In the end it isn’t Cascadia who comes to me at all but her mother Gaia, she whose incandescence alchemizes stone into liquid, birthing a great fiery ring of volatile children. She watches with pride as they shape the landscape of her body through sudden cataclysms and eons-long processes deep within her crusts. Cascadia, Mariana, Tahoma, Krakatoa, Mazama, how they rend the brittle earth, how they sink cities beneath waves and raze them with mudflows! How they shake the very planet when they unleash their full energy! It has taken humanity thousands of years to determine how her children work such miracles and disasters, but Gaia does not mind. There is still much for them to discover about the tectonic mysteries of subduction, collision, and volcanism, still so many scientific revelations awaiting those who best understand and truly respect the awesome might of her geologic offspring. That respect serves mankind well, at least when they are willing to listen to something besides their own greed. And when they are not… well, her children are there to act in Gaia’s honor and remind mortals by whose grace they reside on her creation.