Why Pacific Northwest People are the Most Regionalistic in America
I was born in the Pacific Northwest but I don’t live there now. I was recently in a long-distance relationship with a transplant to my home region. She was born and bred in the Midwest, spent some time in North Carolina, and then made her way to the Pacific Northwest about eleven years ago.
For eleven years, she has heard us yammer on about mushroom foraging, salmon, and hiking. She’s taken up a coffee addiction competitlvey and has learned how to make a blackberry cobbler. For eleven years she has bemusedly tried to assimilate into a culture of fleece hoodies, socks with sandals, and people poetically embracing the constant overcast and incessent drizzle.
Has she made great strides? Her wardrobe of browns, greys and beige sweaters would tell you she certainly has made efforts. Her overgrown yard with blackberries, transplanted ferns from local forests, and apple trees wants you to believe that she’s a Pacific Northwest native. But, do you know the greatest tell of a non-native Pacific Northwesterner?
They’re absolutely amused at how self-righteous we are about having been born here.
An early hallmark of our relationship became talking about how much Pacific Northwest people absolutely love the Pacific Northwest.
I haven’t dated an American in a number of years, and I’ve never dated a Pacific Northwest transplant so I really wasn’t aware of how self-indulgent, how self-righteous, how absolutely sanctimonious we Pacific Northwest natives really are about having been born in the far upper left-hand corner of the States (despite the fact that my carry-on suitcase is covered with regional stickers, including a Washington State Ferry).
I can’t argue with some of the critiques of our culture. When my transplant love interest talked about how Pacific Northwest people have never actually experienced real weather or fireflies or the bigness of the sky in the Midwest, honestly, point taken. When she smirked indulgently at how misty-eyed I became to encounter Marionberry pie, the rainy Oregon coast, and a muddy June day spent hiking and slipping up an evergreen trail; really, I know she has a point. For example, why do we even need Pacific Northwest-themed tarot cards?
It’s incredibly ironic that a place so leftist, so opposed to nationalism, might be the most (quietly) regionalistic region in the entire United States.
Here are several ways that Pacific Northwest people are obsessed with the Pacific Northwest
We take our vacations in the Pacific Northwest
Maybe this is a hallmark of millennial Pacific Northwesters but over the years I’ve watched many of my friends vacation in their own damn backyard. Do some of us with children go to Disneyland? Yes, we sure do. But for the majority? True Pacific Northwesterners spend the few vacation days they have a year in the Pacific Northwest. I’ve watched friends who moved to California and Idaho fly back to spend precious summer and Christmas vacation days among the dreary rainy evergreens, bbq-ing under blue tarps in the Cascades and taking photos yet again in front of the Public Market sign at Pike Place.
Do we tire of comparing indie coffee shops or going for Voodoo Donuts? Never. Do we wonder at the great unexplored Southeast or what it would be like to experience mardi gras in New Orleans? Hardly, we’re too busy slurping down local pho or ordering teriyaki or Thai. What does Burning Man have on Folklife or the Oregon Country Fair?
We talk about how much we love the Pacific Northwest all the time
We are obsessed with the complicated cloud formations of the Pacific Northwest. We buy Pacific Nortwethwest bumper stickers and cover our hydro flask water bottles with little cartoon mushrooms, the logos of local bookstores, and stencil drawings of the Cascade mountains. And if you get a group of two or more of us gathered in any place that isn’t plagued by fog, incredible coffee, and pleasantly peaceful passive-aggressive locals, at one point in time you will hear one of us sigh and utter the phrase, “Well, it’s not the Pacific Northwest….”
We know the Pacific Northwest is rainy; we don’t care. We know we’re being priced out by transplants from California working for Amazon, we’re okay to rent; we’re not moving. We know we hardly ever get snow, but we can drive to it if we want it. We realize that grunge is out and flannels are dated but we wear them anyway. We read the story about the big earthquake that could end us all, and frankly, we wish someone would write another one to scare off all the transplants.
We talk constantly about how great the Pacific Northwest is, how you can always tell you’re from the Pacific Northwest, why we love it so much, and why it is better than anywhere else in the country.
The Only Identifier We Need is Being From the Pacific Northwest
I recently picked up a book of poems from a poet who teaches at Princeton and has lived outside of the Pacific Northwest for the majority of his literary career. Under his author’s photo on the inside flap of his poetry book was not a long list of his awards, his fellowships, his publications, or the fact that he currently teaches at Princeton; instead, it simply read:
Michael Dickman was born and raised in the Pacific Northwest.
Pacific Northwest people are in fact so regionistic, at times it borders on bigotry, and from a little research, I’ve realized that this isn’t a new problem with our culture and it’s something we should be aware of. Rather than being proud of our geographic location and culture, we have a long history of being cold toward transplants and wanting to keep the region to ourselves, which before I was born meant keeping BIPOC out of the Pacific Northwest. In fact, Oregon had a campaign in the 1970s which specifically aimed out keeping Californians and tourists out of the State.
As a native Pacific Northwest person myself, trust me when I say, I get it.
Lavender Dezarae (she/her) was born and raised in the Pacific Northwest. Throughout her many exhausting lives she has been a barista in Seattle, a kindergarten teacher in South Korea, a literature teacher in China, a graduate student in Germany, an illegal immigrant in Paris, a vagabond dog rescuer during the pandemic in Albania, and a university English teacher in the Middle East. She identifies as an INFJ who has an Anxious Preoccupied attachment style.
