'If we are seeing a new kind of claiming of the human by the larger geo-biosphere, then Cascadia is the 'nurse log' for a new understanding of human maturity, a new anthropology, a new way of conceiving community, a new practice of social life. This might be its greatest possible gift for the future.'

— Patricia O'Connell Killen, 'Memory, Novelty and Possibility in This Place', in Cascadia: The Elusive Utopia (2008)

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Right. Let's do this.

Proposal: an expedition and a book.

First, 3–6 weeks in the Pacific Northwest, hunting traces of Cascadia – an imagined territory loosely bounded by the watershed of the Columbia river, straddling Canada and the United States. British Columbia, Washington, and Oregon, right down into North California.

An outsider's history of the idea of the region.

Oregon and Washington as the Pacific foothold of an American Empire stalling for time; staring across the ocean at a rising China and a shell-shocked Japan; sharing more in common with their Canadian neighbour than either the shiny-toothed venture capitalists of SoCal, or their waspish rulers in NY and DC.

Seattle's Space Needle as an atomic ghost. The flying-saucered legacy of a future throttled in the womb; its steel feet in the 'potlatch fields' where Native Americans once jockeyed for prestige with competitive gift-giving.

Ernest Callenbach's Ecotopia (1975). Thomas Jefferson. Medical marijuana.

Environmentalism. The decline of the sovereign nation-state. Perforated sovereignty and millennial geoeconomics. British Columbia's government Learjet. Starbucks, grunge, and the Battle of Seattle.

With so much attention focused on America's border with Mexico, what of its northern equivalent? The western reaches of the world's longest undefended border: the 49th parallel. The long arm of Homeland Security, grasping, hopelessly, at a fading afterimage of the war-on-terror.

Interviews with environmentalists, historians, SF writers, urbanists, sociologists, artists, and similar.

Then, later: a book of speculative travel writing. A bottled despatch from the yellow zone, here:

A series of essays focusing on the peculiarities and potentialities of North America's Pacific coast. Ethnography's 'thick description', punctured with the cant of science fiction. Gonzo with fewer without the drugs. Occasionally slipstream. Rough and weird and scrappy and honest.

... and, right now, that's where the blueprint runs out. I still don't know if I can do this alone, so if you have any ideas, thoughts, comments or suggestions – please, throw them my way.

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Elsewhere, I've been thinking out loud; blogging some of my early, incohate thoughts about the project. Have a look:

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(Header uses material from Andreas Pizsa, NASA, Barry M, and the Seattle Municipal Archives)

Project Cascadia

Project Cascadia