I am reminded of a Seattle-Boston flight, on which I had the window seat and, having chatted with the woman next to me, told her to lean over me to look out the window at the view, including Mount Rainier: she had been in town for a week or so and not seen the sometimes-elusive mountain.

I am glad to be back in the landscape I grew up in, but sometimes I miss the mountains: Rainier standing above the horizon, a more northerly part of the Cascades to my east, and the Olympics in the west on clear days.