Field Notes from the Pacific Northwest
Explore Cascadia
A thin band of emerald forests and fjords stretches from northern California to Alaska, punctuated by Portland, Seattle, and Vancouver's distinctive Cascadian culture. As my adopted home, I explore its far-flung fringes.
What Is Cascadia?
Where the Rain Draws the Border
Cascadia is easier to feel than to draw. There is no line where it starts or stops, only a thickening of rain, moss and big conifers along the Pacific, from the redwoods of northern California to the fjords of southeast Alaska. Mountains hem it in to the east: the Klamaths, the Cascades and the Coast Mountains. Rivers carry it inland: the Columbia, the Fraser and the Skeena. Geologists named the region for its mountains, and the Seattle sociologist David McCloskey later borrowed the name for a bioregion he called “a land of falling waters.”
- 380 ftHyperion, a coast redwood and the tallest known tree
- 1,243 mithe Columbia, from the Canadian Rockies to the Pacific
- 1700the last great Cascadia earthquake, about magnitude 9
- 40–60°Nthe span of the Pacific temperate rainforest
From the Far North to the Redwoods
My stories, from north to south, the way the map reads.
- Beyond the EdgesTundra and prairieWhere the rain gives out: Alaska’s Seward Peninsula to the far north, and the grasslands east of the mountains.
- The Wild North CoastVancouver Island and the Olympic PeninsulaRainforest and surf on the open Pacific, from the Makah lands at Neah Bay to Clayoquot Sound.
- The CascadesVolcanoes and wildernessThe volcanic spine of the region, from the Goat Rocks and the Dark Divide in Washington to Mount Jefferson in Oregon.
- The Columbia and Its ValleysRivers and townsPortland, the Columbia and the valleys around them, from the Hood River Valley to the Coast Range.
- The Southern Coast and the DeepOregon coast to the redwoodsDunes and headlands, the open ocean past the continental shelf, and the redwoods of northern California.
