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FALL 2018 ISSUE 02 / VOL . 03
Mt . Rainier assaults the senses as it soars thousands of feet above the timberline .
WHAT DO FOREIGNERS SEE when they look at America ? If they ’ re headed east out of Vancouver on the TransCanada Highway around sunset , they see the shimmering dome of Mount Baker , riding 10,777 feet above amber waves of grain . Awesome .
Ah , to see America — that ’ s one thing . To know it one really must visit Lynden , Washington , so Norman
Rockwell perfect — as citizens bicycle to and fro in the magic light — that I thought I ’ d slipped through the front cover of a “ Saturday Evening Post .” But Lynden is real . Its pristine streets are walkable , but its buses are free , and so are its bicycles . But alas there are no rooms for the night , and I ’ m tired . Maybe I did imagine it .
What I know of the Pacific Northwest is too little , having visited only once before , but I remember the Western Washington Fair . It was in Puyallup , and I stumbled through its gates flat broke in 1979 , riding a Ducati 750GT in sore need of repairs . I left the fair with a job no one else wanted — laboring in the scrap mill of Mr . Weyerhauser ’ s forest — which kept me off the streets for five weeks until I had enough money to move on . Back then there was no Pearl Jam , no Microsoft , no Starbucks . Who ’ d heard of latte ?
But I remember Rainier Beer , rrrr ( a little speck on the horizon ), rrrAAAIeee ( a dot growing visibly