Timeless in Seattle: Healing the Past, Walking Into the Future.

While I am mostly known today as Wild Oregon Girl, before that I was simply Renee Anderson. An aspiring stage actor. Freshly eighteen and accepted into Cornish College of the Arts. For eight months straight I drove back and forth between Bend and Seattle for auditions, falling more and more in love with the city each time. I wanted to fly away as soon as I could.

It had started years earlier, when my family took me to the Puget Sound in the eighth grade. Orcas breaking the surface. Pine trees leaning toward the water. A sleepless city alive with art and indie music. Seattle imprinted itself on me then, a place that felt both untamed and electric and full of POTENTIAL.

This year, after the armed burglary that happened during summer solstice week, everything shifted. I had been staring down a season crammed full of assignments for other agencies.

Overbooked. Pre-exhausted. But when I was face to face with an intruder pointing a gun at me, I knew I could not keep running around working for everyone else. I needed to take the summer off. To pivot. To start again, for me.

I told my husband I wanted to return to the city I was meant to claim. The city that had once held my younger dreams in its palms. Seattle.

I did not end up going to school in Seattle. The war had been declared a month before graduation in 2003. My FAFSA mysteriously disappeared in the mail. A reluctant boyfriend pulled at my choices, my parents discouraged me, and the money was never there. Instead, I slipped into food service, slid into restlessness, and became a young mom.

The list of turns in the road is long. But listen, when a gun is drawn upon your face, all the decisions you have ever made flash through your mind.

This trip, twenty-three years later, was more than a getaway. It was a reclamation. A way to begin again. To step outside the box I had been forced into and to step back into the version of myself that Seattle once promised.

As if to prove a point, my husband planned the entire trip. No longer reluctant, but steady, thoughtful, and supportive. This was not only a return for me, but a milestone for our own (beloved)teenager, who now carries their own dream of art school. A circle was beginning to close.

We flew out of RDM, the small and familiar airport in Redmond. A single bar tucked by the gates, stiff drinks poured for early flights. Boarding is easy, and the takeoff feels freeing…

The flight to Seattle is only forty minutes, just a quick lift over Hood and the Columbia before touching down in another world. Not so far at all, and yet it felt like stepping into a parallel life. I was about to find out which one was mine.

We purposely spent a few extra hours in the airport. Why? Because the energy of an airport is its own kind of atmosphere. Full of anticipation, heavy with emotion. It is an air I do not often breathe. The noises settle into me like a casino, a wash of announcements and footsteps, engines humming, the rush of strangers chasing gates. Dopamine in disguise. Worldly people moving in every direction.

We wandered into Sub Pop Records, home to so many of my favorite and most formative artists. The Shins, Death Cab for Cutie, Nirvana, Soundgarden. A place where the soundtrack of my youth still lingers in the bins and posters.

I stopped at the MAC store and picked out something fierce and bold, a purple lip color. A new disguise?

Our Uber circled too many times, and before long I nodded toward a private driver waiting in a sleek Rivian. His passenger had flaked, and with a little quick cash, the ride was ours. It felt like Seattle was opening secret doors for us, just like it had twenty years before.

In 2003 I came to Seattle with money that came in graduation cards from well-meaning relatives. Eight hundred dollars bought me a week in the city and I felt like queen of the world. A Motel 6 by the Needle, cheap eats, long walks, wide eyes. Back then I was hungry for a future I could barely picture.

Now I’m here again, with a suite that connects to another suite, an oyster bar waiting downstairs. It feels borrowed, like I slipped into someone else’s life. At eighteen I wanted to be the woman who had this. And now that I am, I still feel like I’m looking at her through glass. Time is strange that way, looping back, showing you yourself in two places at once.

That night I awoke after only three hours to a banging on the streets below. A man had pulled wood from the back of a truck and was smacking it around like a drum. Sigh, the city. I am not as tolerant of mindless men causing havoc anymore, not after I have stared down the barrel of one myself. From the window above I watched him jump from the truck toward a passing couple, circling them for half a block before staggering into the street. Two street racers nearly clipped him, tires screeching as they sped past. Sleepless in Seattle, indeed.

