Water Photoshoot -- Contessa

 

Water is what drew me to Bellingham. I was raised in Pennsylvania, a landlocked state, and while some count Lake Erie's 77 miles of Pennsylvania shoreline as a vague exemption to landlocked-ness, I do not. My entire life, the closest ocean was at least a full day's drive away in New Jersey. Those in Philadelphia had the luxury of making that drive in under two hours, but Pittsburgh is closer to the Midwest by a long shot, and I was significantly closer to Indianapolis than the ocean. 

My mom was born and raised in University Place, Tacoma with constant access to the water. If it was nice out, she went to the water. If it was a special occasion, she went to the water. If she had free time or needed to breathe good air or had any excuse at all, she went to the water. 

When she married my father, he brought her to Pittsburgh, where he grew up and where starter homes were affordable for a freshly married couple in graduate school with plans to raise two children. She was baffled by the dramatic seasons, and she constantly sought the water. We traveled the country as much as we could, and she brough me to Tacoma and the Oregon Coast as often as money allowed, but she still felt trapped without the ocean.

I honestly never understood what in the world she was talking about. I had never known anything different -- the longest I'd spent by the water was six weeks in 2023. I realized the call to the Pacific was coded in her blood before she was even born. Her family and Scandinavian ancestors fished, canned, and sailed for generations before her. That precedent alone is impossible to escape, and after a childhood and young adulthood of bordering the water, her soul and the ocean became indistinguishable and inseparable. 

After moving to Bellingham in September of 2024, I followed the same path. I had felt the calling in my DNA to return to the Pacific Northwest despite having never lived there. The stars aligned to bring me to Fairhaven College, and I am forever changed because of this place. 

When I visit Pittsburgh, I feel like an amphibian trapped on land, and the air seems stale and under-salted. But every time I come back to Washington, I stand careening on the edge of the world and find a tranquil home by the water. I am connected to the planet, and I am unrestricted by the bounds of land and our arbitrary state lines. I am free.

"Now I know what it feels like to want to go outside." -Phoebe Bridgers, Sidelines