Slices of the Good Life

A picture-window view of a passing submarine, a rising mountain, a rippling lake or inlet--these, and more, are the fringe benefits enjoyed by many who reside around Puget Sound. Three examples of varied lifestyles:

The Islanders. Each weekday morning when Attorney Charles Moriarty, 50, a former state senator, boards the 7:10 ferry for a 35-minute commute to a glass-and-steel skyscraper in Seattle, he leaves behind what his wife Marion calls "a paradise"--Restoration Point on Puget Sound's Bainbridge Island. Founded in 1890 as a summer retreat for a wealthy group of Ivy League sailing buffs from the East, the point is now the duchy of their descendants, whose 16 stately homes, gardens, tennis courts and nine-hole golf course nestle among towering cedars and firs. Seattlites have nicknamed this 120-acre enclave the "Country Club."

"This is a wonderful place to raise children," says Marion Moriarty, whose grandfather built the family's seven-bedroom English-style country house 70 years ago on a stretch of land just 100 ft. from the sea. Unimpressed by now with the daily show of aircraft carriers and nuclear subs cruising by the island, the four Moriarty kids prefer exploring secret trails in local forest preserves, watching the bald eagles or scouring nearby waters for killer whales and schools of frolicking dolphins.

Moriarty's prime concern is overpopulation. Technicians and their families from the new Trident submarine base at nearby Bangor are jamming the ferries to Seattle. But he takes comfort by gazing through his windows at the city's growing skyline and concluding: "Thank God we are not living in Seattle."

The City Artists. Many would live nowhere but in Seattle. "There are places not far from here where you feel you are the very first person to visit," says Dick Wrangle, 40, an Oklahoman who came to Washington ten years ago as a Methodist minister. Now he and his wife Cheryl are wood sculptors and cabinetmakers who earn a living selling their handmade furniture. The Wrangles would never move from their weathered cedar house in a former black slum in central Seattle. Says Dick: "The environment here fits my work."

They do not have to wander far for inspiration. From their old wooden porch, the couple can see Lake Washington through the trees; their garden borders on the large Leschi Park, which is only a five-minute drive from downtown. Often the Wrangles go hiking in the nearby Cascades, and Dick roams the lake shore watching daily the mallards and fishermen.

Says Cheryl: "I'm really pleased to live among people who are so involved with preserving what they have." But the main thing the Wrangles miss in their adopted city is intellectual curiosity and "vibrant intensity" among neighbors. "People don't talk ideas," remarks Dick. "This place is a touchstone for the primeval, not a place to discover people. This is a place to come to discover yourself."

The Modern Mountain Man. "On clear days, Mount Rainier seems to rise in our front yard," boasts Phyllis Shreve, who lives with her husband Jerry and son Terry in a white frame house in the bucolic town of Kent, 16 miles south of Seattle. Jerry Shreve, 40, a native Kansan, came to Seattle at 18 to work for Boeing, where he is now a quality-control inspector. Off the job, his passions are growing roses, fishing (he ties his own flies), hunting elk and deer with a 52-lb. longbow or old-fashioned muzzle-loader.

Shreve is something of a modern mountain man, self-reliant and happiest tramping through the wilderness--"doing an honest day's scouting." As a director of a group of the state's local sports clubs, he works to promote environmental legislation. He marvels, "When you look at a virgin forest after it rains, water runs through the streams clear as gin." Adds Shreve: "I hope and pray my son can enjoy the outdoors the way I have and live as a free person. This may be one of the last places he might do that."

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