wherever you go there you are

PNW Slander + loving yourself

In my head the Pacific Northwest is this sparkling and magical green place. From Minnesota, I imagined crashing teal waves and snow capped peaks that turn dusty purple in the evening and blaze pink in the morning sun. I imagined thick carpets of moss and blue rivers and that I would sit by the base of waterfalls and journal, mist clinging to my hair and making the pages of my notebook crinkle.

I thought I would get up from my spot by the waterfalls and come home, still smelling fresh like forest.

In my head, I thought the Pacific Northwest would be full of people similar to me— outdoorsy people who like grabbing a drink at a brewery for the atmosphere as much as the beer itself, people with similar ideas and values to mine.

fall hiking in the north cascades | listen the pacific northwest is truly undeniably beautiful, it's just that I haven't found that beauty to be inherently more so than the Northern Midwest. Who decides what makes something most beautiful anyways? Who is to say that mountains are inherently more beautiful than the lakes?

What I found has been markedly different— the mountains and crashing waves exist, but you’ll likely be driving at least three hours round trip, maybe more to see them due to the sprawling Seattle traffic, and it’s rare to find a hiking trail without heavy foot traffic. There are trails near town, but they’re crowded. In itself crowds aren’t an issue, but the people can be unfriendly. Not everyone of course, but you’ll get dirty looks for talking too loud with a friend, for not stepping off trail to let someone pass quite quickly enough, for pausing for a water break in a way someone else finds inconvenient.

I think that’s the thing I’ve noticed— people in the Pacific Northwest do not like to be inconvenienced and are generous with their interpretation of the word.

I thought it would be progressive here, because that is a thing I have been told about the Pacific Northwest— it’s young, it’s outdoorsy, it’s accepting, it’s progressive. What I’ve found is a lot of people who are progressive and accepting in theory are actually quite unaccepting towards people different from them, so long as they can prove the reason isn’t directly race, gender, or sexual orientation.¹

some of the sights & scenes from Orcas Island, WA early this summer when I was still full of hope & wonder

I thought it would be all mountains and alpine lakes, and a deep green rainy season and I thought I would go for a morning jog and drink matcha tea and maybe lose ten pounds and get a line drawing tattoo of the mountains and my art would thrive and I would journal every night and I would cook lentils or some shit like that for dinner but the Pacific Northwest cannot make me a morning runner.

In hindsight, I guess I don’t know what I thought. I can tell you what I found though:

I think place shapes the people. In the Northern Midwest, our long winters and quick summers, the beautiful burst of fall, have made us hardworking— change is always coming. We’ve got to be ready for winter.

In a place with winters so long, October through May sometimes, Minnesota has practice finding its own warmth. We find warmth on the cross country ski trails, rosy cheeks and snow-covered pines. There’s warmth in the pastel sunrises, on the long dinners we make from scratch, in folk arts we practice, but mostly we find warmth in each other. We’re all a little extra kind to strangers in the winter. The Minnesota Nice is a direct response to the bone-chilling cold, the creaking trees and burst pipes. We get through it all by caring for each other.

I guess I just don't understand how we as a culture have so decidedly ruled that the Pacific Northwest is the most beautiful place in the world, and the Great Lakes are flyover, the Midwest is an undesirable place to live and be, the outdoor spaces are uglier. All of these places are less than three hours from a major city; people in Seattle are happy to drive three hours to get to a mountain hike

In the Pacific Northwest there is a long and beautiful summer, one that begins in May and seems to cling on well through October. Winter in earnest doesn’t seem to start at all near the coast. Oh sure, they say the Seattle winters are brutal, but really it’s just dark and wet, and still very green. Put on a raincoat, there’s still plenty to do.

The attitude towards the winter is different than in the Midwest. People hibernate, living for the three weekends of the season they get out to ski or hike— when it’s an hour and a half to even leave the city and light for only a few hours, I can hardly blame them. Chilly, damp, and dark, and it feels like the people have adopted the same exterior².

