In my seminary years, I did two Internships based at Union Church of Hinsdale, Illinois. The first was in youth ministry, the second in health care ministry. I did a reverse commute, living in the city and heading out to the suburbs to work each day. I grew up in small town Montana, and Montana doesn’t have any cities of the size and scope of Chicago, so living in Chicago during our seminary years was a totally new experience for me. It was during those years that I began to understand what a metropolitan area is. A large city is surrounded by many different independent communities that are affected by the city. People live in the communities and work in the city. Even those who do not work in the city are affected by urban life. They go to the city to access an airport served by airlines. They go to the city to shop. They go to the city for cultural events. The traffic of the city is projected out into the outlying communities.

When we first started to think of moving to the Pacific Northwest, I thought of Seattle as the major urban area. Seattle has Sea-Tac, a large international airport. This summer we have had guests who flew in and out of Sea-Tac. One week I made the 5-hour round trip to the airport two days in a row. We know our way around Seattle a little bit. We’ve visited Pike Place Market and the Space Needle. We’ve ridden on the great wheel at pier 57 and toured the aquarium. I’m sure we’ll do more touring in Seattle in the years to come.

Where we live, however, is not really in the metropolitan Seattle area. We’re beyond the suburbs and even the exurbs of the city. We have to drive an hour before we are really in that zone. That doesn’t bother me. I’m a small town kid. Chicago was my one experience with a major metropolitan area and it was enough to convince me that I prefer rural living.

What I didn’t understand, even when we bought our house here last year, is that although we are not in the Seattle metropolitan area, we are in another metropolitan area - that of Vancouver, British Columbia. Vancouver is one of the densest and most ethnically diverse cities in Canada. The metro Vancouver area has a population of over 2.6 million, making it Canada’s third largest metro area. The population of the metro area is affected by the international boundary. When they say 2.6 million, they aren’t counting us. But in most other ways, we are part of the metro area.

That fact wasn’t clear when we moved here. The international boundary was closed to all nonessential travel due to the Covid pandemic. But the border has opened and things have really changed this summer. One of the first places that I noticed the effect was on the Interstate. We drive about 10 miles on the Interstate from an intersection near the town of Ferndale into Bellingham to get to our church. First of all I began to notice that the traffic was a bit heavier than it had been during the height of the pandemic. Then I noticed that there are quite a few cars that are being driven aggressively - the way they are driven in a large city, cutting off other cars, not allowing sufficient space between vehicles, darting into the space that I have left between me and the vehicle I am following. It annoyed me. I commented to my family that I remember Chicago drivers who drove like they were in the heart of the city even after they had left city traffic behind. These drivers were like those. Then I noticed that most of those overly aggressive drivers had British Columbia license plates on their cars. I noticed that a lot of the cars on the Interstate have BC plates. When we walk along the beach in our little village, about a third of the cars have BC plates. We are definitely impacted by the city just north of us.

After all, we live less than 40 miles from the center of the city. But there is more to that metropolitan impact than might otherwise be the case because Vancouver is a contained city to the west and to the north. On the west the Pacific Ocean stops the city from spreading in that direction. And to the North are high mountains and a vast wilderness area that stretches all the way to Alaska. Vancouver’s impact spreads east and south and most of it spreads south.

So we live in a metro area. But you don’t have to go far to find wilderness. If we head straight east we arrive at the North Cascade Mountains in a place where no highways cross the high country. And, to the north, it is only about 70 miles to wilderness dotted with provincial parks and federal lands.

We may live in a metropolitan area, but we are very close to Sasquatch country. About 70 miles northeast of our home is Sasquatch Provincial Park, near the town of Harrison Hot Springs, home to multiple Sasquatch sightings. Some call the creature Big Foot. In the Himalaya they call it Yeti. Here the name is Sasquatch. Some say the creature is a myth. Others say it was made up to promote tourism. But there are true believers and there have been true believers in this area for a long time. The creature is considered sacred to the indigenous people of this region and the Sts’ailes people have been telling Sasquatch stories for at least 10,000 years. In Sts’ailes tradition, Sasquatch is a shapeshifter that protects the land and the people. Their word for “hairy man” (sasq’ets) has been anglicized into Sasquatch.

In British Columbia the dense forest of cedar, Sitka spruce, Douglas fir and hemlock stretch from the shores of the ocean to the snow-capped crests of the mountains. That area of temperate rainforest is nearly impenetrable.

We may live in a metropolitan area, but the wilderness is close by. I’ve never seen Sasquatch, but I’m rather pleased to live in Sasquatch country. In a way I’d rather encounter Sasquatch than those aggressive city drivers.