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En Peu de Francais

En Peu de Francais

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With a new French-speaking grandson, I find myself dredging up phrases from ancient history — a high school class in French I. Today’s is “il fait du vent” … it’s windy.

But how much more trippingly does “Il fait du vent” fall off the tongue? Pretty trippingly, I’d say. 

Apparently, I could also phrase it as “Il y a du vent,” but I’ll stick with what I learned years ago. Which is way too little to converse with a bright 11-year-old.  

Once again, I’m struck by the paucity of foreign language study in the U.S. — or at least my language study!

(I met these children on a trip to Benin in 2015.) 

Midway Airport, 10 p.m.

Midway Airport, 10 p.m.

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Today’s forecast, in fact the forecast through mid-week, is for “mild and murky” weather. Somehow, that suits. After being caught up in the great Southwest Airlines cancellation weekend and arriving home at almost 2 a.m. as a result, I could use some calm and cloudy days to stay home, do laundry and recuperate. 

While I was walking around Chicago’s Midway Airport last evening, I thought about how airplanes and hubs have changed the way we think about travel. It’s a circular experience rather than a linear one — full of hubs and spokes, more tedious than miraculous. 

Flying west, I was whisked from coast to coast in less than five hours. Coming home, not so lucky. 

First Hill

First Hill

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Seattle is a city of neighborhoods, and I’m getting to know them. Today we toured the Central District (in hard hats, no less!), then lunched in Capitol Hill. Several mornings I’ve hiked along the waterfront. I also visited Green Lake and Woodland Park. 

But I’ve spent most of my time in Seattle’s first neighborhood, First Hill, also called Pill Hill because of the hospitals here. 

I’ve trudged up steep grades and sidled through shortcuts. I’ve spotted fewer tents under I-5 but heard more sirens heading up to Harborview. 

It’s an urban neighborhood with all that implies, but there’s a gentility beneath the grime. Here are leafy lanes and named apartments buildings, an old German deli on Madison and a cathedral garden behind St. James.

I leave today with the smell of the city in my pores and the pitch of the hills in my calves. And I leave … from First Hill.

Marine Layer

Marine Layer

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Sometimes it seems as if you could will away the marine layer that cloaks this city in the morning, that by walking up and down the hills, through parks and intersections, past coffee shops and markets you could build up enough heat to part the clouds and let the sun shine through.

That’s the way it felt this morning, as I ambled down Pike to Alaskan Way, and headed north … toward Alaska.

I didn’t get that far, of course. Only to Myrtle Edwards Park. But by the time I hiked back up the hill to the hotel, the sun was shining. 

Vistas

Vistas

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Seattle is a city of vistas: heading west to the bay and the sound, islands on the horizon, ferries and tug boats and freighters plying the deep, unfathomable blue. 

Or looking east, to the lake and Capitol Hill, the muted colors of sky and clouds, small sailboats on the water and a cathedral on the summit. 

Or the most iconic of Seattle vistas, the one with the Space Needle, of course.
March of Time

March of Time

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One of the things I like about travel is that you move through time as well as space. You recover lost springs and leap ahead to crisp autumns. 

On Monday I strolled through the Columbia City neighborhood of south Seattle. It was sunny and cool, and I snapped a photo of a gnarled and mossy tree with crimson leaves. 

My head was still spinning from the flight across the country — an unusual tail wind meant we made the trip west in less than five hours — but it was alert enough to register this place, this northern place, as already ahead of us in the march of time. 

Community of the Ether

Community of the Ether

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A spur-of-the-moment trip to Seattle (I can do these things now!) means that I’ll attend class tonight on Zoom rather than in person. While I’ve had plenty of experience with Zoom meetings the past year and a half (haven’t we all?!), I’ve been driving down to Georgetown for the real thing every Tuesday evening. 

While this seemed slightly terrifying at the start — where will I park? will rush-hour traffic make the trip twice as long as it would be otherwise? — those concerns have largely faded. And the joy of being in a classroom again (even if only one other classmate is there with me, which has been the case the last few weeks) has more than compensated for them.

But tonight, we’ll all be on Zoom. We’ll be a class, a community, of the ether — as so many communities are these days. 

(Sunset from the Car Barn Terrace, where I am not whiling away time before class tonight.)

The Power of Scent

The Power of Scent

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Yesterday, on my way back from a walk, I caught a whiff of manure from a passing truck. Turns out, the truck was turning into my neighbors’ driveway where for a couple of hours the lawn was aerated and fertilized.

As a result, I spent the day inhaling whiffs of the barnyard, a scent I associate more with the farm than the suburb. 

It wasn’t unpleasant, not after I got used to it. In fact, it made me think of afternoons spent interviewing farmers in Cambodia or Malawi or other places around the world, places where roosters crowed and pigs wallowed and shy children peeked at me from behind the leaves of a banana tree.

I miss those trips, the golden sunrises, the purple twilights, but I’m grateful that yesterday, for a few hours, a whiff of the barnyard brought them back to me. 

The Shore

The Shore

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I’m home now, looking out the window of my office, staring at the trees that aren’t palms, the greenery that’s not tropical. 

Yesterday I took a walk along familiar streets, nodding at neighbors, noting the changes even a week can bring, the house that’s up for sale, the fall clematis about to bloom. There was much rain while I was gone. Not enough to rescue the parched ferns but enough to green the grass that clogs the mower. 

It’s lovely, it’s my home. But I miss the big skies above the palms, the limitless white sand, the confab of shore birds that hung out at a tidal flat near where I would go. I see in my mind’s eye the small crescent beach only reachable at low tide and the alternating blues and greens of the Gulf water, lighter above the sand bar. 

What a magical place! How grateful I am to have gone there again!

Summer Storm

Summer Storm

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One of the things I like about going to the beach is, strangely enough, the rain. Not  the steady, all-day showers but the late-afternoon thunderstorm. 

In this subtropical climate you’re pretty much guaranteed to have two or three (or more) summer days a week with skies darkening after 3 or 4 p.m., the uptick of stickiness in already-humid air, the low rumble of thunder and then, with a release that matches the heat of the day, a lovely, brief torrent.

There was a downpour like that yesterday, a fitting way to say (sigh!) … goodbye to the beach.