Timothy Egan, columnist for the New York Times and author of nine books, including A Pilgrimage to Eternity, which I reviewed in this blog last year, is a native and current resident of Seattle, and a graduate of the University of Washington. His first book, The Good Rain (1990), is a history of the Pacific Northwest, and a set of strongly opinionated reflections on how we in the Northwest Corner live now, how we got here, and -- possibly -- where we're going.
If you live in the Northwest, and especially Washington, much that's told in this book will be familiar. Certainly, as he travels about the state, he visits and observes areas that are familiar to many. Egan devotes his second chapter to Enchanted Valley in Olympic National Park -- which my brother and I unsuccessfully tried to reach hiking as teenagers, while on a bike tour of Southwest Washington, and which my nephew and I finally did reach some twenty years later, on our way to crossing Anderson Pass. In the same chapter, he tells the story of the famous 1890 Press Expedition -- the first white men to cross the park north to south, from the Elwha watershed to the Quinault. A friend and I did the same hike in the opposite direction, although it took us about four days rather than six months, and we didn't have to kill a bear and drink liquid bear blubber to stay alive.
Egan has a wonderful chapter about the life of the legendary climber Fred Beckey -- who he finally tracks down for an interview. It's a chapter that alone is worth the price of the book. Beckey was 65 when Egan met him -- a face lined and old, but a voice like a guy in his 20s. He was 65, and he lived another 29 years. When Beckey died in 2017, the New York Times ran an obituary:
Friends called him a cantankerous cuss who hated talk about himself. He sped long distances in his old pink Thunderbird, screaming all night to stay awake at the wheel, and howled at tourists who gawked at his camps. On a mountain, he amazed fellow climbers with his uphill speed and stamina, even in his 80s.
Egan's travels take him to Seattle itself, to numerous Indian reservations, to Crater Lake in southern Oregon, and up and down the Columbia River. He lets us ride with him across the Columbia River bar, into the ocean. And we climb with Egan and his wife to the foot of a glacier on Mt. Rainier, as he commits the ashes of his grandfather to the headwaters of the White river.
I took the usual mandatory course in Washington State history as a ninth grader, and much of the history Egan offers brings back half-forgotten memories of those lessons. But the history is told more vividly than anything my ninth grade teacher was able to achieve. More importantly, our ninth grade texts presented what the British would call a Whig version of history -- where all the events of the past led majestically to what is now the best of all possible worlds. Egan casts a colder eye on our history. Marcus Whitman, by his own lights, may have been a "kindly saint and hero," as portrayed in ninth grade history. But the Indians saw his Presbyterian fervor to "civilize" them otherwise, which explains the tomahawk that ultimately split his skull.
Although Egan clearly loves the Northwest, there is much that dismays him, much that distresses him. In The Good Rain, he introduces us to Theodore Winthrop, a recent Yale graduate, who toured the Northwest in 1853. Unlike most Americans, Winthrop was not interested in the timber, or fishing, or the furs available for exploitation. A couple of posts ago, I discussed Philip Marsden's belief that a people's character is shaped in part by its physical environment, and of the importance of this "sense of place." Winthrop felt that the eastern states had lost their own sense of place, and that their lives had become money-grubbing -- meaner and less imaginative. He saw the chance for something new and different in the Pacific Northwest:
Our race has never yet come into contact with great mountains as companions of daily life, nor felt that daily development of the finer and more comprehensive senses which these signal facts of nature compel. That is an influence of the future. These Oregon people, in a climate where being is bliss -- where every breath is a draught of vivid life -- these Oregon people carrying to a newer and grander New England of the West a full growth of the American idea -- will elaborate new systems of thought and life.
Throughout the book, Egan measures what he sees in 1990 against these extravagant hopes by Winthrop. Not surprisingly, he is dismayed.
Dismayed by the leveling of the Northwest forests, dismayed by clearcutting. Dismayed by the destruction of the greatest salmon fishery in the world. Dismayed by the Army Corps of Engineers and their obsession with damming every bit of every free-flowing river. Dismayed by the hunting to near extinction of fur bearing animals.
These silk mammals [sea otters], up to five feet in length and with the disposition of a toddler just after a long nap, were easily clubbed, smiling right up until the moment their skulls were smashed.
Dismayed by the betrayal, time after time, of the Indians -- reducing them from living their traditional free lives to a state of abject poverty and spiritual emptiness, huddled on ghetto-like reservations.
The story of our Northwest Corner's history is a story of cruelty and greed. Rather than living harmoniously with the beauties of nature, as Winthrop had hoped, we treated the most attractive area of America as a treasure chest of riches to be plundered -- old growth trees, fish, and furs --all to be "harvested," not just for our own use, but sent overseas to eager Asian buyers. The beneficiaries of this exploitation, more often than not, were large Eastern companies whose owners never set foot in the Northwest.
We've largely run out of timber and fish. Egan is well aware of the devastation visited on those small towns throughout the Northwest that depended on those resources. He talks to bitter men who have seen themselves and their families left behind. He talks to Indians, who are beyond bitterness.
At the same time, Egan sees some hope in the new industries of tourism and computer technology. He visits thriving vineyards near Yakima, the source of some some of the best wines produced in the nation..
Aside from the human instinct of greed, many of our problems stem from rapidly increased population -- locally and globally. When I was a kid, Washington's population was 2.4 million. When Egan wrote his book in 1990, it had jumped to 4.8 million. Today, thirty years later, it is 7.6 million.
Even Egan's limited optimism seems dated today. Tourism clogs the scenic areas. Visiting the Alpine Lakes Wilderness Area requires advance reservations -- if you can get them. Amazon and Microsoft have remade Seattle -- in some ways for the better, but their arrival has brought its own problems, including housing that is now unaffordable for many people whose parents once lived here comfortably.
Away from Seattle and the counties bordering Puget Sound, Washington is a different state. Once prosperous towns populated by solidly middle class citizens have lost their industries and their commercial centers. Their citizens are often poorly educated, often unemployed, often addicted to drugs and alcohol.
The first settlers in Seattle named it "New York Alki," using Chinook jargon to express the hope that we'd someday become the New York of the West Coast. Be careful what you wish for.
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