Lived here for: 24 years (in east county since 1982)
Originally from: Arkansas City, Kansas
Notable: Volunteer at Foothills Food Bank in Maple Falls
Can you tell me about your first impressions of this area?
When I first moved here from Kansas, it was love at first sight for me. I tell everybody my roots are in Kansas, but my heart belongs to Washington. Because I just — I love it.
What did you love about it?
The mountains, the color. And I was very fortunate that we lived off Highway 9, and so I got to raise my kids on a 200-acre Christmas tree farm that had access to the South Fork of the Nooksack. So we were in perpetual camping season all the time. Everybody came to our house, we didn’t have to go to their house. And now the last 24 years, I’ve lived in Maple Falls, right on Maple Creek. I have a living mural [outside] my house because I just love all the wildlife.
And I’ve been basically a country kind of girl. I grew up in a small town in Kansas. I love the scenery [in Washington]. I love the fact that you could go make a snow angel and go an hour west and beach comb in salt water. In Kansas, the saying was: where you ate breakfast, [you could] look down the road and see where you’re going to have lunch. Because it’s just so flat and yet it has its own beauty in itself. But this … I found Oz. It was technicolor. I’ve just always loved it out here.
How do you find the culture in Washington compares to Kansas?
In a big city in Kansas, you’re still small town. Big cities in Washington, it isn’t. Seattle is no man’s land, as far as I’m concerned. I know there’s good people in Seattle, but I’m not a city person.
Bellingham is a city with a small-town attitude, I think. They’re just more community-minded. And I think in larger cities, they’re more isolated within their own house, their own area. A lot of it’s what you grow up with, too. I have a tendency to trust people until they show me I shouldn’t trust them.
Can you tell me about your work at the food bank?
On Monday, I come and we sack groceries for the home deliveries. I go pick up bread once a month at Franz and then on Tuesday, I check people in. And I do whatever they need to do.
If you volunteer, then you volunteer. You don’t say, ‘Oh, I’ll only do this or only do that.’ You volunteer.
And I love the community. Where I live, I don’t see my neighbors a lot because I don’t have a lot of neighbors. So this is my meeting. My neighbors and I love it. And I’ve worked here long enough now that I would say 95% of people [who] come in, I know who they are. And that thrills them to their toes. And so that thrills me. I can make somebody else feel good. That’s my purpose.
“Faces in the Crowd” is published online and in print Fridays. Have a suggestion for a “Faces in the Crowd” subject? Email us at newstips@cascadiadaily.com.
Sophia Gates covers rural Whatcom and Skagit counties. She is a Washington State Murrow Fellow whose work is underwritten by taxpayers and available outside CDN's paywall. Reach her at sophiagates@cascadiadaily.com; 360-922-3090 ext. 131.