What followed was a silent panic attack that lasted until the first ferry of dawn crossed Elliott Bay. Its lights shimmered on the water as I tried to steady my breath. Still, I wanted to enjoy our time.

I knew the city carried both wonder and chaos, and I had chosen to return anyway.

So I dragged my weary bones several blocks to Pike Place Market. Despite the restless night, my heart beat alive and wild. There it was, a memory not seen since the week I graduated high school.

Flowers spilling from stalls. Vendors shouting. Fish flying across counters. Artists leaning over their work. The famous gum wall still thick with color and names. The faces of travelers lit with curiosity from all over the world.

I remembered something deep inside of me then. A piece that had been waiting, dormant but alive, for twenty-three years.

The stimulation of Pike Place woke me up out of my fog. I both adore and abhor the anxiety that comes with travel and new places. Will this trip be safe? Will it breathe life into a new me, a new novel, a new voice? Will I die here or be reborn? It felt best not to wrestle with those thoughts in the moment. Instead, I decided to find lunch.

We slipped through another secret portal…the unmarked but unmistakable entrance of The Pink Door, tucked into Post Alley since 1981.

Inside was an expansive room, the restaurant swirling and alive, a carnival hidden behind a plain pink door. The swings hung above the stage as if they could start moving at any moment. Clowns grinned from the décor, their painted faces holding the secret of what was to come. The lights, the velvet, the shimmer all suggested that the curtain was about to rise. It felt like a secret circus, and I could not help but wonder what role I might be called to play.

Locally sourced Italian-American food arrived in abundance, recipes meant for Sunday family tables but dressed for the stage. The antipasto of the house overflowed with prosciutto, Tuscan bean salad, fresh mozzarella, tapenade, and charred vegetables, a spread as colorful as a costume trunk.

Our server wore a hot pink beret and a long gold chain, a ringmaster disguised as a guide through the feast. The other waitstaff floated by in elaborate, romantic blouses and flowing Havana-style shirts. The room was dark yet warm, velvet shadows stitched with laughter.

In the city it is hard to see the stars at night, but oh how they shine through the streets all day.

A girl from small-town Bend could vanish under life’s weight. Yet among old-world flavors and new-world art, she could step onto the stage again, ready to claim her role in the secret circus.

The Seattle Aquarium was one of the stops I looked forward to the most. I am quite fond of Aquariums.My obsession began when I first watched Free Willy as a child. For a time I dreamed of becoming a marine biologist, and though life took me elsewhere, the fascination never faded.

It takes courage to travel to other worlds. Sometimes it is a city like Seattle, or maybe Paris one day. Sometimes it is the otherworld of an aquarium, where sea cucumbers, jellies, and salmon remind us how time bends and cycles return. And sometimes it is the depths of our own minds. Each journey is a dive, mysterious and bright, and I am willing to see what bubbles up.

This summer I took up aquariums on a larger scale at home, a project I share with my teenager.

After the break in that shook our family, we found peace in creating tanks filled with fish and plants. There is comfort in the steady rhythms of water, in watching life flourish under care. It became something we turned to together as a way to heal.

Walking through the Seattle Aquarium on a crowded holiday weekend, I watched kids tugging at their parents, faces lit with excitement. The air buzzed with voices in many languages, but everyone was joined by the same sense of awe. In their wonder I recognized my own, and also the child inside me who once dreamed of the sea. Visiting reminded me that those early dreams never truly leave. They wait, ready to be reclaimed, when we choose to begin again.

After the aquarium we made a short stop on the pier at Elliott Bay Oyster. I needed something quick, something briny to bring me back into my body. Oysters have always been my instant energy. They are rich in protein, zinc, and B vitamins, small but powerful reminders that food can be both medicine and indulgence.

