Yesterday morning the fog in the air matched the fog in my brain. It flitted between my ears like so much cotton batting. I walked to the light rail line hoping both fogs would clear, the internal and the external.
I was optimistic, because it was already brightening, and though my breath came out in clouds, the humidity added warmth.
By 2 p.m., the sky was blue, and we’d found a place to grab some lunch. The mind was thinking clearer. And the Seattle fog … was gone.
To live in a city of hills is to know long views and low valleys. It’s to feel that pain in the back of the legs that comes from uphill climbs. It’s to know the slow trudge and the quick downhill.
It’s not always easy, but ease is not always the point.
As I prepare to leave Seattle tomorrow, I will keep many images in my heart, snapshots of a city that Celia has grown to love.
I will remember the city blocks and the flaming maples and Mount Rainier looking down on it all.
It has brought a psalm to mind — timeless, eternal source of strength: “I will lift up mine eyes to the hills, from whence cometh my help.”
It’s where Seattle goes on a sunny day … or at least it felt that way last Sunday. There were lovers and families and dog walkers. The elderly in wheel chairs and walkers. Cameras with tripods, their earnest photographers snapping shots of engaged couples and even a bride.
Kubota Gardens is an oasis of green in the midst of the city. Even a city as green as Seattle, one nestled between water and mountains, needs the relaxation potential of an urban park. Kubota satisfies all the senses: the splash of water, the aroma of autumn leaves — and everywhere, flaming foliage, artful arrangements of flower and leaf and grass.
I did a lot of people watching on Sunday, a lot of strolling and stopping, a lot of deep breathing. It was just the respite I needed before a hectic week.
You can call it a bed and breakfast, an Airbnb or a VRBO (Vacation Rental By Owner), but when you come right down to it, you’re staying in someone else’s house. Someone you didn’t know before and will probably never see again.
But while you’re there (here), you become intimately acquainted with the play of morning light on window blinds, the amount of pressure required to turn the faucet, the location of the bathroom light switch so you can flick it on in the dark.
I’m a private person, one who doesn’t take naturally to early morning conversation with strangers while making a cup of tea … but somehow, this works for me.
It’s calming to stay in a house rather than a hotel. It feels as if I’m part of a community and not just visiting. And indeed I am — just one member of a band of travelers who want to see a place from the inside out.
The Chief Sealth Trail winds its way through southeastern Seattle for almost five miles. Though I’d read about it in my Airbnb welcome note and tried to find it on a map, it was proving elusive to pinpoint — at least in cyberspace.
In the long run I literally ran into it. Walking down 32nd Street, I saw a rise, an opening, a grassy meadow, a break in the cityscape. It was the trail!
I turned left, and the sight almost took my breath away. There was Mount Rainier looming large in the sunset sky. I couldn’t find an angle that didn’t involve power lines, but there it was, Seattle’s iconic mountain.
When I reached my place, I told Cris, Airbnb host, how excited I was to spot the peak. Oh yes, she said. But you can see it from our house, too. She led me to the dining room window, pointed off in the distance. And there it was again, only slightly less imposing.
Sometimes, peak experiences are closer than you think.
We’ve been walking up hills and down, from Pioneer Square to the International District, then hopping a bus to Ballard where we walked some more. We chugged up hills as steep as San Francisco’s, and stopped at a local watering hole for sustenance.
I’ve already walked one route twice, from my Airbnb to Celia’s place. And last night I finally found the Chief Sealth Trail (more about that later).
For now, I’ll just say that Seattle has rolled out its grandest strolling weather for this walker in the suburbs. … walker in Seattle, I should say.
Speaking of “above it all,” … I’m about to take off for Seattle, a flight from Washington, D.C., to Washington State. In fact, I’m writing this at Dulles Airport while a history program on the popes of Avignon — “the papacy was more or less captured by the king of France” — drones on the television.
From one extreme — an expanse of sky; the miracle of flight; a miracle, period — to the other, the absurdity of the particular.
Modern travelers are strung between these two. The wonder of the firmament outside, cramped seats and coffee inside.
Here’s hoping that the miraculous part of this flight holds up its end of the bargain.
Ireland seems like another world already. It is another world, of course, or at least another country. But it’s one I’m going to imagine now, because the fields are so green and the stones are so gray and the two go so well together.
There was a feeling there that everything will be all right in the end. A strange feeling, when you think about the history of the place. But a cozy, warm feeling.
Maybe it’s the gallows humor there or the expectations, which aren’t as high as those on this side of the Atlantic. But whatever it is, I’m going to be drawing on it today.
Jet lag has finally had its way with me, waking me at 4:30 and sending me spinning out into the day. Luckily, it’s Friday and the office is still empty, the only sounds are of blowing air and my fingers tapping the keys.
This weekend I’m hoping to let all of this sink in: the green hills and friendly people, the toe-tapping music (which I’m reliving in my car thanks to a CD by the sons of a man who ran the B&B on Inishmore). All of that mixed with what awaited me on return: lots of work and crazy national news to catch up on.
I’m trying to keep the “above-it-all-ness” of travel, the feeling of joyful skimming it can give you. The cessation of normal routine; the quick, bright glimpse of a world you thought you knew but can still surprise you — your own.
I noticed the difference the minute we left the plane. The lilting voices were gone. I clung to the last few of them, people standing around the luggage carousel waiting for their bags. Maybe I’ll have to hang out in Irish bars, though there’s no guarantee you’ll hear a brogue.
It’s not just the Irish accent that I love, it’s also the expressions they use. “Sure and you wouldn’t be” or “just a wee bit of that now.” That Ireland produces more than its fair share of writers is no surprise given the number of talkers Ireland produces. Our cabdriver to Dublin Airport yesterday was one Rodney Robinson. Told us most of us life story in 30 minutes.
Today as I make my way to work on Metro, I’ll think of Rodney already driving. He lives in a little village in County Kildare. At 5 a.m. it only takes him 40 minutes to reach center-city Dublin. Seven hours of driving his cab (which he owns) and he’s back for a late lunch in the village, picks his kids up from school (two daughters and a son), and has the rest of the day with them. Four days a week like this and the other three his wife works in the village pharmacy and he stays home.
It’s a good life, a simple life, and it’s one of the Irish lives I’m thinking about today, on New World shores. Wouldn’t I love to find a cottage and try living in the Old World some day? Probably won’t happen, but it never hurts to dream.