Perhaps most HCN staff and readers will recognize
themselves in Stiles’ essay (HCN, 3/21/05: A look at the
West, in the funhouse mirror). I did not recognize myself or my
neighbors. We are the Old Urban West.
I am a
fourth-generation Northwesterner living in the urban neighborhood
where I was born, a neighborhood as strained by the influx of “New
Westerners” as any mountain town. I have never ridden a chairlift
or used my car to transport my bike. I drive a 1981 Toyota, and to
get in touch with nature, I go to the city park or sit in my yard.
On my standard city lot one mile from downtown Portland, I grow and
process lots of food, and I am much more comfortable talking with a
farmer about the finer points of soil fertility than with a
recreationist about the finer points of snow conditions. Although I
could probably afford a second home, I choose not to own one,
because if environmentalism means anything, it means the daily
practice of restraint.
Thousands of my neighbors are just
like me, and we are the environmental movement. “New Westerners”
are easy to caricature, but real urban people have no more in
common with them than do working cowboys. By reinforcing the “New
Westerner” stereotype, HCN helps ensure that
even those who try every day to walk their talk will continue not
to be taken seriously, and will not be recognized for the majority
that they are.
Martin C.
Evans
Portland, Oregon
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline The old urban West speaks out.
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