So in my head Washington was pink and yellow wildflowers and purple mist on the coast and the person I would become there was somehow inherently better. Do you know what I mean? I truly believed that a change of location would somehow magically change me and my life. Like somehow the Pacific Northwest would help me become this abstract person I’ve been quietly striving to be since I turned 18, a cool girl with exclusively healthy habits but not health obsessed, someone smart and funny who wears liquid eyeliner probably, a morning runner who does yoga.³

my made up fairytale PNW looked like this -- in reality, these photos were hard to come by and not at all representative of "life" in the PNW. The first shot, my sister and I camped up Mt. Baker and hit the trail at 6 am to beat the crowds. The second, my friend and I drove 2.5 hours (one way) to hike four hard miles to reach this lake. it was extremely crowded, and we waited about an hour until it cleared out to take any photos at all

It’s raining outside and I’m stopped in traffic waiting to make a right turn. The person in the car behind me wails on the horn.

“there’s nowhere for me to go, I’m sorry I’m blocking you,” I apologize to the air gesturing wildly. He jerks out and makes a u-turn cutting off the person behind him and flashing me his middle finger.

I want to cry, and wonder if the welling feeling in my chest is really about the road rage or rather about feeling like a stranger in a strange land in a place I had wanted so badly to want me.

the Olympic Peninsula is one place where i did seem to find that magic I was dreaming of. A sunny day in a November rainforest, unbeatable. Then again, i think I went without expectations, which has maybe been my issue all along

In my head, Washington is all rainforest and coffee shops, breweries and hiking boots. In reality, gas costs more than a beer and the cost of living is so high we stay in mostly. In reality, the place I had invented in my head and the new person to go with it were just that— invented.

My dream of Morning Runner Maddy is dead⁴. That’s okay though.

I think leaving a place helps you appreciate it more. The sound of loons in the morning and mist on lakes, spiky pine trees outlined by pink sunsets, the hills in the Midwest we call mountains, the white sandy beaches and crystal clear water of the Great Lakes all are things I find myself missing when I think of home. Now that I know the Pacific Northwest is just a place and not a fairytale I see home with clearer eyes.

Did you know it’s beautiful here too? Morning Runner PNW Maddy who was somehow four inches taller than me and only drank tea and did yoga every morning never came to fruition but I’m starting to figure just me, Midwest Maddy might be enough.

little moments from our time out here; I think if there's one thing worth truly romanticizing it's the little beautiful things you can find everywhere. (the moon reflected in the water, campfire crackle and warming your hands, the map up against the windshield and a fresh pair of socks-- adventure is not a place, it's a feeling)

Midwest Maddy doesn’t run in the morning. She’s lucky if she’s up before nine— unless there might be a good sunrise. For a sunrise, she’s up at five. She doesn’t run or do yoga but she hikes and paddles. She can’t and won’t kick her coffee habit, even when her stomach is in knots by noon everyday. She struggles with body image, and loving herself completely, and probably always will. Sometimes, she says and does absolutely stupid things and lies awake at night thinking about them for weeks.

Midwest Maddy (me, the real version) is not “cool”⁵.

They say that wherever you go, there are you are. In 2019, when I lived in Armenia and my college roommate and forever best friend Hannah had just moved to Berlin we used to joke over the phone about it whenever we were confronted with how very much the same we were, even in a new place— ah well you know. wherever you go there ya are.

It seems silly that I thought even subconsciously that moving to the Pacific Northwest would miraculously change me and how I interact with the world— in hindsight though it seems even sillier that I had built up the Pacific Northwest to be some mythic, fairytale place, but I think that’s what we do.

We write about places like romantics. We show tumbling waterfalls and peaks and on our Pinterest boards cobble together an idea of a place that the place itself couldn’t possibly measure up to. I do think there’s something wonderful about choosing to find your life and the places you are magical, but when all the information you’ve consumed about a place is how magical it is, perhaps we do ourselves a disservice.