Tradition says to only eat oysters in the winter months when the waters are cold, but with September around the corner and the bay still crisp, I felt no hesitation. I ordered Baywater Sweets, my favorite variety, harvested from the chilled tides of Washington. They tasted clean, cold, and alive, like swallowing a piece of the sea.

Arthur Miller once said, “The oyster is not a closed box, but a seedbed of pearls, an emblem of fecundity, and a symbol of eternal renewal.” Sitting there with the shells stacked in front of me, I understood why.

Each oyster a new shot, a small reclamation, a reminder that beginnings can be as simple as the tide turning.

The highlight of the trip for me was an Argosy summer sunset cruise around Elliott Bay. I have always loved being on boats. I love being on the water. It is where I feel the most inspired, the most alive, the most at peace. I wanted to see the city from the water, to let the breeze carve me into something new.

The golden hour light fell across the skyline in Hollwood fashion. Glass towers and cranes lit up in a glow that made the whole city feel staged for wonder. Out on the water, the horizon stretched wide, holding us in a frame of sea and sky.

Then came a rare sight. Freshwater porpoises broke the surface beside us, leaping in unison as if they too were caught up in the evening’s magic. I leaned over the railing, watching them race the boat, my heart lifting with each arc.

We caught the wake of the giant ferries as they moved toward their crossings. For a moment I wished I was on one, sailing away to a secret island after a day in the city.

Could I make that a reality? The thought lingered as the sun lowered. The present moment already felt unreal. With the eclipse portal overhead, who was to say what else could be manifested.

We stepped off the boat with seven miles of city and harbor stretched beneath our feet. Tired and a little sun-worn, we wandered into Ye Olde Curiosity Shop, a place as strange and storied as the waterfront itself. We admired mummies sealed in glass, shrunken heads lined up like odd trophies, shelves of shells and polished stones, rows of trinkets begging to be taken home.

Hunger pulled us next to Great State Burger, where I ordered a cheeseburger that topped them all. In-N-Out, Burgerville, who are they? A chocolate shake, krinkle fries, American cheese and ketchup. The most comforting meal of my life, served in a paper wrapper under the neon glow.

We played a round of skee-ball after, the arcade lights blinking in a rhythm of their own. I sent one last curve into the 100 slot, a small victory before stepping back outside. The night skyline glittered across Elliott Bay as we walked toward our rooms.

It felt like boardwalk magic. A movie, a play, a new scene written for us, yet familiar to the soul.

I slept through eight hours for the first time in ages. Rested and reset, I decided to throw my family (another) curve ball.

I wanted to go to Capitol Hill, the neighborhood that had captured me two decades ago.

This was where I first came to audition for theater school. It was the neighborhood where I dreamed of living, of working, of folding myself into a cultural shift through song, dance, and good(enough) writing.

I wanted to belong to the art scene, to the indies, to the conversations spilling onto the sidewalks. It was Jimi’s neighborhood, and I wanted to see if any of that spirit remained. The magic….

Back then I had nearly taken a job in the Odd Fellows Hall when it was still a more formal dining space. I imagined working the ballroom upstairs, serving while the floors echoed with history, hoping some of the grandeur would rub off on me. I wanted to be in the current of it all, a young woman acting out a place in the big city. Life pulled me another way, but the dream still lingers inside. That is why I had to see the places I almost called home.

Walking through the doors of Oddfellows Café and Bar now felt like opening a time capsule. The building has stood here since 1908, built as a lodge for the Odd Fellows, a fraternal order rooted in ritual and charity. Over the years it has housed everything from arts groups to activist spaces, always shaping the soul of Capitol Hill. The neighborhood itself has changed since those years, as all cities do. Politics, pandemic, and protests left their mark, but in the hum of conversation and the beat of rain against the windows, I could still feel its pull.

