Northwestern Exposure

The Seattle area is beautiful. Absolutely gorgeous. But any of you who have ever been up there before already know this. I am now back home, and I must say that I am not especially fond of the warmer weather, the trees that display only one color of leaves in the fall, the dearth of rainstorms, or the asphalt and buildings that engulf my home. It rained nearly one hundred percent of the time I was up north, and I loved every minute of it. I told my friend Steve that I need to buy a little pennant that says “RAIN” on it in big campus-style letters so I can cheer for it as it pelts down from the sky. Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaayy RAIN! I even got to experience a little hail. Wonderful.

S & P (they sound like a gas station, don’t they?) live in an amazing place. Issaquah is much smaller, population-wise (well, most likely geographically as well) than Seattle. Therefore it has a lot more nature gallumphing its big puppy-dog self all through town. Trees and streams and bazillions of plants popping up everywhere. Even the light posts have overflowing baskets of flowers hanging from them. S & P’s apartment building is set back and down the hill from the main street (not that it’s a busy one) so you really don’t feel like you're in the city at all when you are inside their apartment. It’s more like summer camp. You can see no other buildings, just a steep hill facing them, and their back wall, with its sliding glass doors and balcony, overlooks a very small patch of lawn, teeming woods, and the beautiful Issaquah Creek. You can take a walk from their place along the creek and then further down the hill toward town.

On Sunday, Monica came up to visit, and we all traipsed down the path to look for fish, since it is spawning season for the salmon. We saw about a half dozen in the shallow water downstream of the small dam, their fins breaking the water and making little wakes. One salmon even tried to leap up the fish ladder while we were there, but it didn’t make it. It made it up one “step” and then got washed back down again. We kept walking down til we got to the fish hatchery that is just downstream. Thousands of salmon are diverted each year into the hatchery so that the eggs and young fry can be protected from predators until they are old enough to be released into the wild. The fish’s numbers are still really struggling and they need some extra assistance from humans (we're the reason they're struggling in the first place!). We spent a lot of time watching the salmon leaping and splashing their way up the ladders in the hatchery. It was thrilling. They had built numerous windows into the concrete structure (photo above) and you can stick your nose right up to where the fish are milling around and jumping and thrashing and slapping their tails. It’s quite spectacular. Actually, the most spectacular sight was the stream itself where hundreds of fish had queued up, trying to get upstream when the hatchery’s gate was closed. A barrier has been built across the stream adjacent to the hatchery to prevent fish from bypassing it, so when the gate is closed, the fish have nowhere to go. But they keep trying! Check out the SalmonCam that shows the barrier across Issaquah Creek.

At one point, the stream was so full of salmon it was more fish than water. Silvery fish bodies, all oriented upstream and swaying gracefully as the water washed over them, formed a nearly solid mass in the creek bed. Many had to struggle and thrash around to get over the really shallow parts. All waiting, all patiently biding their time until they got their chance to leap at the barrier holding them back. And the leaping display was incredible! Pam and I actually both felt a little upset after a while, watching so many of the fish futilely propel themselves out of the water again and again. We placated ourselves with the hope that fish don’t feel frustration, but they were still probably pretty tired out.

During my trip, we also went into the city to watch a really amazing concert--The National--at a great venue called the Showbox. I have decided that I like the band rather a lot. The lead singer’s voice is deep and expressive and wonderful. This is their myspace page, where you can hear more of their music than on the previous webpage. It's actually pretty un-obnoxious as far as myspace pages go.

I also got to go on a short hike in the rainforest on the lower slopes of Mt. Rainier. It was raining prodigiously, as is only fitting. The trees were covered with so much moss in some places that they looked like they were melting. There was water everywhere, falling from the sky, shining and dripping from the leaves, running along the trail, running under the trail; it was glorious. The trail on the main short loop from the road was actually a built-up path, but it looked totally natural. The path was built out of large, chunky sections of wood and then covered with soil and gravel. Moss and other vegetation has grown all over everything, but occasionally you see glimpses of shiny wood or the water passing right under your feet. Without the raised path you would be slogging your way through a mini-swamp. Everything man-made along our short hike had been so taken over by the water and the vegetation, so darkened into shades of glistening brown and green and covered with fuzzy drapings of moss, that the bridges and railings look like they just grew there.

I apologize profusely that I have no photographic evidence of any of this; I didn’t bring my camera and S & P’s batteries were not working in theirs.

My friend Monica lives in a yurt. It’s beautiful inside; lots of natural light and a high, pitched ceiling. I actually do have a photo of this, caught split seconds before the camera gave up for good.Here is the lovely and talented M singing us a song she wrote recently. I believe I forgot to mention that Monica has one of the most astoundingly beautiful voices I have ever heard. And she lives in a yurt. I’m surprised that she’s only got four or so young men pining for her at the moment--who could resist a charming, musically gifted woman who lives in a yurt? Incidentally, she also lives in the town where they filmed the TV series “Northern Exposure” so you may already know what it looks like. It’s very quaint; I know that’s an overused real-estate term, but it fits. I loved the tiny-town feel of it without the tiny-mindedness that so often seems to accompany it. If I ever moved up there, something that has been increasingly on my mind, it would probably be to this town or somewhere in the vicinity. It is a lot drier there than Seattle and Issaquah, due to the intervening mountains in between, and that could bode much better for my health. This is all pure speculation at this point, at any rate, so don’t worry about me packing up next week.

The rest of my trip was a happy blur of driving in the rain, drinking good beer in local brewpubs, talking to friendly strangers, walking by the creek, eating yummy homemade food, drinking lots of hot tea, and playing with two amazingly cute felines. And best of all, soaking in all the green luscious nature that crowded around from every direction; the omnipresent water; the sky filling up with multicolored, riotous clouds; the falling leaves raining down like a fairy tale; the kind of place that I feel most at home.