Cascadia and the desire for more regionalism

It's hard being in a physically large country

Mount St. Helens with the Doug flag overlaid on top.

As many of you know, I live in the Pacific Northwest. Portland to be specific! It’s a wonderful part of the planet. Very lush (but also dry if you go east of the Cascades) and vibrant with an incredible coastline. Not very warm, admittedly, but I definitely enjoy it.

But one of the more interesting things about living in the Pacific Northwest is not the climate. That might be the most talked about (“it’s so rainy, right?”) but the weather is actually the most boring part. We get rain but not typically torrential rain. We don’t get hurricanes, tornadoes or blizzards. Sorry everyone but the maximum 4 inches of snow we get does not count as a blizzard, even if it shuts the entire city down. No, one of the more interesting things about living in the Pacific Northwest is a little concept called Cascadia.

Now, I’ve been writing about Cascadia for a long time. It was obviously a big part of the conversation when I was a sports reporter covering the Portland Timbers in MLS. But also, Hunter Shobe (a friend and former co-host of my podcast) and I wrote a whole academic article about Cascadian identity as it exists through the lens of geography and soccer. It’s real nerdy stuff. I’d love to share it with you all, but I don’t have a copy anymore. You can read the abstract here.

All this is to say, the concept pops up in my mind often, but I don’t think I’ve written about it recently. So, let’s talk about Cascadia! And regionalism at large.