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December dawns gray and cold. A new month. I began the last one in an old house by the sea. I begin this one in the two-story suburban home I’ve lived in for decades. A garbage truck trundles by as I write. It’s the third garbage truck I’ve heard this morning.
Ah, the suburbs! The beauty and the bane of them. I love the trees and solitude. I deplore the sameness and isolation.
But that’s an old story. The new story is this: Here I am.
I make my way down the hill from my house at the foot of Artillery Hill in Fort Worden, stroll along the brow, listen to the surf surging below.
From there it’s up one hill and then another. But at the top of that second hill, huffing and puffing, I see all of Admiralty Inlet spread out before me.
I snap photos. And in fact, I snapped plenty of them. But they never did it justice, never captured the openness and the light.
No matter — it’s in my mind now, and in my bones and sinews, too.
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.