Our host led us to the back patio “because it is cute back there.” I laughed. Always the aesthetic girl, I never pass up a good photo moment. The patio was lush with greenery, statues tucked into corners, cozy tables lined with candles. I ordered a matcha martini, Dave went for an espresso martini, both of them club worthy, trendy but ironic.

Then the rain came. At first a sprinkle, then a steady patter, soft but insistent.

We tourists moved inside, dripping coats and damp hair, while the locals stayed put, unfazed, leaning into the drizzle as if it belonged to them. And maybe it did. That is Seattle. A city where rain baptizes everything, where resilience is written into the rhythm of daily life.

Inside, we sat beneath a black-and-white photograph of founding fathers, brunch served in cast iron skillets, gooey and sharable.

Capitol Hill still thrums with its contradictions. It has been through upheaval, boarded storefronts, late-night protests, rainbow-painted crosswalks that shine defiantly in the morning. But sitting there, I thought of the Odd Fellows and the Masons, of how they once used ritual and symbolism to stamp out darkness with light. That energy is still here, waiting for anyone who wants to tune in.

And I do.

You know a bookstore is good when you can smell it before you even step inside. The warm bitterness of chocolate and coffee beans drifting from the café. Butter from a croissant carried through the air until it tangles with ink and paper. Rain clung to coats at the doorway, but inside it felt steady, safe, alive.

The Elliott Bay Book Company has lived on this block since 2010, though the shelves seem older than time. The spines along the rows were muted, worn with years of hands pulling them free. Technical drawings rested inside heavy volumes. Small displays offered colorful stationery, odd little gifts. The space hummed noetic.

I noticed the book guardians, keepers of the words, watching over the shelves. They were not staff, not exactly. They were people who belong here, leaning against the stacks as if keeping vigil. Protectors of stories. Protectors of truth.

We are the book keepers. This is where the secret lives. Truth hidden in plain sight, tucked between jackets and footnotes, waiting for whoever is curious enough to find it. Time bends here. You can lose yourself in the aisles, fall into trap doors between genres, and come out someone new.

I bought Space Opera, a novel of galaxies and music, theater played out among the stars. It felt like more than a purchase. It was a signal. A dare. A reminder that books can still open portals, even in a world that tries to shut them.

We drifted a few blocks to BLICK Art Materials, an artist’s sanctuary pressed against the corner where Jimi waits in bronze. I wandered the aisles, lingering over pens, overhearing a worker tell her coworker, “I just act like this is a game and every little thing is a clue, it makes it more fun that way.” That line stuck with me. It is how I tend to move through life too. A scavenger hunt of symbols and signs, stitched together into meaning.

I tested the pens, scanning the scratch pads for secret messages. Instead, I found the name of my ex written again and again across the pages. A reminder I didn’t ask for. The worker caught me noticing and casually stripped away the sheets, smiling as she tossed them. “Isn’t it fun…to test the pens.”

I smiled back, though inside I knew this is what happens when you step backward. The past always wants something from you. It charges a ransom. Sometimes it gives you a piece of yourself in return, sometimes it just takes your breath away for a moment.

That is the trick with healing. Revisiting old ground can help you honor it, but if you stay there too long you get stuck. Healing has to be a place you pass through, not a home. I stood there reminding myself: the goal is to be free, not held fast to a ship already sailed (and sunk).

Which is why I laughed at myself walking out with a copy of Space Opera in hand. I had just stood over pen-testing sheets covered with the name I wished I could forget. I’d joked to myself about writing my own musical on these Capitol Hill streets, and what does the universe serve me? A cosmic rock show in paperback. Drama dressed as comedy. The kind of punchline you can only laugh at, because that is how the story keeps moving.

Going back in time is never easy. Hopefully it is worth it. Hopefully it gets you closer to being whole. But the point is to keep moving forward, guitar feedback in your ears, rain on your coat, magic still humming in the streets.

