A Northwest chauvinist in the Southwest

Kirk Ericson | Dec 02, 20210

The Continental Divide at Interstate 40, New Mexico: The line that determines whether precipitation flows east or west in North America cuts through a souvenir shop along westbound Interstate 40 in the unincorporated community of Continental Divide, New Mexico, elevation 7,228 feet. The goods in the souvenir shop — cups, shawls, scarfs, pots, plates — feature Navajo Indian patterns and colors. The white woman working behind the counter looked to be in her 80s, and I asked her how she came to be in this place. She said she moved here with her husband in the early 1970s because he was a miner and uranium mines, at the time, were a big business in this section of western New Mexico. But the mines started tailing off in the 1980s. She said her husband died of lung cancer at age 57. “That’s what killed him,” she said of his work in the uranium mines. “The poor man. He never got to do anything in life but work, work, work. Then he died.”

A Starbucks in Amarillo, Texas: I don’t often go to Starbucks, but Amarillo was so excessively Texas-y that going to a Washington-born business put me in Washington state of mind. I had stayed the night in Amarillo in a faded rose of a motel off of I-40, where a 2-by-4 propped up the edge of the bathroom vanity and I had to turn the water off to the unfilling toilet tank. The next morning, I stopped at the Starbucks before continuing east to visit a relative in Oklahoma. About 20 customers were inside the coffee shop, and I was one of two wearing a face mask. It was a long wait. About 15 minutes into the wait, a man about 60 years old entered and approached the register, near where I was standing. He asked, “Excuse me, are you waiting in line?” “No,” I replied. He stepped toward the register and I watched him. He wore a mask, clean jeans without holes, and a cap that didn’t advertise his political allegiance. He was thin and had a neat beard, his posture was straight and he wore a North Face fleece vest. I leaned toward him. “Pardon me,” I said, “are you from Washington?” He tilted his head, perhaps baffled, and hesitated. “I am,” he finally said. “I graduated from Western Washington in Bellingham and I work in Seattle.” I told him I was also a Western grad and that he was facing a 20-minute wait for coffee. He didn’t hesitate a second to exit the store. “Thanks,” he said over his shoulder. We are creatures of our geography in ways that we don’t realize.

A hot yoga studio in Gilbert, Arizona: As I was blithely signing a piece of paper, likely warning me I couldn’t sue in the event of a yoga-related tragedy, the woman behind the counter asked where I was from. “Olympia, Washington.” “Oh, my God!” she blurted. “My son and his wife got back from there yesterday.” She said her son is a project manager with Honeywell, her daughter-in-law is studying to be a nurse and they’ll be moving to Olympia next August. The woman showed me a video, a slow pan of Budd Inlet, the Capitol, a park along the western shore of the inlet and her 31-year-old son. His black hair reached his shoulders, he had a wild beard and a flannel overcoat, his jeans had holes at the knees, and his head sported a red bandana. “All he has to do is lose the bandana and he’ll fit right in,” I told the mother. Then she showed me a picture of her daughter-in-law striking a standing lotus pose in front of a pagoda in Tacoma. “She’ll fit right in, too,” I said. “They absolutely loved it there,” the woman said. “Really?” I asked. “Even with all the rain Olympia’s been having? What did they love about it?” “Mostly that it wasn’t Arizona,” she said.