Portland Again Again

Two days devoted entirely to modes of transportation, with an interlude in the arms of Big Medicine.

Flew south in cloudy overcast foggy sorts of weather: from Port Angeles on Kenmore Air's Piper Chieftain to Boeing Field in Seattle,

In the Piper Chieftain, February 3, 2013 (Click for larger image.)

van to Seatac, Alaska Air to Portland,

Best view ever of Mount Saint Helens, from the Alaska Air flight; always sit on the Cascades side of the plane, just in case. February 3, 2013 (Click for larger image.)

light rail (MAX) to the motel. Streetcar to Powell's.

The Mother Church for book people, Powell's City of Books (Click for larger image.)

In the morning, streetcar to OHSU

Portland Streetcar N-S Line at sunrise, February 4, 2013 (Click for larger image.)

to be examined by my clinical trial doctor (I'm still a science project), at the Center for Health and Healing—airy name notwithstanding, a 13-story building full of suffering people (and that's all I'm going to say about that). After the appointment, streetcar to the light rail station at City Center,

MAX signage always tells you when the next two trains will arrive (Click for larger image.)

lightrail to Portland-Hillsboro general aviation airport. Hillsboro Aviation's FBO is a 10-minute walk from the MAX station. I just cheerily rolled my roller-bag up the sidewalk and was there.

Waiting at Hillsboro (Click for larger image.)

AngelFlight home to Port Angeles through murky skies on a Cessna T182T Skylane. Not good camera conditions, but I clicked the shutter all the way, just to keep paying attention.

The mouth of the Columbia River, out to the west (Click for larger image.)

Approaching Port Angeles, we had to descend through the overcast below us,

Descending into the cloud, the Olympics disappearing (Click for larger image.)

sliding slowly downward buried in the cloud; then once under the ceiling, looped out to approach the runway from the west. Got a good view of the Lower Elwha Klallam Reservation which is so familiar to me from the ground, and an oblique glimpse of mouth of the Elwha at the edge of the rez, already much reshaped by the sediment coming down the river from the dam sites.

Elwha. No point in artificially straightening the view, the plane was tilting :-). The river mouth on February 4, 2013 (Click for larger image.)

Thankyou to my pilot Hunter Handsfield, and to AngelFlight, for getting me delivered to the airport practically on my own doorstep with such wonderful ease.

Arrived in Port Angeles, February 4, 2013 (Click for larger image.)

Midwinter Spring Is Its Own Season

Definitely glad to be home. Went to the outer coast yesterday with my beach-buddy JL, and took the hike to Second Beach. Foggy/overcast here in town as it has been for days, cleared up before Lake Crescent. Perfect sunny weather out on the beach, then later fog moving in.

Lake Crescent, Olympic National Park, January 20, 2013 (Click for larger image.)

JL was in bliss. Sunshine! Beams of light in the chilly woods on the 30-minute hike to get down to the beach. And sunshine sunshine sunshine by the ocean with the tide retreating, giving us more and more beach to wander on. We shed layers, ambled, had a picnic.

Sunny Sunday in the Middle of Winter, Second Beach, Olympic National Park (Click for larger image.)

While we picniced, the fog began to drift ashore. The sunshine went, and came back, went and came back, over and over.

Fog moving around, Second Beach, January 20, 2013 (Click for larger image.)

Not a lot of wildlife. Some really distant elk off the highway at Beaver Prairie, raccoon footprints on the beach, flitty chirpy birds (that we never saw clearly) in the woods, and hardly any critters in the tidepools. I kept joking that the sea stars and anemones, and the mussels on the rocks that the sea stars eat, had all gone south for the winter; but really, where were they? On the way back to the trailhead, in a sunny interval we saw a nice show of the garnet sand Rau tells about. (Washington Coastal Geology between the Hoh and Quillayute Rivers, about 2/3 down the page.)

Raccoon Feet; and Garnet Sand (Click for larger image.)

I had Philip Whalen's voice in my head all day, as he wandered the main path at Tassajara more than thirty years ago, coffee mug in hand on a spectacular sunny February day and offering his very best T.-S.-Eliot-as-an-old-man impersonation. "Midwinter spring is its own season," he creaked, passing by.

Thank you, Phil; and thank you, Olympic National Park.

Second Beach, before the fog moved in, and after. January 20, 2013

The Dock at Mosquito Creek

The floating dock which came ashore in the Marine Sanctuary last month, presumed to have been set loose from Japan by the tsunami in 2011, remains in the news. (1)(2)(3)(4).

There's another story I saw earlier, with a closeup image of the concrete-with- rebar-encasing-foam material of the dock. Sounds like the same sort of stuff that PG and I found a piece of on Second Beach in October. Can't relocate the story now, and am on my way down the street to the airport. May add link if I find it.

Ah. Here. And photos galore, thank you Washington Department of Ecology.

P. S.

It's wetter here, and snowier, than anywhere else in the country right now.

River Basin Snow Water Content, 01/10/13 (Click for larger image.)

