Seattle part 1: Innocence, home and water

An innocent abroad arrives in Seattle

Over the border from Canada to the USA, and into Seattle’s Green Tortoise Hostel.

It’s easy to get into ‘explorer mode’, everything is new, somehow more so than Canada. Every successful negotiation ends with a lightbulb going on, oh so that’s how it is! Some things are too easy to chuckle at: why is every US banknote the same colour and size?! It’s the quirkiness of an empire that knows it doesn’t have to explain itself. We know all about that.

The friendliness of strangers is engaging. On a mountain walk: ‘Hello, this is Lily I’m Lucy and Scott is over there, we just passed you a moment ago.’

There are probably helpful words, that I can’t hear for the accents! And new words: ‘Go to the end of the blacktop and turn left’.

There are domestic tricks that trip me up: who knew that the cereal dispenser would let fly more cereal than my bowl could hold. And so many light switches are also dimmers.

I’m waiting to cross a four-lane highway, behind a single car that’s travelling the other side of the road and it slows down for me. I should saunter but I feel like I have to run across in thanks.

Gallons of petrol, quarts of liquid, pounds and ounces of food, Fahrenheit degrees of heat.

Hummingbirds in a back garden. Seriously.

The streets are in a lattice-like grid between the lakes, even and odd house numbers opposite. But the house numbering is bizarre, often leaving out many numbers between neighbouring houses. Maybe the original plan was for smaller plots, or maybe they allow selling off bits of plot.

And just when I’ve learned to expect nothing to be the same, I find there’s cloudy IPA on tap in every bar I’ve been in.

Home in Seattle

Seattle is new like Vancouver, 150 years old and based on the timber trade, with mostly wooden housing in lattice-street suburbs. Like in British Columbia, in rural areas there are more logging tracks than ordinary roads. Plenty of people can remember when Seattle was a quiet town attached to an industrial port. In the 21st century Seattle is HQ for the now vast Microsoft, Boeing, Starbucks and Amazon, especially Amazon, and their hang-on businesses. House-prices have rocketed, developers are interested in building apartments at high rent rather than family housing, food and services are generally a little more expensive than elsewhere, and there is no state income tax – it’s all regressive products tax.

I find everything expensive, though I may be not knowing where to look, and I may be being fleeced as a stranger. But I’ve stopped seeing the cost of things as a loss, else I would be a nervous wreck. Fortunately I know I won’t go bankrupt. On the other hand, I’m not eating a lot. I read and believed a lifetime ago that we eat three times as much as we need to, and I can happily miss a meal.

There are homeless everywhere. On every street corner in downtown (the commercial centre), there are homeless living off scraps and in their own community of sharing at least information. All ages,

all colours. Two miles from downtown I’m sat in a grassy corner of NE 50th St and Roosevelt Way NE and there are half a dozen homeless in sight. One sat on the sidewalk with a shopping trolley suitcase. Another on the library steps with bedroll and bags. Two on a wall with blanket in a milk crate, and crammed bags. Two others wandering separately, both in their thirties I’d say, one with a sign ready to use: ‘Homeless and struggling’; the other shouting at no-one in particular. What happens in winter?

There are housing rental vouchers for some homeless if you know how to get them: “To qualify for Section 8 housing in Washington, you need to meet all of the application and income guideline requirements, including the requirements for the credit and criminal background checks. You also need to provide proof of income via pay stubs, tax returns, court-ordered child support or family support paperwork, and government benefits award letters. As well as copies of bank statements and birth certificates for all of your family members.”

Water and overheating

After a night in the Green Tortoise hostel, I’ve had a week housesitting cats with Mary, friend of Bradford via Rod, and four nights with Richard and Betty on Vashon Island, and six other nights in the Green Tortoise. For me, that’s a good balance of independent exploring and friendly guidance.

Seattle is a city of water. It’s on the same long Pacific bay as Vancouver, sheltered by Vancouver Island and others, at the end of Puget Sound inlet. It has inland lakes: big ones like Washington where I’ve spent a day on Madrona beach with Mary and her Israeli friend Debbie and kids, medium ones like Union with its Wooden Boats Centre, and small ones like Green which I walked round in an hour as part of a treasure trail set me by Alan and Nissa and their kids who stayed 3 months in Seattle earlier in the year.

They left me just an instruction to raid the greenhouse at the address they had stayed. I found my name on a jar. Inside, a map, some sweets to keep me going, and directions to sample the Lighthouse Coffee House, sit in a community garden overlooking Seattle, walk round Green Lake, and eat a burrito at the Pecado Bueno (translation: Guilty Pleasure). Thank you.

Mary is special. She house-sits for one friend and cat-sits for others, does supply

teaching, and gets something for co-counselling leadership roles but that’s mostly commitment. Over the summer she’s looking after her niece and nephew as much as she can.

We went – Mary, me and Camille (3) and Wolfie (7) – by ferry to Bainbridge Island, stopped off at another friend Carla’s small-holding-and-studio to enjoy the goats, and on to a half-mile woodland hike, ending up at Kitlap Forest Theatre for a Dr Zeus musical. Magical and well-done, they put on something every day during the summer.

Hot summer. Every day in the mid-twenties. I’m loving it and laughing at my scarf and gloves and layers that take up half my suitcase. I’ve been to a city library that has no air-conditioning and closed last week at 2pm when the temperature got too hot “Seattle isn’t used to this, our institutions were built for the temperate climate we had.” Later I met Sharon (Jim’s daughter in law) who works in a thirty-strong sustainability unit in Seattle City Council. They work on policies, and on alliances to give politicians a sense of support for doing those policies that a lot of other electors won’t like. In spite of a great public transport system, it’s nowhere enough to lure people off cars. So far the politicians aren’t brave enough for anything nearing the transformational policies needed, including a congestion charge or some other way of charging for using the roads. The difference from West

Yorkshire: they have a big unit working on it…