One thing new was the mountains. The first time he saw real mountains was the summer after college, during the opening stretch of the first west coast tour with the Kissers. He fell asleep in the back seat of the van after Fargo and when he woke the next afternoon they were halfway through Montana, and a solid wall of snowcapped mountains framed the horizon far off to one side of the interstate. He kept staring.

Now, he sees mountains every time the sky is clear, from a number of vantage points around Seattle, the Cascades off to one side, the Olympics off to the other. Standing guard over the city.