A lot of people
18/05/16 04:48
In the hills where we live the predominant species of tree is Ponderosa Pine. The other evergreen tree is Black Hills Spruce. There are also birch, aspen and even oak trees in the hills, but their numbers are much smaller than the pine. With our soils and moisture patterns, the pine trees can grow to 60 or even 75 feet high. They create an effective wind barrier and create cover for all kinds of animals. We do have a tree that is nearly 150 feet high just southwest of our home, but it doesn’t really count as it is a cell phone tower.
When I visit the Pacific Northwest, I am always amazed by the trees. The Olympic peninsula and regions around the Hood Canal and the southern end of the Puget Sound are technically temperate rain forest. Sitka Spruce, Hemlock, and Douglas Fir grow to 150 feet high. The size of the trunks of the trees is amazing to someone from our part of the world. The varieties of mosses and ferns and other undergrowth make a walk in the woods around here a delightful adventure.
One of the big advantages of these wonderful trees is that they are very good at absorbing sound. It is said that there are parts of Olympic National Park that are among the most acoustically natural places on the earth. These sound properties of the trees are very important because the greater Seattle area is one of the great urban centers of the world. Interstate 5 runs north and south a ways inland from the Pacific Coast from Mexico to Canada crossing through many of the major cities of California, Oregon and Washington. It is a corridor for the transportation of everything from food to energy supplies to high tech gear. Interstate 5 never sleeps. There are multiple lanes of traffic on the road in the middle of the night as well as during the day. Some of the truck traffic is higher during the night than the day as transportation networks supply the retail goods that are required to keep the cities running.
The motel where we stay when we visit our children is very close to the Interstate with just a narrow band of trees separating it from the Interstate. Although our children’s home is within walking distance, the difference in location makes a fairly big difference in the amount of noise from the highway. If we listen and pay attention, the dull roar in the background when we are at the motel is the sound of the highway supplying the cities of the West coast.
A couple of times during this visit I have been lying awake on the bed and listening to the traffic noise and wondering about all of those people. The city of Olympia itself is not much bigger than Rapid City. But Rapid City is a long ways from other cities. You have to travel more than 300 miles in any direction to find another town as big as ours when you are in South Dakota. Several of those larger cities are in different states. Driving from Olympia to the airport in Seattle you pass through Tacoma and some of the Seattle suburbs. Tacoma has over 200,000 people and more than 650,000 people call Seattle home. Although they don’t all go to the airport at the same time, sometimes it seems as if a fairly large percentage of the population is on the move. Whether driving on the Interstate or walking in the downtown region, one encounters a lot of people wherever you go.
For the most part the people get along with each other very well. If you consider the number of vehicles that pass on the Interstate every hour the accident rate around here is remarkably low. Travel is safe and we do so without worries. Still with all of those people in a relatively small amount of space it is inevitable that there is human drama playing out all the time. There are folks being rushed to hospitals where the emergency rooms are filed with dramatic actions and complex events. There are fires and ambulance and police calls around the clock in the cities. Each of those events is a big deal in the lives of those involved. If you were to know all of the stories of the city, you’d be overwhelmed by the human emotions involved.
In the midst of all of those people and all of those stories, we have been focusing our attention on just one family. We borrow our son’s car to run to the grocery store or to take the children to the park. We walk around the neighborhood with the dog. We follow our grandson as he rides his bicycle on the trail. We see lots of other people and we greet a few of them, but we don’t really know their stories. Chances are they all have stories as fascinating and interesting as the story of our family. Chances are they have children and grandchildren and parents and others in their lives that add richness and meaning. Chances are they have jobs and are engaged in volunteer work and enjoy their lives. Chances are they have problems to solve and challenges in their lives. But we just don’t know their stories.
Most of the time I am engaged in the church where I have an opportunity to learn at least part of the stories of the people with whom I work. Their families become important to me. Their challenges are mulled in my prayers. But here in a city where we are visitors, my prayers for these people have to be more generic. When I don’t know the stories, I pray general prayers for safety and meaning and justice. When I hear a motorcycle on the freeway, I don’t know the story. I don’t know why someone is riding by on a motorcycle in the middle of the night. So I just pray that the rider reaches his or her destination safely.
