVEN THINK OF MOVING HERE.]
We moved into our house in Olympia the next day, greeted by Zoltan's
parents visiting from San Francisco to help us move in. The cats were
kept in a bedroom as boxes were unloaded, and then let out to explore
their new home. They also want to explore outside, but Debi is afraid
they'll take an ?Incredible Journey? back to Wisconsin.
Our new house has four rooms upstairs, and a guest room downstairs. The
yard has a huge cedar tree, roses, pear trees, strawberries, and we
haven't yet begun to landscape the yard. Mount Rainier is visible from
an upstairs window on a clear day, which in the summer is virtually
every [CENSORED]. The neighborhood is surrounded by towering pines.
Our neighborhood is on the west side of town, between downtown and the
Evergreen State College campus, which is an easy bike ride through
forest and farms. From our house, it is a short walk down a fern gully
to Budd Inlet, at the very southern tip of Puget Sound. We were
surprised on our first day here to see a deer-crossing sign in our
neighborhood. We've since seen deer (including a 4-point buck) on the
hill leading down to the shore.
At the bottom of the hill, on a short walk to downtown, we can pause and
watch the Chinook salmon in the Inlet, on their autumn run up the
Deschutes River. (They will have to jump up Tumwater Falls, next to the
old Olympia Brewery.) On the bridge leading to downtown and the Capitol,
we can watch blue herons, bald eagles, and harbor seals scoop up the
salmon. Residents walk by like it's no big deal. But we have seen
plenty of salmon fishermen descending on nearby rivers and inlets.
Our westside neighborhood reminds Debi of Madison in the '70's, with a
food coop, people riding bikes, bringing pies to their new neighbors,
taking dishes to potlucks, and tending their gorgeous flower gardens.
The whole city looks like an endless garden, with bright dahlias,
gardenias, roses, wild blackberry bushes, and much more. There is also
a Japanese Garden, and roadside stands where you can buy a dahlia
bouquet for $5 on the honor system.
Many flowers are sold at the huge Farmer's Market, held Thursday through
Sunday in a covered structure downtown. You can also buy fresh peaches,
pears, apples, plums, etc., fresh seafood and sweet corn, eat ethnic
food for lunch, and listen to live bands. Evergreen's own organic farm
also has a Farmer's Market on campus each Wednesday, as well as its own
produce and flower bouquet deliveries. Though Olympia is in Seattle's
metro area, and in a county with 215,000 people, much of the city is
rural and forested.
Olympia has a lively downtown, with lots of culture and outdoor art and
music (no mosquitoes in the evening!). We have been here only 3 weeks,
and have already seen a Pet Parade, with hundreds of dogs, cats,
gerbils, etc., usually dressed up and pulled by kids in costume. We have
also seen tugboat races at the annual Harbor Days. Every Wednesday, we
go down the hill to Tugboat Annie's marina restaurant to hear local
Irish musicians jam for (and we think of our musical friend Matt in
LaCrosse and Christine in Milwaukee). Debi is going to be taking singing
lessons, as well as sewing and quilting lessons soon, as well as job
searching and working with the Northwest Community Alliance.
Evergreen is on the quarter system, so Zoltan will not begin co-teaching
the American Frontier history course until September 27. The year runs
until June 16, but everyone says that late June-late September are the
summer months here, when it is unrelentingly beautiful and [CENSORED].
Evergreen's Native cultural center, the Longhouse, is going to celebrate
its 10th anniversary with a cultural event just before school begins.
We are taking the opportunity to explore the Northwest before school
begins. From Olympia, it is an hour north to Seattle, an hour west to
the coast, an hour east to the Cascades, and 2 hours south to Portland.
We started by driving up the Hood Canal to see our friend Leah and Chuck
and their sons in Silverdale, on the Kitsap Peninsula. We went to the
powwow on the Suquamish Reservation (the home and gravesite of Chief
Seattle), where the tribe held races of long canoes on Puget Sound.
To take a break from unpacking, we headed out to the coast and the wild
Olympic Peninsula. When we first drove out onto the wide beach at Ocean
Shores, we had finally arrived at the sea and our new home. ?Jewish and
Clark? had completed their journey from the Mississippi to the Pacific.
We traveled up the beautiful coastline through the huge forested
Quinault Reservation to an old stately lodge on Lake Quinault next to
the Olympic Mountains. We also visited the tiny Quileute Reservation,
in the coastal village of LaPush, where we dined on Crab Louie Salad
while watching sea lions and giant pelicans among the offshore islands.
About 97 espresso stands later, we arrived at our destination in Neah
Bay, on the Makah Reservation at the very northwestern-most point in the
United States. We had been to Neah Bay together 20 years ago on our
first trip to the Northwest, and not much has changed. This time we
went to see the 81st annual Makah Days, a cultural festival with
children and adults performing traditional dances, and the elders
preparing a salmon bake. We camped within view of whales surfacing
between us and Vancouver Island, across the strait in Canada. (We plan
to soon visit Vancouver and Victoria.)
Last weekend we camped with our friend Cindy and her family on Mount
Rainier, and also traveled south to the Swan Island Dahlia Festival on a
huge flower farm in Canby, near Portland. The area between Olympia and
Portland reminds us of Wisconsin, with more maple and oak, farms,
orchards, horses, and wildflowers than in the coniferous areas to the
north.
The Northwest weather is ideal for raising a huge variety of flowers,
since winter temperatures only rarely get below 40 degrees, and in the
summer it is [CENSORED]. The region has other flower festivals,
including the Skagit Valley tulip festival in April, and the Sequim
lavender festival in July. Debi is in awe of how much bigger the plants
and flowers are here; they're ?almost like in Alaska.?
But our next adventure will be to head over the Cascades to the drier
region to the east. As our friend Barb Munson first noticed, Zoltan is a
turtle attracted to water, and Debi is a tortoise attracted to desert
and ranching country. Here we can have both. Today we walked along the
beach near the fishing village of Westport, picking up sand dollars and
crab shells, and watching the sunset over the ocean (while eating smoked
salmon). This weekend we're headed to a rodeo, cattle drive, and horse
parade east of here.
So despite all the time we have spent on moving, we are enjoying this
summer. We hope you've enjoyed your summer, despite the terrible times
in this country. Part of the point of this letter is to let you know we
are doing well in our new home. But part of it is also to let you know
how much we miss all of you, and how we wish you would visit us in
Olympia, or at least keep in very close touch. ?We'll learn to live in a
new town. But our heart is staying in Wisconsin.?
Debi and Zoltan
1516 Thomas Street NW
Olympia, WA 98502
(360) 754-9123
Debi McNutt
debimcnutt2002@yahoo.com
Zoltan Grossman
grossmaz@evergreen.edu
New faculty website:
http://academic.evergreen.edu/g/grossmaz
PHOTOS WITH THIS LETTER at
http://academic.evergreen.edu/g/grossmaz/enticement.html
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Dr. Zoltan Grossman
Faculty member in Geography /
Native American & World Indigenous Peoples Studies (NAWIPS)
Lab 1, Room 1015,
The Evergreen State College
2700 Evergreen Parkway NW
Olympia, WA 98505 USA
Tel. (360) 867-6153
E-mail: GROSSMAZ@evergreen.edu
Website: http://academic.evergreen.edu/g/grossmaz