Maybe my disappointment in the Pacific Northwest is that it’s a real place at all, and that I didn’t magically transition into a beautiful new life upon entering. Maybe my frustration is with myself entirely.

if you liked this piece, here’s some related reads about my time in the Pacific Northwest!

• read about our trip to the north Oregon coast, and how i was sad the entire time

• like anywhere, I’ve experienced scraps of really magical moments. Paddling Sucia Island at a negative tide this summer was one of them.

• check out an archive of my Pacific Northwest Trail Guides, which covers pretty much all of the beautiful places I got to explore out that way as an outdoor guide!

• I made my ideal Washington one-week Road Trip Itinerary if you fly into Seattle and rent a car! Check it out here.

if you’re looking to find beauty in the Midwest, you might like…

• 17 Winter Travel Destinations in the Midwest

• Check out all my free trail guides

• or download the Exploring the Midwest eBook Bundle

To support the creation of free trail guides, essays like this, and gain access to a backlog of exclusive content (as well as my deep and undying gratitude), consider becoming a paying subscriber below!

1. one really poignant example I’ve seen of this in the outdoor community is people’s attitude toward Leave No Trace and the idea that people from cities are coming to trails, leaving trash and ruining them. When pressed on who these “people” are who are ruining the trails, when asked what the profile of this person is, people get uncomfortable. The person that they think is “ruining” the environment is not a well-off white man who hits REI then hits the trail; they have a very specific image of who they think is ruining their hiking trails, and pressing people on this is very telling

2. make sure not to laugh too loud in public, someone will glare. bump into someone? we’re in the land of “f**k off” not “ope, sorry there!”. Dressed in too bright of colors? People will stare. There is a pervasive feeling among the 20 somethings that you are being watched and quietly judged. Here, it is important above all else to be “PNW cool”. It’s like everyone read in magazine what the Pacific Northwest culture is supposed to be like and is obsessively trying to bend into that mold. But hey! these are just one person’s observations— if they’re completely incongruous with the Pacific Northwest you know and love, that’s okay! we all have different experiences and different world views.

3. “hey maddy you know all you would have to do to become a morning runner is just start running in the morning right? and it would be easy to add a little yoga into your routine and just switch out your coffee for tea and listen maybe you’ll never not be afraid of needles and man up enough to get a tattoo or be able to put on liquid eyeliner without looking like you have a black eye, but plenty of those things are totally within your reach whereever you are, you know that right” SHHHHHH it’s about the idea !!!!!

4. a moment of silence for Morning Runner Maddy— . Listen, I know that the key to a healthier me is just starting, but every time I try to get in to running again (in high school and college and the Peace Corps I was actually quite a runner!), or try to eat exclusively healthy or start yoga I am forced to examine why I want to do those things. Am I doing them because I want to take care of my body and mind, or because I want to look like I did when I was twenty? Do I actually want to be “morning runner Maddy”, or do I want that because I’ve been spoon fed ideas of thinness and hot cool girls my entire life and have been trained by magazines and social media ads and the beauty industry and hundreds of images and snide remarks from men around me that I am good not enough and should be constantly striving to self improve? I am in good shape; I regularly hike and I work as an overnight sea kayaking guide in the summers. Every time I put on running clothes and step out the door I cannot run a mile without wondering if this abstract idea of Morning Runner Maddy is actually, truly healthy for my body and mind. Is Morning Runner Maddy who drinks tea and does yoga something that I actually want, or something that I think I want? Is it a betrayal to the body I have and am continually working so hard to love to so badly want to change her? And so, the dream of Morning Runner Maddy is dead. Maybe one day I’ll become an afternoon runner, when I can know for sure whether I am running because I love my body and want to celebrate it, or hate my body and want to punish it.

5. “what maddy but you seem so cool on social media” nope. not cool. you’re confusing the abstract version of me that exists online, bits and pieces of my life with me the actual person. I assure you, the person whose fingers are typing into the keyboard right now is categorically uncool.