Seattle, USA
Summer 1991
From Toronto to Vancouver, five hours by air. In the middle, the immense paunch of North America, four time zones and a never-ending trip. The Canadian Boeing pursuing the west, eating up thousands of kilometres and flying over boundless tablelands of grain, clean lakes and wild mountains. Seen from the eye of a European tourist the distances covered by the plane appear to be almost surreal. Landing in Vancouver, after 4500 kilometres of this Canadian crossing, is almost like entering the suburbs of Toronto: tidy, plenty of colorful houses sparkling in the green but with the difference that here you also have a clean ocean and snow capped mountains which form suggestive fjords and inlets.
The Pacific Northwest exerts an irresistible charm. It is a delightful dream for people loving an ecological vacation. This region, considered a sort of last frontier which has been snatched away from the local Natives, includes the Canadian provinces of British Columbia and Alberta and the American states of Washington and Oregon.
Seattle and Vancouver are the two biggest centres. Although separated by only 230 kilometres of highway on the map, they seem to be light years apart because of the different mentality of the two nations which they respectively belong to. The Canadian Vancouver hovers between the huge and still growing Chinese district and the nostalgic charm of the British-style shops and houses; her clean and animated city centre, even by night, with long “promenades” of European fashion shops and restaurants. The inhabitants are genuine and tolerant of outsiders, exuding their friendly hospitality. The American Seattle is supposed to be the most liveable city in the States. It is a city which prefers to take greater care of environment and maniac recycling than its not few homeless people. A city with its suburbs lost between parks and lakes, with a dirty downtown that becomes a ghost town just after sunset. A city proud for the thirsty-called of its introverted people and which lies idle in the monotony of its over 250 rainy days per year.
Beyond urban life of these two cities, Pacific Northwest has much to offer: the Rockies, Mount St. Helens, the Oregon dunes, the rainforests of Washington state and the charming jagged coastline. Whistler lies only one and a half hour from Vancouver by car. This beautiful ski resort is surrounded by rough snowy peaks and never-ending forests. In the last few years it has become the most renowned ski resort in the whole North America. Its long ski slopes, modern gondolas and an intense night life end up with attracting thousands of skiers from everywhere in winter time. Whistler is no way inferior to the most famous European ski resorts, like Cortina or St. Moritz and also here shopping and staying is both chic and expensive, catering largely to tourists with money to burn. Summer, instead, brings up here an army of photo-snapping tourists, mountain bikes and bloody mosquitoes.
Cycling on a rented bike for some 40 kilometres under a pitiless sun, I have seen a gang of old ladies from Colorado travelling solo, obese young girls baked under the sun, the inevitable Japanese tourists armed with their inevitable handicam and, even a small black bear. Then, I have left the summer mess of Whistler just in time to seek refuge in the wilderness of Alberta’s Rockies. For a week, near a village named Cochrane, one hour driving west of Calgary, I have forgotten all the comforts of the civilized world just to rely on the experience of David Richards. Like many of his other colleagues in the area, this young and quite introverted guy is an expert cowboy organizing suggestive horseback trips through mountains and canyons which seem to come out of a John Ford’s western movie.
One hundred dollars per day (expensive, I know, but it is well worth) to be content with a, maybe, unrepeatable experience among the northern lights, beavers and grilled meats in the improvised camp. And the best thing of all, the nearest phone is kilometres away. Heading south in a rented white Pontiac my next destination is Mount St. Helens. Some fifteen years after an overwhelming eruption, the landscape around this amputated volcano did not change that much. I spent the whole afternoon walking under a sparkling blue sky through this sort of Blake’s Inferno. Several square kilometres of solidified lava which disappear over the horizon among a real ocean of ashed tree trunks. Still today, vegetation has difficulty in breaking the grey volcanic blanket and the entire area around the volcano seems to reflect a ghostly lunar aspect.
From St. Helens toward the southern coast of Oregon where the Pacific Northwest says goodbye. Here, along the coastline, for over 40 km, beaches are covered with dramatic dunes dating back to the last glaciation. For thousand of years time and wind have shaped these odd sand mountains, some of which reach even heights of 110 metres . The unreal landscape looks like a sort of Sahara lost among the pines. This ends up to create a mere mirage, almost an illusion that wipes out the natural European standards and maybe, just because of this, seems more difficult to accept as true. I spent the weekend in the small harbour of Wincester Bay; more fishing boats than living souls. Just twenty km inland, the sun is shining brightly and the heat can be measured in the middle 30s C°, but here the coast lies shrouded in a dense and drizzly fog and the atmosphere reminds me of fall in Scotland. How about a confused Mother Nature?
I am spending the cold evening (and guess what: it’s August!) in the warm atmosphere of an old pub listening to some fishermen tales. A blues band is playing live and some Californian tourists are seeking refuge (just like me) from the drizzly weather outside. On the way back to my motel, alone in the darkness of the night, while drinking a beer and listening to the angry waves of the ocean, I recall the words of Jean Baudrillard, author of a book about a trip through this continent: “America is not a dream and neither a reality. She instead is a hyperreality because it is a utopia lived as realized since the beginning.”
