When I left Alaska, I worried I’d left wilderness behind. I underestimated Tacoma | Opinion
My son, Ellison, asked if we could go to the beach on a recent Sunday afternoon. It was chilly, although not raining, so we bundled up and headed to Titlow Park.
“Dad, we’re the only people here!” Ellison shouted as we crossed the train tracks and he ran onto the lookout deck. Ellison is a kindergartener and therefore prone to exaggeration. There were, in fact, a few other folks at the beach: an older gentleman casting a fishing line into the sound and a young couple in matching fleece jackets walking a golden retriever.
Like a military unit leader, Ellison barked out instructions as soon as our rubber boots touched the rocky beach. “I’ll look for crabs; you watch the water for seals and whales!”
I was similarly obsessed with animals when I was his age. Growing up in Anchorage, Alaska, I delighted in the moose that terrorized my dad’s garden, the black bears who occasionally strolled through our neighborhood, and the massive Chugach Mountains that flanked my hometown to the east. As I grew older, I spent my summers fishing with my dad throughout the Kenai Peninsula and deer hunting on Kodiak Island.
I couldn’t help but feel as though I’d left the great outdoors back home when I moved to the Seattle-Tacoma area for college. I was thrilled to move to this land of stadium sporting events, film festivals and exciting career prospects, but I was underwhelmed by hikes that didn’t end at glaciers and just the one, albeit beautiful, mountain.
Eight years after moving to Tacoma I became a father. With that life change came a desire to introduce my two children to the wonders of the outdoors, like my dad did for me up in Alaska. I finally began to explore the Puget Sound region — and the entire state of Washington — with an open mind.
As my young family started exploring together, I discovered I hadn’t given The Evergreen State the credit it deserved. For one, if you drive two hours in any direction from Anchorage, you’ll find yourself, more or less, in the same climate, surrounded, more or less, by the same trees and wildlife. If you drive two hours from Tacoma, you can reach deserts, rainforests, mountains, more islands than I can keep track of, and even the sandy beaches of the Pacific Coast.
Closer to home, Ellison and I have recently started taking evening “nature walks” through our Tacoma neighborhood. In the past month we’ve had close encounters with black-tailed deer, raccoons, cottontail rabbits, and a barred owl.
Tacoma will never be Anchorage. I’ll always miss the rugged, vertical beauty of The Last Frontier. But Anchorage could never be Tacoma, a city where locals regularly spot pods of endangered orcas from the shores of urban parks.
As Ellison and I walked Titlow Beach we found crabs sheltering beneath rocks and a tide pool full of sea anemones. A Bald Eagle flew low overhead, and we spotted sea ducks, a seal and a porpoise swimming near the water’s edge.
Ellison was thrilled as we walked back to the car. “Dad, have you ever lived anywhere else where you could see a porpoise right by your house?”
“I haven’t,” I answered. “This place is pretty spectacular.”
Zach Powers is a freelance writer, the director of communications at Pacific Lutheran University, and a MFA student in PLU’s Rainier Writing Workshop.