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© 2004 Nathan P. Myhrvold Introduction Essay for Washington 24/7 Evergreen By Joel Connelly In Washington State, we dream big dreams. It goes with a larger-than-life setting, sculpted by glacial ice and prehistoric floods, and with the boldness of its settlers. We've harnessed rivers: Grand Coulee Dam was touted as "The Biggest Thing on Earth" when cement was poured in the 1930s. The signature project of the New Deal, the dam would make 500,000 acres of desert bloom and power the manufacture of plutonium for nuclear weapons at Hanford. It also inundated one of the premier Native American fishing and gathering spots in North America. We introduced Americans to the passenger jet: The moment was driven into the memory of a 6-year-old boy, this writer, whose parents had taken him to watch hydroplane races on Lake Washington in 1954. Out of nowhere, a Boeing 707 prototype thundered over the lake at low elevation. As 150,000 Seattleites raised their eyes, test pilot Tex Johnston dipped a wing...and suddenly barrel rolled the huge jet. The future had arrived. In the late 1970s, childhood friends Bill Gates and Paul Allen moved their embryonic company Microsoft back to their native Puget Sound and brought computing to the masses. The future had arrived again. Washington has status in the global economy, but we've also shown the will and foresight to hold on to what remains of our world-class natural environment. A radical tradition lives here: Seattle was shut down in 1919 by a general labor strike. In the 1930s, FDR's political strategist James A. Farley, exasperated by the utopian socialism swelling among voters allied with the Washington Commonwealth Federation, spoke of an America consisting of "47 states and the Soviet Republic of Washington." Sixty years later, a World Trade Organization meeting brought thousands of peaceful protestors and a few hundred violent anarchists to downtown Seattle. Tear gas wafted through city streets. In future venues, globalization protesters gained the unwanted nickname "Seattle people." Yet, the nation's consumer-protection laws would not exist without our longtime (1944 to 1980) Senator Warren Magnuson. He served side by side for 28 years with Senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson, twice a presidential candidate and author of the Clean Water Act and National Environmental Policy Act. Washington produced gentlemanly House Speaker Tom Foley and, in Governor Dan Evans, perhaps the Republican Party's greatest champion of preserving wilderness since Teddy Roosevelt. We will always be a place where people begin life anew. Our population has doubled to 6 million since 1954. A million more folks are expected to settle in the Puget Sound basin by 2020. The state faces the challenge to keep diversifying while holding on to our quality of life. It's what makes the state a magnet. Recently, three buddies and myself-all Washington natives-hauled backpacks to the remote McAllister Pass in the North Cascades. At sunset we scrambled to the summit of a nearby butte. Ice-draped peaks of the "American Alps" surrounded us. No human creation was visible. Ah, wilderness! A bottle of Walla Walla Valley cabernet appeared and was poured into Sierra Club cups, and metallic clinks marked our toast to the disappearing sun. One of us spoke for the group when he said, "I feel very much at home here." JOEL CONNELLY, a Bellingham native, writes the "In the Northwest" column in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Browse    View All    Evergreen    Hearth & Home    Hard at Work    Washington at Play    Reason to Believe    Our Town Photos: 153 Photographers: 43 Towns: 55

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