Dixy Rocks the Northwest

Through the mud of Fox Island in Puget Sound clumps a stubby and sturdy woman wearing a vibrant green baseball cap, a gold and green sweatsuit, and a T shirt emblazoned SAVE OUR FISHING FLEET. Beaming happily, she feeds her Beltsville White turkeys (one of which she will later carve with gusto at her table); points proudly to three eggs freshly laid by her Rhode Island Red hens; strokes her pet sow, which is ready to have piglets and then become part of her larder; hails her goat April, a daily source of milk; and shows all the joy of a Washington dirt farmer in her modest (65 acres) spread. Then she marches through a stand of Douglas fir to the slate-gray pebbled beach that fronts her property, and gazes fondly out at the waters she has known since childhood. Bending, she picks up a beached starfish, studies the specimen for a moment, and tosses it back into the water—"to preserve the natural balance," as she puts it.

That small act of concern symbolizes the problem that confronts Governor Dixy Lee Ray, her state of Washington and indeed the entire Pacific Northwest. The unspoiled region is struggling to preserve a natural balance that is threatened by the works of man, striving to encourage progress yet retain the beauty of the forests, the mountains and the seacoast that make the area so mistily appealing and define its very essence.

"We all have a deep and abiding love of this land," says Ray, speaking for her fellow Northwesterners. "We're all very defensive about it, and we'd like to see things stay the same. Most thinking people realize that economic development is necessary—you have to have a job to live. But we want change to come in a way that preserves the natural flavor, not necessarily every blade of grass or every weed, but the natural flavor. There are those who argue, 'Now that we're here, let's close the door. Put up a fence, keep the rest out—all those other guys.' But we just can't do that."

Change is coming to the coastal states of Washington and Oregon and to neighboring Idaho, and coming fast, but awesome swaths of the Northwest remain untouched. The upland plains and the mountains that march from horizon to horizon still have a feeling of the frontier. Nearly four times the size of New England, the entire region has a population of only 6.8 million—little more than half of that of the other far corner of the country. Americans who live in cities or suburbs can look at large parts of the Northwest and glean a true idea of what the nation was like 50 or 100 years ago—a region where small-town accessibility and friendliness come naturally, where people seem to care more about who they are than what they have.