Except for four years of seminary when we lived in Chicago, I have never lived in a city. I am very content in our home in the hills. But once in a while it is a worthy experience to visit a city and be reminded of all of the people who make their homes in such places.
I hope some of them notice the magnificent trees growing alongside the road as they zoom from place to place.
When I visit the Pacific Northwest, I am always amazed by the trees. The Olympic peninsula and regions around the Hood Canal and the southern end of the Puget Sound are technically temperate rain forest. Sitka Spruce, Hemlock, and Douglas Fir grow to 150 feet high. The size of the trunks of the trees is amazing to someone from our part of the world. The varieties of mosses and ferns and other undergrowth make a walk in the woods around here a delightful adventure.
One of the big advantages of these wonderful trees is that they are very good at absorbing sound. It is said that there are parts of Olympic National Park that are among the most acoustically natural places on the earth. These sound properties of the trees are very important because the greater Seattle area is one of the great urban centers of the world. Interstate 5 runs north and south a ways inland from the Pacific Coast from Mexico to Canada crossing through many of the major cities of California, Oregon and Washington. It is a corridor for the transportation of everything from food to energy supplies to high tech gear. Interstate 5 never sleeps. There are multiple lanes of traffic on the road in the middle of the night as well as during the day. Some of the truck traffic is higher during the night than the day as transportation networks supply the retail goods that are required to keep the cities running.
The motel where we stay when we visit our children is very close to the Interstate with just a narrow band of trees separating it from the Interstate. Although our children’s home is within walking distance, the difference in location makes a fairly big difference in the amount of noise from the highway. If we listen and pay attention, the dull roar in the background when we are at the motel is the sound of the highway supplying the cities of the West coast.
A couple of times during this visit I have been lying awake on the bed and listening to the traffic noise and wondering about all of those people. The city of Olympia itself is not much bigger than Rapid City. But Rapid City is a long ways from other cities. You have to travel more than 300 miles in any direction to find another town as big as ours when you are in South Dakota. Several of those larger cities are in different states. Driving from Olympia to the airport in Seattle you pass through Tacoma and some of the Seattle suburbs. Tacoma has over 200,000 people and more than 650,000 people call Seattle home. Although they don’t all go to the airport at the same time, sometimes it seems as if a fairly large percentage of the population is on the move. Whether driving on the Interstate or walking in the downtown region, one encounters a lot of people wherever you go.
For the most part the people get along with each other very well. If you consider the number of vehicles that pass on the Interstate every hour the accident rate around here is remarkably low. Travel is safe and we do so without worries. Still with all of those people in a relatively small amount of space it is inevitable that there is human drama playing out all the time. There are folks being rushed to hospitals where the emergency rooms are filed with dramatic actions and complex events. There are fires and ambulance and police calls around the clock in the cities. Each of those events is a big deal in the lives of those involved. If you were to know all of the stories of the city, you’d be overwhelmed by the human emotions involved.
In the midst of all of those people and all of those stories, we have been focusing our attention on just one family. We borrow our son’s car to run to the grocery store or to take the children to the park. We walk around the neighborhood with the dog. We follow our grandson as he rides his bicycle on the trail. We see lots of other people and we greet a few of them, but we don’t really know their stories. Chances are they all have stories as fascinating and interesting as the story of our family. Chances are they have children and grandchildren and parents and others in their lives that add richness and meaning. Chances are they have jobs and are engaged in volunteer work and enjoy their lives. Chances are they have problems to solve and challenges in their lives. But we just don’t know their stories.
Most of the time I am engaged in the church where I have an opportunity to learn at least part of the stories of the people with whom I work. Their families become important to me. Their challenges are mulled in my prayers. But here in a city where we are visitors, my prayers for these people have to be more generic. When I don’t know the stories, I pray general prayers for safety and meaning and justice. When I hear a motorcycle on the freeway, I don’t know the story. I don’t know why someone is riding by on a motorcycle in the middle of the night. So I just pray that the rider reaches his or her destination safely.
Except for four years of seminary when we lived in Chicago, I have never lived in a city. I am very content in our home in the hills. But once in a while it is a worthy experience to visit a city and be reminded of all of the people who make their homes in such places.
I hope some of them notice the magnificent trees growing alongside the road as they zoom from place to place.