Are you surprised? You shouldn’t be.

Seeing Coos Bay listed among National Geographic’s 50 best “adventure” towns shouldn’t have caught anyone off guard. The Bay Area is a fantastic place. Recognition by outsiders is inevitable.

Expect more of it.

If you’ve lived in the Bay Area all your life, you probably see the area through the grimy lens of history. You see the once-bustling waterfront, now largely silent. You see too many empty storefronts in downtown Coos Bay and North Bend.

You see families scraping to get by. You know the disappointment of missed opportunities — major employers that looked but didn’t land, development plans that came to nothing.

But try seeing the area through a stranger’s eyes. Pretend you’re an outsider — perhaps a visiting magazine writer, scouting America’s next hot spots.

On those windblown docks, you see an increasingly rare commodity: waterside property available for visionary development. In those sparse downtowns, you see tree-shaded, pedestrian-friendly streets, and commercial buildings poised for quaint-chic renewal.

The stranger focuses on the South Coast’s obvious assets. Ocean, of course. Proximity to clean, uncrowded beaches. Dunes to ride, waves to surf, forests to explore. A temperate climate, neither blistering nor blizzard-bitten. A remarkable number of sunny days, accented by episodes of mist and bluster.

Looking at the Bay Area, National Geographic paid no attention to past disappointments, because they have no bearing on the future. Instead, the magazine identified a community on the cusp — a great undiscovered locale for vacationing, for raising a family, and possibly for relocating a business.

Incidentally, folks in North Bend and Charleston shouldn’t feel slighted because National Geographic didn’t mention their cities by name. To a national magazine, “Coos Bay” is a handy shorthand for the whole Bay Area. What matters is that National Geographic saw the area’s ripening potential — too often overlooked by some long-time residents.

Fifty years ago, Malibu wasn’t much. Martha’s Vineyard once was just a sleepy waterside burg. Only 30 years ago, most parts of Bend had no sewers. But America is rapidly running out of great undiscovered locales.

If the Bay Area lacks anything, it lacks faith in its own future. Too many people around here wear pessimism like a rain poncho. Hunkered under oilcloth, they may not see the opportunities.

Recognition from National Geographic will bring us some attention from the magazine’s readers, and it might bring us a tourist or two. More importantly, it reminds us how blessed we are to live where we do. Seeing our community through fresh eyes affirms the Bay Area’s underappreciated   possibilities.