CATEGORY: PORT TOWNSEND

PORT TOWNSEND. FIRST DAYS  (For the first spring after I moved there, I had a job in a plant nursery)

Yes, I am enjoying being in Port Townsend–especially with the very intimate warm welcome given me by old man weather, who got all dressed up in his Sun-day birthday suit and his happiest smile.  BEDAZZLING!!!  A clear bare sparkling day in this frequently gray flannelled town is a wonderfully glorious and strangely shocking thing; even one day, not to mention one after the other–meaning two.  And when I say “clear” I mean the whole sky–when you can actually see the mountains!

I walk to work.  At the top of the hill–WHAP!–with a jarring of teeth and toenails, I bump right into the entire Olympic mountain range, the peaks apparently gathered for an early morning caucus and caring little if their fat-and-over-1,000,040 bulk is an impediment to traffic.  “Excuse me, but would you please not hunker quite so close to the street?  You’re making me late for work and causing my neighbor’s cow to give ice cream”!

I walk home at night and at the top of the hill–WOW!–there, across Puget Sound, are the North Cascades all lined up with their feet in the water–old stony Easter Island types peering cross-eyed down their long noses and only three good breast strokes away.  Yesterday they were back behind Marrowstone Island, but today they are practically in my front yard.  Maybe they think the Starret House, newly painted white, is one of THEM, and they are making seductive overtures.  “Excuse me, but would you please get back behind the guard rail!  You’re scaring the fish”!

On a sunny day I can even make the mountains move!