I'm Italy Mone and this is the Slowdown.

My father, stepmother and little brother all moved to Stanwood, Washington when I was 15

years old.

I stayed in Sonoma, California with my mom and stepdad.

I went to the University of Washington for my undergraduate degree and I learned the

language and landscape of rain.

I have always loved the Northwest and I love that my little brother still lives in Seattle.

It feels like a second home.

After my stepmother died in 2010, my brother was living at college in Olympia and my dad

eventually sold the house and moved to California.

Still, the Northwest holds so many feelings of magic and nostalgia for me.

In 2018, I read at the Skagit Valley Poetry Festival.

I rented a car and before I drove to the festival, I drove by the old house.

I drove to the entrance to the Piltchek tree farm where we used to hike as a family.

I stood still in the woods and everything came flooding back to me.

It's wild how a place can hold a feeling or a strong memory in such an intense way that

it activates every sense in the body.

I drove out to La Conor after that, the town where the Poetry Festival was taking place

and the drive reminded me so much of spending summers and holidays there.

I remembered stopping for ice cream and provisions at the Snowgoose, a country market on the

side of Fur Island Road in Mount Vernon.

Everything held some blurry teenage memory and it felt like everything was happening all

...