There's a dynamite picture of Glines Canyon just before the dam was built on the Dam Removal Blog.

We may try to be optimistic about the Elwha, but overall, the state of Washington's watersheds is poor, and there are fewer and fewer fish.

Travelling Fool

Weeks pass. I travel, rest up from travelling, and travel again. On January 2, WC came over from Victoria on the noon ferry and we set forth for Portland. Seriously clear sunshiny day, except for mysterious foggy clouds blowing in from the west across 101, from somewhere above Shelton to Olympia. On the 3rd, beginning before sunrise, the usual medical adventures at OHSU. What was not usual was such clear weather, and a huge leisurely space in the middle of the scheduled day. We went joyriding on the aerial tram.

Mt. Hood from the Third Floor, before sunrise, 01/03/13 (Click for larger image.)

The tramway cars are called 'cabins'. (Click for larger image.)

You fly over neighborhoods. Notice the shadow of the cabin :-) (Click for larger image.)

See lots of landscape, urban and mountainous (Mt. Hood) (Click for larger image.)

You arrive on Marquam Hill at the main OHSU hospital complex.

Looking down towards OHSU's waterfront complex from the station at the top. Cabin sailing up towards us. (Click for larger image.)

For future reference. Sunrise at Ziddell Marine on the Willamette River waterfront, viewed from the windows of the Center for Health and Healing. This barge will keep growing, month by month.

01/03/13 (Click for larger image.)

We hit the road as fast as we could after the appointment, heading home. Ran into rain about the same time as we ran into darkness, at approximately Olympia. The heaviest weather was, yes, from Olympia to somewhere above Shelton; it was snowing onto the windshield in the dark, I wasn't happy. Then it lightened up, and by about Hoodsport the weather was intermittent.

Next, Florida again for family stuff. Have I mentioned lately how I hate to travel? Naturally, therefore, I must go to Portland twelve times a year, and hypotenuse the coterminous US over and over and over again, especially lately. Just for the record, it was on purpose that I moved to the west 47 years ago this month, and never moved back to the East Coast. Sigh.

High Tide at the Edge of the Ghost Forest

On Sunday, did went west. It was gray here in town all day apparently, but by golly there was sun at the ocean. It began opening up at Lake Crescent, and just kept getting better.

Lake Crescent, Olympic National Park, December 30, 2012 (Click for larger image.)

Eagle at the Lake (Click for larger image.)

Pretty much all I wanted to do was to sit on the beach and read, but it was high tide. No beach. I found a log to sit on that seemed likely to be above sneaker-wave range, and watched the occasional extra-high waves wash salt water right into the forest edge among the ghost trees for a whole hour after the high-tide time marked on the tide tables.

Rialto Beach, Olympic National Park, December 30, 2012 (Click for larger image.)

Where I was sitting I could see to the north, and my body shaded the book. Almost right away I fell into it— Louise Erdrich's The Round House, wow— and would be gone away; and when I'd come back each time, there it was, the sunny ocean, the sound of the waves:

... (Click for larger image.)

The closest a wave came, it only caught my attention because I was taking a picture of two hikers as they came along the beach, and it washed them up to their thighs. I did a quick assessment: do I need to grab my stuff and scramble further back? No. But just in case I was wrong, I picked up the book and held it above my head.

That wave is probably the one that got them... (Click for larger image.)

There were a few eagles in the day, one in the tree on the point along Lake Crescent (where one often is); another at a turn in the shore along the Quileute River (ditto), one along the highway somewhere past Bear Creek. Not much of gulls, or ravens, or little flitty birds in the woods, or sea ducks.

To look south I'd have to be squinting into the sun, so I didn't, hardly at all.

James Island, Rialto Beach (Click for larger image.)

The web doesn't yet have a way to grant @vcmcguire what she wants, "Wish I could get a few deep breaths of salty Pacific air." But probably Cee is willing to share her soundscape, which might gratify a different sense:

Soundscape for Cee (Click for larger image.)

Thank you, Olympic National Park.

Morning Morning

The sun rose a little while ago, about 90 degrees around to the right behind clouds and behind the lot with the trees. The ferry just sailed, I could hear its horn when I went out on the deck to take a photo. Straight out, my bit of water horizon. The Strait, San Juan Island (US); off to the left of this image would be downtown Victoria on Vancouver Island (CA). As always, camera zoomed as my attention does, focussed on the water.

Strait of Juan de Fuca, December 30, 2012 (Click for larger image.)

The soundtrack at the moment is Richie Havens, singing, "Morning morning". And a verbal one (*googles*, good heavens it's Longfellow). It's about the other end of the day, but feeling exactly right. "Darkness settles on roofs and walls,/ But the sea, the sea in the darkness calls."

Indeed the sea calls. Heading west to the outer coast, soon as I can. The tide and the weather aren't right, but this is the day, here I go.

Nu?

Update on the Japanese dock that washed up on the outer coast.

