A Wild, Wild Place
Uncovering the dreamy allure of the Pacific Northwest.
The state of Washington is bordered twice by natural leviathans. To the west lies the great Pacific Ocean, the largest single mass on the planet. To the north, Canadian wilderness pushes down, tectonic inertia and erosion forming mountains the size of mountains. Each exerts pressure on this scraggly region of the United States: the Strait of Juan de Fuca prods into its landmass like a searching finger; just north of the dividing line, Westwood Plateau sits nestled between a series of lakes in the shadow of Mount Seymour, from above resembling the claw mark of a three-toed predator.
Evidence of frontier simplicity remains. The city of Welcome greets you upon crossing the North Fork Nooksack River, the same winding tributary that spills into Bellingham Bay some sixty-odd miles north of Seattle. Keep one foot in America and the other in Canada, and find yourself in Boundary, a now-empty vessel whose population surged to 900 in the late 19th century. What is natural here is inherently a place on the margins.
