Our sweet, sweet home of Washington

Kirk Ericson | Jul 14, 20220

I have an idea for a pledge of allegiance that’s exclusively for Washingtonians:

“I pledge fidelity to the flag of the mostly united state of Washington,

And to the heavily democratic republic for which it stands.

One state directly south of Canada,

With wheat, apples and clam cakes for all.”

When matters go kerflooey elsewhere in the United States and it seems the downside is on the upswing, we might search for a cubbyhole in our brain where we can wall ourselves off a bit.

We’re in for an extra-long stretch of kerflooey this time. When the previous president was elected, many of us figured we could survive four years of it, perhaps by treating it like a stint in a minimum-security federal prison. We could catch up on our reading, maybe learn pottery.

But the current tilt of our nation’s highest court might stretch 30 years. That’s a sentence long enough to require some emotional and mental accommodations, and my accommodation has been to identify less as an American and more as a Washingtonian.

We can’t completely ignore what’s going on beyond our state’s borders, but we can lower its ability to hobble our lives, especially when we can’t do much about it. It’s often a geographic equation anyway. For instance, consider that murders in Albania rose by 13% in 2021, according to the news site EU-OCS.

You didn’t know that, did you? Why can’t we not know similar matters when it comes to, say, another place that starts with A-L — Alabama?

Geography helps us. We’re secreted away in the far left-wing corner of the nation, as far away from the other Washington as is continentally possible. Cape Flattery near Neah Bay is the farthest spot from the U.S. Capitol. That’s comforting, in light of, you know, recent developments.

Our location puts British Columbia and Alberta within easy fleeing distance, too.

Consider some of our state’s attributes:

Washington’s air quality is the third best in the nation, according to the Air Quality Index. This state is thick with oxygen-producing stacks.

We have two major mountain ranges. We have Vance Creek, which would be considered a major river in any other state. We grow our own wheat and apricots, and we appreciate not spending existence as a slug. We have a temperate rainforest on the Olympic Peninsula and scrub-land between Yakima and Ellensburg.

We have old-growth forests. We have new-growth forests. We have orcas and coyotes. The Columbia rolls through the heart of our state.

We have the roiling Columbia Bar at Cape Disappointment and the view of Lake Cushman from atop Mount Ellinor. We have the San Juan Islands, the profile of downtown Seattle at night, a sunset drive along Chuckanut Drive south of Bellingham and the view from atop Mount Spokane.

We have the North Cascades and Mount Baker highways. We have the Museum of Un-Natural History in Walla Walla. We forged Kurt Cobain, Jimi Hendrix, the Wilson sisters and Burl Ives.

To discourage people from moving here, we tell outsiders it rains constantly. We’re introverts, but we’re not neurotic.

We have the No. 1 overall economy in the United States, according to WalletHub, a financial website. We were the first state to make it illegal to arrest people for possession of less than 1 ounce of marijuana.

Eight members of our 12-member congressional delegation are women. We have two Republican U.S. representatives among the 10 who voted to impeach the president in 2021, and they might get re-elected. We were the first state to approve the top-two primary, a move that limits the influence of political lunatics.

God bless Washington.