The Arcadia Club

Where is Cascadia?

The borders of Cascadia have changed through time, and they remain fluid even in the present day. Taking the Oregon Country as their guide, modern Cascadians have a range of visions, from those that include only the modern states of Washington and Oregon (the so-called “little Cascadia”) right through those that add Alaska, Yukon, British Columbia, Idaho, Western Montana, and Northern California (the so-called “Cascadian Empire”).

Most proposals, though, are centered on the vision advanced by the the Sightline Institute. This version of Cascadia is the Cascadia bioregion, defined by the watersheds of the rivers that flow into the Pacific Ocean through North America’s temperate rainforest zone.

Et Ego In Arcadia Vixi

There were hills which garnished their proud heights with stately trees; humble valleys whose base estate seemed comforted with refreshing of silver rivers; meadows enamelled with all sorts of eye-pleasing flowers; thickets, which, being lined with most pleasant shade, were witnessed so to by the cheerful deposition of many well-tuned birds; each pasture stored with sheep feeding with sober security, while the pretty lambs with bleating oratory craved the dams' comfort; here a shepherd's boy piping as though he should never be old; there a young shepherdess knitting and withal singing, and it seemed that her voice comforted her hands to work and her hands kept time to her voice's music.

As for the houses of the country - for many houses came under their eye - they were all scattered, no two being one by the other, and yet not so far off as that it barred mutual succour: a show, as it were, of an accompanable solitariness and of a civil wildness.

"The New Arcadia" by Sir Philip Sidney, 1580