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Author: Anne Cassidy

Admiralty Inlet

Admiralty Inlet

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I enjoy taking photographs, and I take a lot of them, but I’ve never visited a place that a photo truly captures. A still image can’t communicate the broad sweep of an ocean vista, the tang in the desert air, the way a place speaks to you — or doesn’t. 

Many places speak to me. I’m fickle in that way. Last month I was enraptured by Savannah and Charleston. This month it’s the Pacific Northwest. But in my defense… I do love all these places. Especially when I’m walking through them. 

I strolled through Port Townsend the other day and took in its Victorian/hippie vibe, bought a small packet of tuna salad from one of its overpriced grocery stores, savored the views from Jackson Street overlooking Admiralty Inlet. 

Returning to my little house, I passed homeowners putting their gardens to bed before the rain moved in, the omnipresent grazing deer, and the view you see above. 

I plan to take this walk again soon.

Haunted Chicken Coop

Haunted Chicken Coop

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It wasn’t exactly a haunted walk I took yesterday through uptown Port Townsend. But it was filled with little ghosts and goblins and houses decked out in their Halloween best. 

My favorite was this haunted chicken coop, the hens pecking away nonchalantly behind faux tombstones. They don’t need to make fun of death because, well, they have no idea they’ll experience it one day. 

We humans, of course, are another matter. 

Improbable Home

Improbable Home

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It’s a day of hauntings, of swirled fog and footsteps in the night. But here on the tip of the Olympic peninsula (actually, a map tells me that it’s called the Quimper Peninsula), it’s bright and clear. 

I arrived here yesterday when the sun was streaming in the windows of the house that will be my home for the next two weeks. There were just two hours left of daylight. I had to explore.

There was a road down to the beach and a lighthouse at the end of it. There was a single sailboat moored in the waves. There was Mount Baker and the North Cascades on the horizon. 

I walked until I was hungry, then came back here, to this most improbable home. 

Seattle Sunday

Seattle Sunday

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Today I head up to the residency at Port Townsend, but yesterday was a break between prep and travel. A Seattle Sunday. 

And not just any Sunday, but a crisp, sparkling one, temp in the mid 30s to start. I hoofed it east toward Lake Washington and strolled first down, then up. The water was so clear you could see the rocks at the bottom.  

People were running and strolling and walking their dogs. The sunshine was intoxicating. I don’t expect to see much of it while I’m out here … so I reveled in it, too. 

A Mountain, A Miracle

A Mountain, A Miracle

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Day One of my getaway began with an early wakening and a miraculous flight across the country. 

Do I gush when I say miraculous? Actually, I do not. Because when you grow up on car travel, as I did, on seemingly interminable slogs from Lexington, Kentucky, to Los Angeles, San Francisco or other points west, boarding a jet at 7 and being on the opposite coast before lunch will never cease to amaze me. 

What awaited me on the other side were family and friends, blue skies and fir trees. Here’s Mount Baker from a Columbia City, Seattle, rooftop. It’s the same mountain that illustrates Friday’s post, which I captured from an earlier plane trip. 

It’s become a beacon now on these cross-country flights. When I see it, I know I’m almost there. It always appears sooner than I think. 

Heading West

Heading West

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Tomorrow I’ll board a plane for Washington state, bound for adventure: my first artist’s residency.

It’s a place and a time set apart for creative activity, designed for artists of all types — musicians, dancers, painters, print-makers, photographers, and, oh yes, writers. 

I’ve been keeping a packing list for weeks, mostly mulling over how many books I can take and still lift my suitcase. The answer: not as many as I would like. 

In less than 24 hours, though, I will have made my final choices and be on my way, heading west to a quiet cabin beside the sea. 

(Flying into Washington last May.)

Super Scary!

Super Scary!

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Ghosty has been with us for years, a piece of fabric with a stuffed-newspaper head and inexpertly-drawn eyes. He’s been haunting our lamp post for the better part of two decades, and when I at first couldn’t find him in the basement a week ago, I felt bereft.

Compare him with the current crop of Halloween decorations. The 12-foot-tall Skelly, for instance, a plastic skeleton so popular that Home Depot can’t keep it in stock. Or the gruesome, leering werewolf that rears his ugly head from a woods near me. I wouldn’t want to run into him on a dark night.

It’s all fun and games — unless you’re a child with an overactive imagination. Since I was one of those, I feel for the kiddos who see a masked face so scary that a full year later they can’t forget about it.

It’s super-sized Halloween terror, coming soon (already!) to a suburban lawn near you.

(Top photo: courtesy Home Depot)

Blanker Canvas

Blanker Canvas

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I’ve removed the standing desk from my office, a large black metal contraption that sat atop the scarred apple-green desktop. The standing desk was helpful when I spent more hours sitting. Now I’m free to jump up and down scores of times a day — and I do so, probably more often that I should.

But that’s another matter.

What I wanted to mention today is the geography of my workspace, how the terrain has changed. A vast, flat expanse has emerged now that I’ve removed the two-tiered standing desk. And with it gone, I realized I could shift the desk lamp from the far corner to the exact midpoint of the surface, between the windows, so as not to block the view of trees and sky. 

It’s a blanker canvas. A more open vista. It suits me now. 

(The prism that hangs between the windows makes rainbows on the walls.)

Endless Summer

Endless Summer

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There was a freeze warning last night, and the furnace is humming as I type these words. Time to remember warmer weather. 

I’m thinking of a beach: salt air, gentle surf, an inquisitive egret strolling through the waves, eyeing the bait bucket as he passes a fisherman on the shore.

I’m remembering the way my body feels in the sun, loose and warm and grateful to be alive.

I’m reliving walks under palm trees, fronds clicking in the breeze and the air heavy and full.

As the season turns, the mind can mutiny, can claim for itself an endless summer. 

Parental Equinox

Parental Equinox

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Today is the birthday of our oldest daughter. I realized, as I counted the years, that today also marks a parental equinox of sorts for me: I’ve been a parent as long as I have not. 

What do I see from this perch, from this fine balance? Strangely enough, I see continuity. For me, becoming a mother didn’t mark a revolution of caring but an expansion of it. Parenthood has been a way to give back the love that was given so freely to me by my own parents. It is the completion of a circle. 

I can’t imagine a life without motherhood. I’m grateful beyond measure to have become a parent. But I’ve tried always to live as not-just-a-mother, to honor dear friends who live full lives without children, who are wonderful aunts and uncles (honorary and by blood). I hope this message got through to my daughters; I think it has. 

Most of all today, I’m thinking of the baby with a V-shaped mouth who seldom slept, who sang before she talked, who took us to places we never thought we’d go. She has grown and flourished. She has studied and learned. She has traveled to the other side of the world — the dusty red-dirt roads of the Sahel — and back. She has given us three other wonderful people to love: her husband and children. Because of her and her sisters, our hearts are full. A parental equinox, yes. But if I had to pick one side of the divide to live in always, I know which one I’d choose.

(Three-year-old Suzanne holds her baby sister, Claire.)