Life in the Northwest

Lo and behold, HERE WE ARE. Moving is never easy, but we made it happen, and it is so exciting to finally find ourselves exploring this new world. And really, compared to what we’ve been used to in San Diego, Seattle is like a whole new universe. Even now, in the dead of winter, everything is ALIVE! We see flocks of birds take flight every morning, seas of trees in every direction, and practically every surface is covered with a fuzzy, friendly diversity of lichens, fungi and mosses. Life is beautiful, and this biological abundance is something I take a lot of comfort in.

This week we’ve been getting settled in Lake Forest Park, a quiet northern suburb of Seattle bordering the western shore of Lake Washington. I’m restocking my new kitchen, and hope to start sharing my adventures in food again soon. But in the meantime, I’m compelled to share some words that caught my eye, and made me smile with appreciation that I’m moving to a place with a history of honoring Nature. Getting acquainted with our new town, I read its Wikipedia page and learned that upon its founding in 1912, Lake Forest Park’s original prospectus for lot sales declared:

…the strict fiat has gone forth that all the natural beauty must be preserved; that no tree must unwittingly be cut down; that the natural wild flowers must remain; that the streams, the springs, the lake front, the nodding willows, the stately cedar, the majestic fir, the quivering cypress and the homelike maple and all the flora and fauna with which Nature has blessed this lakeshore, must not be defiled by the hand of man.

Nicely done, LFP – my kind of town!