This summer has been a difficult one for me personally. In the past month, both my mother and my father passed away. I will miss them immensely, and will be remembering their lives among family and friends, but here, on these pages, I’d like to honor them with a collection of images showcasing the place on Earth they loved and called home: Washington. When I was young, we lived on the east side of the state, on a big farm outside Spokane. We spent countless hours driving the highways and back roads connecting the farms to the towns and the city. Our family split up, and over time, some of us moved west to Bellingham, Longview, and Seattle. These were the green lands I dreamed of as a boy, and we spent years exploring the mountains, shorelines, rain forests, and cities up and down the coast. These are for you, Mom, and for you, Dad.

An earlier version of this photo essay misidentified the location of one of the photos. The caption has been corrected.