For my third and final trick in Capitol Hill, I decided to perform a magic routine I have carried since childhood: manifesting. Not rabbits from hats, but certain items conjured from thrift stores, vintage markets, or the side of the road if needed. This time it was Breakaway Thrift, a cavern of racks and basements, a reliquary of all things forgotten and waiting to be claimed again.

I went in with one thing in mind: an army green parka, the kind everyone wore in the 2010s. I had donated mine in 2017, thinking the trend was gone. I had read it was back, though for many of us it never left. It was part of the uniform.

The deeper I walked, the heavier nostalgia became. These places are dangerous for me, the way the past comes rushing back in smells and symbols. There was the sharp sweetness of Gain, the sticky fog of Bath & Body Works sprays, a hint of Huggies and Tide. On the racks, the artifacts of our little brains. Sparkly “grandma shirts” with metallic threads. The WWF panda shirt that promised we could save the planet. A Jurassic Park lunchbox, from a time when our minds were packed with daydreams of dinosaurs and unicorns.

Everything we once thought made us cool, right there in faded cotton.

I found my parka. A Levi’s, perfectly preserved, like it had been waiting since 2011 for me to wise up and come back. Sorry I took so long.

Then I hit the basement: rows of denim, a graveyard of early 2000s mistakes. True Religions, Sevens, Rock & Republics, every brand that promised confidence but delivered suffocation. We all squeezed into them anyway, buttoning jeans and pretending we were Britney Spears.

“Ya know what would make my whole Universe?” I said in my head, pulling out a pair of embroridered JNCO’S “The True Religions I had in 2006.”

So imagine my face when I turned the corner and there they were. Eye level, end of the rack, in my size. The universe had a sense of humor. I picked them up.

They were heavy jeans, we wore heavy denim in a time when “weightlessness” ruled. An ironic time. I tried them on, tapping into an ancient ceremony, the bend and squat of shrink to fit denim. The ceremony worked. The wear on the bottom cuff (never hemmed) was to my exact length, I could cry. How fancy of me to have these again, now….what for?

to prove that magic (traveling) pants do exist!

And then I saw it. A black crewneck with two stripes on the same sleeve, one mustard yellow, one red. My heart skipped. If Mickey Mouse was on the front, I knew exactly what it was. And he was. My mother’s shirt. The one she wore through my entire earlychildhood. I had proof of it in Polaroids on Christmas mornings, it hit me with a blast through 30 years.

Time bent. In one rack of clothes, I was myself before I was a mom, reaching for things I thought I had lost.

And then i was reminded of my own mom, smiling in a shirt I never expected to find again. Going backward is messy. It uncovers what you tried to leave behind, but sometimes it delivers the proof that magic is real….now AND then.

(time travel is real on Capital Hill, come play!)

Move Forth

Capitol Hill had already swallowed the hours. By the time I reached the Space Needle, I was late. Maybe that was fitting.

(The white rabbit continues on. )

Built for the 1962 World’s Fair, it rose as a rocket-shaped promise of tomorrow. A Jetsons fantasy sketched on a napkin, designed for a streamlined future where elegance was reserved for the few who could afford the view.

But the future we inherited is not so polished. Instead of sequined diners twirling martinis above the city, I found timed tickets, endless lines, elevators stuffed full. A feedlot dressed in steel and glass. Tourists circled the deck in slow orbit, holding up phones for the same picture, each of us allotted our ration of skyline.

The view was tall, yes. Rainier steady in the distance, the bay catching light. Yet the sparkle was thinner than I imagined. I snapped my picture, shuffled on, and wondered what kind of progress this was supposed to be. Maybe the Needle is not a promise anymore, but a reminder. The future cannot belong to an elite few at the top of the tower. It has to work for the many crowded into the elevator.

I missed MoPOP and Chihuly next door. Capitol Hill’s pull had cost me those hours. Still, the Needle left its mark. Progress is messy. Not always glamorous, rarely fair, often cramped. But it asks you to keep looking up and to imagine a future built wide enough for all of us.

