If we trace them back, we find that ideas of Cascadian secession go back to around the time Cascadia was defined as a bioregion by McCloskey. The clear message, literally bottled up and presented as a hipster product, was that Cascadia could be its own country. Its label featured a map of Cascadia floating alone, superimposed over the Cascadian flag. As expected, the beer was organic, sustainable and handcrafted. In 2009, Hopworks beer released Secession Cascadian Dark Ale. Yet this liberal spirit veils the Cascadia brand’s nationalistic undertones. The Cascadian flag is flown at gay pride parades, Occupy protests, and by Portland Timbers soccer fans. Responsibly sourced coffee roasters and craft beers “brewed on site” incorporate Cascadia’s name, its flag’s insignia, and its devotion to all things locally sourced. Today, Cascadian iconography is deeply engrained in the Pacific Northwest’s liberal, hipster culture. The clear message of Secession Cascadian Dark Ale, literally bottled up and presented as a hipster product, was that Cascadia could be its own country. Then, in the 1970s, David McCloskey, an ecological studies professor at Seattle University, defined Cascadia in terms of the bioregion and Cascadia began to morph from simply being a geographical area to representing a socioeconomic and cultural movement, one that believes landscape should inform lifestyle and political thought. Gary Snyder, the poet and essayist, describes the waters of Puget Sound as “salmon-rich” and the forests as “a marvelous expression of wild.” Although writers often refer to Cascadia as a utopia and a source of harmony, Joel Garreau, a former Washington Post reporter and editor, once observed on a visit to Oregon that “Paradise, as it turns out, smells like bee glue.” Named for its cascading waterfalls, Cascadia is considered a heaven of fresh water, rushing rivers, and dense foliage. Some months prior, Donovan had purchased several acres of land to “serve as the spiritual and cultural home in the Cascadia bioregion.” Public outrage ensued and for weeks irate Oregonians, including my mother, demanded the kid face stiff consequences.Īmong the people posting lamentations on social media was Jack Donovan, the alt-right leader of The Wolves of Vinland’s Cascadia chapter. Forty-eight thousand acres of Cascadia burned in a fire that now has its own Wikipedia page. In September, while I was visiting my family in Oregon, a fifteen year old from Vancouver recklessly threw fireworks into the Eagle Creek Canyon along the Columbia River Gorge.

It’s no surprise that the Pacific Northwest produced a man like Baretich who’s proud of his birthplace and enraged over threats to the land. Then he overlaid these stripes with a Doug fir to symbolize resilience against “catastrophic change,” reaffirming the region’s long-standing fear of contamination and dislike of interlopers.

He designed it with three horizontal stripes of blue, white, and green for the colors of nature, expressing the conviction among Oregonians that Cascadia is perfect in its natural state. In 1995, a Portlander named Alexander Baretich was in Eastern Europe studying nationalism when he conceived a flag for Cascadia, an area encompassing the Pacific Northwest and sometimes beyond, depending on who you ask.

Cascadea flag