Because I’m a visitor here, the mountains still surprise me. They appear mirage-like on the horizon, a gift after a hard climb or a long walk.
So it was yesterday with Mount Rainier, shimmering peacefully above Lake Washington in Seward Park. I turned my head … and there it was.
It wasn’t the clearest day or the bluest sky. But the mountain showed itself anyway.
In the beginning was the Word, and the word was a Fort,
a peninsula, open to the sea.
Pilgrims seeking vistas and space
scale battlements, walk gunnery lines,
marvel at the madrona, her red skins shining.
We climb steps for inlet and strait,
whitecaps, a lighthouse on the point.
Wandering trails.
Reading verses in the vault.
Looking west to spy a mountain range
we didn’t know was there.
In a place designed for war
we find peace.
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.
It’s part of the Charleston allure, the way so many single family homes in the historic district sit sideways on their lots, presenting to passerby not their ample fronts but their narrower sides.
It wasn’t for tax purposes, but for privacy and tranquility that the airy old manses on Tradd or Legare turned their shoulders to the world.
I didn’t enter one of these homes, but I can imagine the cool breezes that would flow from the portico ceiling fans. There would be rocking chairs, of course, and tall glasses of iced tea, beaded with moisture.
To enter you’d step through a portal that led from street to porch. A false door? Perhaps, but it provided an extra layer of protection between inside and out.
A walking tour of Charleston yesterday revealed many interesting facts, two of which are related, I think. This southern city had the nation’s earliest and most successful preservation laws — and it has now surpassed Las Vegas in the number of weddings per year.
That last one is a dubious distinction, but it indicates that people want to be here, that there’s a charm and scale about the place that boosts tourism and the bottom line.
Old buildings, narrow alleyways, hidden courtyards — these create a sense of place that’s often lacking in this country. If only more of our cities had preserved their pasts, instead of bulldozing them.
(The Powder Magazine is South Carolina’s oldest government building, completed in 1713. The Colonial Dames of America saved it from demolition in 1902.)
In 2015 it was Big Sky, Montana. In 2016, Chicago, followed by Huston in 2017 and St. Louis the year after that. And then we ran out of young’uns getting married, or at least ones having big weddings.
This weekend, we made up for lost time. Savannah obliged by rolling out a pair of warm days and sultry evenings, perfect for strolling the brick-paved walks of this gracious southern city.
I’m here to see people not scenery, but the place has wowed me just the same.
Yesterday I found the trail I was looking for. It was tucked away in a corner of the county that adjoins the Fairfax County Parkway and its monolithic soundproof walls.
The path featured several fair-weather stream crossings, but nothing that could scoot below or hang above all that parkway asphalt, as impassable as a raging river.
There was a tunnel under a lesser road, though, a dark enclosure that paralleled a stream. I took that — despite the warning.
Sometimes you have to walk on the wild side. Even in the suburbs.
I’m going to stay with The Power Broker for this post, too. I realize that most of my comments about the book have been about its weight. But 923 pages into it I can say at least a few words about its content.
The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York is an in-depth portrayal of New York City’s traffic and building czar, Robert Moses, who held sway over the Big Apple for more than three decades, crucial years during which much of the city’s modern infrastructure was shaped.
Moses built parks and dams, bridges and highways. He moved rivers and shorelines, condemned homes and destroyed neighborhoods. He shaped not just New York but all the cities of this country, because New York was held up as a model. And in it, public transportation took a back seat to the automobile. That there was a connection between this deficit and the highways that were clogged with traffic almost immediately after opening was just beginning to be understood in the 1940s and 50s.
The book is also a study of power, how it seduces and changes a person and, by extension, the places over which that person has control. In this meticulously researched account of Moses, author Robert Caro shows young reporters and writers how to tell a big story, one so big that for years it wasn’t understood, let alone written.
It’s for that reason that the book was assigned as summer reading before I entered a graduate journalism program years ago. I bought it then, a used copy for $7.50, but am only now getting around to reading it. The book has been worth the wait — as well as the weight.
(Entrance to the Queens Midtown Tunnel, which Moses tried to block. He disliked tunnels.)
I’m sitting in a window seat overlooking Oban Harbor, trying to imagine living in the midst of such beauty. Would you stop noticing it? Would it become just some pretty wallpaper, something you glanced at from time to time while going about your everyday life?
The two charming rooms in this B&B make me think otherwise. The lady of the house showed us in, laid the key on the low coffee table in front of the window, stood with me just a minute explaining how things work, lingered as if to say, this is something special.
Because it is, and you feel it the moment you walk in. The window frames a view of shining water, docked fishing boats, and many-chimneyed houses made of no-nonsense stone. But it’s a view that depends on the movement of clouds and the angle of the sun, or whether a small ferry or a large one is moving across the waves. It’s a view that’s always changing, and always lovely.