The back room at Shiro’s steadied me after the rush of the Needle. This isn’t just any restaurant. Shiro’s is one of Seattle’s most respected sushi counters, founded by Shiro Kashiba, the man who brought Edo-style sushi to the city after training under Jiro Ono in Tokyo. It is a place known for discipline and craft, where each cut of fish has history behind it. Eight courses, placed with precision, each one a gift to slow down and notice.

The salmon came midway. Rich, fulfilling, the taste I wanted above all. The richness of salmon is the richness I want from life. I could have eaten it course after course and never tired of it. In my heart, oysters and salmon will always be my true menu. Raw, direct, a voice from the sea itself.

The shrimp arrived fried with its head on. I let it be, choosing instead what felt true to me. Then came the sea urchin. Creamy and fresh, reminding me of otters cracking them open, eating enough but not all, keeping the kelp in balance. That thought stayed with me. Food is not only about taste but about where it comes from, how it connects, what it leaves behind.

The sake slipped away with each plate. My family beside me, steady and present. Gratitude filled me as I thought of being twenty, eating McDonald’s dollar menu in a parked car, not knowing how far I would come. Now I sat here, tasting work done with care, learning not only what I crave but how I want to live.

You do not have to love every course life serves you, but you taste it to know. This meal reminded me of that. I can honor every dish while still knowing my own hunger. I crave raw. I crave depth. I crave food that connects me to the sea, that holds balance, that speaks of who I am becoming.

Which I fear is some sort of sea monster.

The pier hummed thick with people, each of us chasing one more night of summer. It was the last day of August, and the Seattle Great Wheel spun slow over Elliott Bay, its cabins glowing like lanterns against the dusk. The last ride, the last view, before the trip gave way to routine again.

We finished our drinks in line and boarded. The gondola rose, the city slipping beneath us. To the west, the Olympics burned in a long, heavy sunset, orange fading into violet. Everyone stared a little harder, as if we could hold the light in our eyes.

Because we knew what came next. The rain. Already on the air, months of it waiting to fall. That is the PNW way. You soak up every last sunset, every last trip, every last ride before it begins.

Below us, the green and white ferries cut across the sound. I wondered if the life I want waits past their routes, on some remote shore where the tide delivers what I crave. Or if it is still back in Oregon, where my roots are buried deep.

When the ride ended they offered photos. My Wild Oregon kid rawred like a dinosaur, my husband fired magic from his hands, and I stuck out my tongue with bunny ears cocked behind them both. Proof that the ride of life is best survived silly.

The wheel lifted, the wheel dropped, and it turned again. Perspective gained from every angle. Roots are strong. But what if I want wings?

Seattle became a portal. Time folded in on itself like a spiral, carrying me through youth, memory, and the present. The Pisces lunar eclipse was a mirror, asking me to honor what did and did not work out, to hold reverence for the failures that shaped me and the adventures that carried me here.

At Oddfellows, over coffee and chatter, I felt the hum of all the lives I might have lived. In thrift shops, I searched racks for echoes of myself, small fragments I once wore, tiny relics of other timelines. On the pier, the salt air and cry of gulls pressed against me while porpoises surfaced like messengers from another dimension. From cheeseburgers to eight courses, I saw how the ordinary and the extraordinary belong to the same journey.

Even the cramped Space Needle carried meaning, a capsule of vision where the past’s dreams and the future’s reach converged. These places became coordinates in a quantum map. Each step was a leap across timelines. Each choice, each glance back, a reminder that youth may be fleeting but experience spirals outward, gaining depth.

Capitol Hill whispered Hendrix: Are you experienced? The answer is yes, though not as I once thought. I did not direct the shows or stand on the stage, but I am grateful. My family, my adventures, my willingness to return and to move forward are my spotLIGHT. I am willing to gather the pieces of myself I left scattered across this city, but I cannot remain here.

The spiral calls me to rise. To step back into the future, not just to live but to lead. To shape what comes next. This is what it means to time travel with intention.