Nature Journalism - The Beautiful View (Bellevue)
“Space represents sanity, not a life purified, dull, or ‘spaced out’ but one that might accommodate intelligently any idea or situation.”
I first heard the meaning of my hometown’s name in third grade three months into learning the French language. I remember all of us sitting cross-legged in a circle with our language teacher for the year (who we all affectionately referred to as just Madame) at its center. “You know, when I first moved to this town, I was so very happy to hear the French language spoken every time people say its name,” she told us. “Belle in le français means beautiful just like the girl in Beauty and the Beast. And the word ‘vue’ means view. So together it means a beautiful view. And so it is with that beautiful mountain you can see.” Even then, I didn’t see anything special about the town I had grown up in. Mount Rainier, as large, brooding, and powerful as it is, can only be spotted on the brightest and warmest of days. Those are the very rare days when we Seattleites exclaim, “the mountain’s out!” More often than not, that same mountain that we love, the pride and jewel of the Pacific Northwest, is frequently hidden behind a thin veil of grey clouds and semi-constant rain. For me, having spent nearly 10 years of my life in a home that faced away from the mountain and towards Lake Sammamish, it was easy to forget the mountain existed. But it was always there watching over us just like the bald eagles spotted along its heavily wooded face.
Bellevue, just like any town, has its flaws. It has been experiencing its share of growing pains with the arrival of Amazon and the expansion of Microsoft. The construction in Downtown Bellevue never seems to stop, traffic has gotten worse (even in a pandemic), and racial tensions in the school district were at an all-time high before schools were forced to shift from in-person learning to online. I watched so many of these changes from afar in Los Angeles; only returning home for breaks and never paying much attention to how much my hometown had changed in such a short amount of time. I didn’t search for Mount Rainier between the evergreens or take a mental note whenever someone made small talk by acknowledging that the mountain could be seen. My French teacher so many years ago in a classroom in Bellevue shared with her students the impact of discovering something comforting and familiar in what was once a foreign environment. While I may never understand exactly what she felt, I know that it may have been one of the things that made this town feel like home for her.
Recently the sun has been out and I’ve found myself beginning to search for the mountain whenever I have the opportunity. On the cloudiest of days, when I know that the mountain will not be making an appearance until there’s a hint of sun, I feel a little tug in my heart and realize that I miss the moment when, while standing in my Walden, my eyes find it in the distance tucked behind the two evergreen trees at the end of my driveway. A year has come and gone since my arrival back in Bellevue and my Walden has undergone a miraculous transformation with the changing seasons. Sometimes it’s hard to believe that the rest of the world changes right along with the little one that I have spent nearly four months and 7 blog posts writing about. My Walden, like the world it belongs to, shows me something different whenever I see it now. I appreciate it more than I did before beginning this series for my nature writing class and I feel grateful for it (and my Walden) every day. Mount Rainier has never looked better.