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Puget Sound: Sea Between the Mountains
Placid bays, steeply forested shorelines, breaching whales, dynamic urban centers -- Western Washington's Puget Sound region captivates with its magic.
111 pages, Hardcover
First published May 1, 2000
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November 30, 2008
Being a northwest native, reading about the history and geography of this glorious region always reminds me of how lucky I am to call this place home. Mix Thompson’s spectacularly alluring photos with Scigliano’s evocative narration, and you have a mesmerizing coffee table book that verges on the cusp of myth.
If it’s not the legend of the Seawolf – whose motif is threaded throughout Scigliano’s text as a metaphor for the spirit of the Northwest in both native and modern times – or Whulge, the native word for our inland sea, then it is one of the many native myths that he recounts that help illustrate our people and land. Take for instance the story of the how the Western and Eastern Washington came to be:
Long ago, the people who lived to the east persuaded Ocean to send them his daughters Cloud and Rain, so that their land might bloom. Then they refused to let the daughters go. Ocean begged the Great Spirit to return his daughters and punish the eastern people for their greed. So the Great Spirit threw up a wall of mountains, the Cascades, to keep Cloud and Rain near the Ocean. The trench he dug to form the mountains filled with water, becoming what we call “Puget Sound.”
A finer legend of our region I have never heard. Not just for the climatic difference between the two Washingtons, but also for the striking animosity and attitudinal stances between them.
For the native and the visitor alike, Puget Sound: Sea Between the Mountains is an enchanting tour of great waterway that defines our region – much as the Mediterranean did for the Ancient Greeks. Luckily for those of us who inhabit the Puget Sound region, we are now living in our own Golden Age.
If it’s not the legend of the Seawolf – whose motif is threaded throughout Scigliano’s text as a metaphor for the spirit of the Northwest in both native and modern times – or Whulge, the native word for our inland sea, then it is one of the many native myths that he recounts that help illustrate our people and land. Take for instance the story of the how the Western and Eastern Washington came to be:
Long ago, the people who lived to the east persuaded Ocean to send them his daughters Cloud and Rain, so that their land might bloom. Then they refused to let the daughters go. Ocean begged the Great Spirit to return his daughters and punish the eastern people for their greed. So the Great Spirit threw up a wall of mountains, the Cascades, to keep Cloud and Rain near the Ocean. The trench he dug to form the mountains filled with water, becoming what we call “Puget Sound.”
A finer legend of our region I have never heard. Not just for the climatic difference between the two Washingtons, but also for the striking animosity and attitudinal stances between them.
For the native and the visitor alike, Puget Sound: Sea Between the Mountains is an enchanting tour of great waterway that defines our region – much as the Mediterranean did for the Ancient Greeks. Luckily for those of us who inhabit the Puget Sound region, we are now living in our own Golden Age.
Displaying 1 of 1 review