re-set

Left to our own devices a few weekends ago, the dogs and I took a route up the Chuckanuts that is known in our family as the “view hike.” Like many such hikes, it’s on an old utility road that winds through second-growth forest and ends at a recent clear cut. Along the way, it passes a small lookout with views of the Salish Sea, the San Juans, and occasionally even the Olympics--hence the “view” in our nickname for the spot.

Although nothing like summer’s glory hikes, it’s a pleasant little five-mile round-trip that’s close to town and offers hill work. The Chuckanuts are full of little gems such as this, and the return to this bit of loveliness always marks the end of fall and the beginning of winter.

Admittedly, winter is not my favorite season in Washington. The monotony of gray can last well into what should by all rights be spring, making the season seem longer than it actually is. Although we’ve learned by now to combat seasonal affective disorder with full-spectrum happy lamps and mega-doses of outside activity, having a name to stick on the moody doldrums does little to ease the symptoms.

On the flip side, summer in the Pacific Northwest is glorious. Unambiguously, gorgeously glorious. But summer also means a madcap rush to squeeze everything in to one short season--the hiking, the house projects, the lounging in the backyard, the luxury of leaving the house dressed in a single layer, and the feel of sun on one’s face and arms and bare legs. As much as I love it, summer leaves me a bit exhausted, and the swings between seasonal extremes at this latitude always seem a bit immoderate to my Midwestern sensibilities.  

This particular outing, though, was a pause, a chance to anticipate the pleasures of the coming season before we tire of them. And it felt entirely right to be once again tucked in among the grays and muted blues, with the loamy smell of deciduous leaves on the ground mixed with the sharper notes of Douglas-fir needles, and the only sound that of the wind in the trees overhead. 

reconnaissance

Shortly after we arrived in Bellingham last summer, Kendall and I spotted a sign for beach access along Chuckanut Drive. We parked in the designated lot, and after much scrambling down rocky inclines and thrashing about in the undergrowth, we arrived not at anything resembling a beach, but at a rocky outcrop better suited, as Kendall noted, for plunging to one’s death.

Given that this beach is a landmark important enough to warrant its own parking lot, we figured that, as usual, there was some local trick we’d missed. Yesterday, lured by the summer sun, we again set out in search of the phantom beach. We left the parking lot by way of a different trail, but ended up at the selfsame spot, albeit with fewer mosquitoes this time around. After a sigh of frustration, we sat in silence, taking in the San Juan Islands, dark against the opaque silvery blue of the bay’s sun-lightened waters. It was glorious, but not the beach we’d been expecting. So we set off again, following a hiker’s instructions to continue along the railroad tracks, looking for “a slightly bigger trail, probably with more people on it.” And we did, in fact, happen upon Clayton Beach, a sandy sliver carved out between the forested coastal cliffs and the sea. At low tide, the pocked coastline and barnacle-covered rocks were exposed, and crabs and miniature jellyfish moved through the sun-warmed shallows. The beach was neither more nor less beautiful than the previous spot, and finding it gave the sense of a minor triumph and vague restlessness, the sort that often follows the fulfillment of a long-anticipated desire.

We returned to the car, making mental note of the trail’s contours for a future return. Out of such experiences accumulates, perhaps, a sense of place.

home again, home again

My parents just wrapped up a week-long visit to Bellingham and its environs. We drove the North Cascades Highway, hiked in the Chuckanuts, biked Lopez Island, ate oysters and salmon, visited Re-Bar and Butchart Gardens in Victoria, and otherwise indulged in the local summer pleasures.

What surprised me about their visit, though, was how their presence made Washington feel more like home; something about showing my parents around made me feel less like a long-term visitor here. "Lawrence" is no longer the first place name that comes to mind when someone asks where I live, and I hesitate a little less upon hearing that question.