Jetlagged in Edinburgh
The first day after an 8-hour time jump feels a lot like being on another planet. You wander about in a fugue state, answering the questions of bartenders and cashiers with a dumbfounded stare. Words once common to your vocabulary are suddenly nowhere to be found: “That thing, you know, the thing that you… put […]
Mounds Beyond Mounds
Explanations for unexplained geological phenomena range from the plausible (glacial deposition, earthquakes, erosion), to the adorable (pocket gophers), to the ridiculous (aliens). While part of what makes a place like Mima Mounds so fascinating is this mystery, it is a strange experience to walk through a landscape that the modern mind cannot explain. Foxgloves rise […]
River Ice
From their headwaters in Western Pennsylvania and Upstate New York, the two main branches of the Susquehanna River wind toward Northumberland. There they meet and continue as one, rolling south to the Chesapeake Bay. Two days after Christmas, I sit on a bench swing between two trees, watching ice floes float down the Susquehanna. Steam […]
Go Cougs
A wooden fencepost, its yellow paint faded with time, points from Wilridge Vineyard down the winery trail into Cowiche Canyon. On this snow-hushed morning, our boots make the only sound, crunching in the snow as we descend through the shrub steppe toward the creek that cut this canyon from the landscape long ago. Clumps of […]
A Two-Season Weekend
When we wake up Sunday in the spare bedroom above the tasting room, the light from the windows is so bright that I think it’s noon. Afraid we missed the morning’s pressing—Touriga Nacional was supposed to go into the crusher today—I fish around for my phone. Elena looks out the window. “Snow!” she cries. It’s […]
Playing Adam
In 1792, naval officer George Vancouver was exploring Puget Sound, naming things after his pals on behalf of the British Empire. Of course, these things already had names (and names that sounded a lot cooler than “Puget,” “Gardner,” and “Whidbey”), but they were hard to pronounce, and asking the natives what they called the local […]
Battery
Six months after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the United States military began construction of Fort Ebey at the westernmost point of Whidbey Island. Overlooking the Strait of Juan de Fuca, the fort was to stand as the first line of defense for Puget Sound, home to shipyards and Boeing plants crucial for the war […]
Rain Shadow
Not much you’d want to consume grows in Western Washington. If you can eat, drink, or smoke it, chances are it was grown in a greenhouse or the rain shadow east of the Cascades. Seattle apologists will tell you it rains more in New York, while neglecting to mention that several epic storms just ain’t the […]
Intertidal
At the westernmost tip of West Seattle, Alki Beach looks out over Puget Sound toward Bainbridge Island and the Olympic Mountains. A freighter moves slowly, silently, up the channel. Two harbor seals float offshore, their heads bobbing above the soft waves of a late summer day. Despite its proximity to the pollution and industry of […]
Eclipse
Fueled by pure cold brew concentrate and the obvious Pink Floyd album, we arrive at the Ankeny National Wildlife Refuge at 4am the morning of the eclipse. We find a stretch of gravel where a car isn’t already parked and we pile out to see the stars. Too caffeinated to nap, we take off down a […]
