Shaped by Seattle

I live in the Puget Sound region—a land of clouds, salmon, Orca whales, congested traffic, and double-leaved bascule bridges. Like many Seattleites, I grumble at the excessive sunshine in mid-July. I like foghorns and ducks and snow-capped mountains. Rainy Seattle with its cafés and bookstores is a perfect reading-and-writing city; and I am happy here, happy as a coot bobbing on Green Lake. My place, the Pacific Northwest, affects who I am.

Priscilla Long, “Genome Tome,” American Scholar, vol. 74, no. 3, Summer 2005, p. 36