It's really too bad you cannot take a photo of scents, because the strongest sense I have been exercizing the past couple of days has been through the nose. Seattle smells strongly of flowers, everywhere you turn. And while I love how jasmine and honeysuckle perfumes the street I live on, Seattle's flowers are an incredible variety of sweetness -- like wandering through a vaporised herbal tea. And after just one day in Seattle, we took a ferry and landed on the Olympic peninsula, which is not only stunning, at times unbelieveable, to see, but also home to a clear air filled with the fresh aroma of coniferous trees.
I think we've been really lucky with the weather, too. The days have been warm and sunny, bright and clear, so you can see gigantic snow-capped mountains on the horizon while you comb the beach for rocks. We've seen lots of deer (some as close as several feet away), butterflies, chipmunks, salmonberries, spittlebugs, a rabbit, seagulls, and little fish swimming in crystal clear waters. The ancient Hoh rainforest was a mesmerizing twisting, draping, and hanging of deep yellows, emerald greens, light golds, and pale oranges against the blue sky. We wandered a trail along the bluffs leading to Dungeoness Spit and ate a picnic lunch. Just as we were leaving the beach, we looked up and could not believe that we were seeing a magnificent bald eagle perched in the branches of a pine. Let's call it part of the national narrative that H. and I are trying piece together whenever we travel during the July 4th weekend.
Right now, we're on-line at a little cafe in Port Townsend, where I'm eating toast and drinking mint tea. We arrived in time yesterday evening to watch some fiddle-players at the Centrum in Fort Worden state park, which looks like this really interesting former-military base turned arts complex slash college campus. We returned to the park for fireworks last night (the temperature drops a bit in the evening, and the strong winds brings a little chill to the air, so folks were wrapped in blankets) and watched them burst over the water. We're staying in a hotel that used to be a brothel, where the different rooms are given women's names. It's got a claw-footed tub!
Tomorrow we're headed north to Bellingham to visit some relatives of H, then back to Seattle for a couple of days. The most important thing to do today is nothing, which I, for one, cannot wait to get to.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
Hey, Chuck...glad you're enjoying the Pacific NW. Bellingham, what can I say, my old stomping ground, two k's from Surrey, yet a thousand miles away from pull-tabs and buying booze at corner convenience stores.
You guys rock! We have many eagles here, one of which I've seen tear a duck apart in no time, feathers flying, spectacular. Who needs cable?
I sort of linked you as one of my fav writers and hope you don't mind me snooping in. cheers, calle.
When D and I were in the writing program at University of Washington, they had twice-yearly weekend retreats at Port Townsend, at the old military base on the bluff overlooking the Sound. We experienced the most spectacular sunset of our lives there. Glad you're enjoying it.
And the Hoh rainforest -- I camped there many times. Doesn't the forest look like Dr. Suess backgrounds?
Post a Comment