As I nosed my pickup into a parking space at The Leader offices early on the morning of Oct. 8, the stucco wall with its faded blue and white “Leader Staff” parking signs, felt familiar, yet the scene surreal.

I arrived in Port Townsend nearly 15 years ago, and on a blustery January day, I rolled into the parking lot, much like this day, to begin my first day working under Scott Wilson as a general assignment reporter.  Now, 15 years later, I rolled into the same parking lot to serve as the paper’s managing editor — same stucco, same faded parking signs — but a whole slew of new responsibilities, a new publisher, married, children, and a slightly newer truck. It never occurred to me back then that I would one day sit in the editor’s chair.

I came to Port Townsend new to the paper, but not new to journalism or the peninsula. As a reporter in New Mexico and Colorado, I tackled stories on government finance, land use, environmental issues and took on developers and oil and gas companies as they probed the ground for coalbed methane and sought to expand pipelines in the region. 

And while I had called the southwest home for more than two decades, I grew up in Olympia and spent my childhood fishing West End rivers with my father. Together we cast for winter steelhead, explored the deep shadows of the rainforest and tramped beaches, armed with clam guns, clad in rubber boots and rain slickers. We made summer basecamps at Oak Bay, La Push and along the Bogachiel and Hoh rivers. Over time, and with hours spent with rod and line, we became connected to this place. And although my life would take me far away, it was an easy place to return to. An easy place to reconnect with.

Today, so many years later, I tramp with my own children in the Olympics. We cast to high country cutthroat with rod and fly and pursue their cousins in the salt. We stalk blacktail in autumn twilight, and haul in crab pots from the deep. We gaze around us and breathe deeply of clean air. We savor sweet mountain water and we enjoy the fruits of our own labors and that of our neighbors. Our quality of life is immeasurable, the bounty extraordinary. As a family, we are unbelievably blessed. It’s why we stay. It’s why the connection remains. It’s why we are vested and committed to making this place better, to leaving it better than we found it.

And although time has passed, and my personal and professional stations have changed, my core values haven’t. I remain committed to standards-based journalism: Seek truth and report it. Minimize harm. Act independently. Be accountable and transparent. Speak for the voiceless. Fight for the powerless, and hold those in power accountable. As journalists, we are the fourth estate, and it is our job, as journalists, as parents, as humans, to leave things better than we found them.