Update on the Elwha River. Sediment outflow is building sandbars at the river mouth. The present 'fish window' ends January 1, and the work crews will be lowering the remaining face of Glines Canyon Dam again. Given the amount of sediment which has been coming down the river even without the addition of what demolition might have stirred up, it seems silly that they even bothered to stop... but anyway, we should be seeing cranes and tractors and guys doing stuff in view of the DamCams again, beginning next week.

The Watcher of Ships Watches Some Ships

Light mostly gone. Thank heavens the sunsets are going to be later now, I am done with darkness. Went out on Ediz Hook (map).

Vancouver Island on the other side of the Strait of Juan de Fuca, December 23, 2012 (Click for larger image.)

The submarine escorts (technically, offshore supply vessels) HOS Arrowhead and HOS Eagleview came in off the Strait. They always travel in pairs. It used to be Silverstar and Gemstone, but those two are no longer listed. Where have you gone, Silverstar?

HOS Arrowhead (Click for larger image.)

There were three big ships at anchor out in the harbor, the tankers Polar Discovery and Alaskan Frontier—the Polars and the Alaskans are often here, either just anchored and waiting for a day or two, or tied up at one of the piers sometimes for weeks, getting service done—and something more unusual that I couldn't get an angle on to photograph. The shiptracker sites say she is Prabhu Jivesh, an Indian ship. I can only think of one other time there was a ship from India...

Polar Discovery in Port Angeles Harbor (Click for larger image.)

There were three boat trailers parked by the small boat docks when I got out there, and a woman from Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife sitting in her pickup waiting. All three came in while I was hanging around; only one of the boats had caught anything. "A small blackmouth," said the fisherman. The WDFW lady took her clipboard out on the dock and measured the fish. Blackmouth is a winter Chinook salmon, not yet mature to begin its spawning run.

Alaskan Frontier, and a small recreational fishing boat (Click for larger image.)

The Olympic Mountains emerge briefly (Click for larger image.)

Being Here

While I was gone, and preoccupied, I kept setting aside links to stories from home.

The log yard is nearly empty. At least one logship loaded while I was gone, according to David Sellars' December 15th 'On the Waterfront' column. He says (near the bottom of the story) POS Jade was the 13th log ship of the year to sail from our harbor.

A big dock washed ashore down the wilderness Olympic National Park coast, somewhere nonspecified between Toleak Point and Hoh Head. Is it tsunami debris? Unknown but likely. Japanese writing found on it.

The elk herd in Sequim were hanging out by the highway. Motorists were warned to watch out since they seemed to intend to cross...

Discovered there is a weather station down on the harbor. Who knew? Apparently it's associated with the tide gauge. (1)(2)

'Tis the season to watch for high tide and heavy surf warnings. We had a king tide while I was gone, water splashing ashore in West Seattle, lots of debris and fresh erosion out on the Hook. With all these storms, there will surely be a Mavericks this year. My twitter stream brings me news of events in the rarified realm of big wave surfing, in this case a near-fatal wipeout on Cortes Bank; and I have resumed my not-so-secret winter habit of watching surf videos on youtube. I have watched Mike Parsons ride this wave very many times, and it is still breathtaking...

A Sunrise

I'm in Florida doing family stuff, and thinking about home. It's hard to blog from the iPad, but here is a pinky-gold sunrise I found in the camera. December 5. Olympic Mountains to the south, Strait of Juan de Fuca to the north. Eventually I'll be back there.

**TOTALLY BOOKSTORE**

Went to Portland for the monthly medical adventure. The big west coast storms had discouraged any AngelFlight pilots from signing up for my mission, so I flew down via Kenmore Air and Alaska Air. (AngelFlight, determined to take care of me anyway, arranged for the AlaskaAir flight to be free. Thank you to AngelFlight and to Alaska Air.) Had a nice sunbreak for the flight out of Port Angeles...

December 2, 2012. Heading East Over Port Angeles Harbor (Click for larger image.)

The Olympics Peeked Out As We Flew By (Click for larger image.)

Not Many Passengers, So Kenmore Flew Us In a Piper Chieftain. (Click for larger image.)

This trip was all about urban delights. There I was in Portland, riding on the MAX (the light rail), and on the streetcar, arriving early enough in the evening to look around me. There are tall buildings and Powell's City of Books, and light rail and streetcars and buses, and restaurants and density, and people on bicycles zipping along the rainy dark streets with blinky lights on their helmets; brick buildings and pedestrians everywhere even on a rainy Sunday night. At the motel by the PSU campus, skyscraper out the window, sound of the MAX train's bell. I held my umbrella over a Portland State student at the streetcar stop; she was watching its expected arrival time at our stop via an app on her phone. Other stops have proper shelters and digital readouts, tick tick, the next car will arrive in 4 minutes, 3 minutes...

Motel Window at Dusk, 5th and Montgomery, Portland. Church of St. Michael the Archangel (Click for larger image.)

Motel Window at Dusk. The Portland Plaza and the Wells Fargo Center (Click for larger image.)

I got to Powell's after a quick supper in a noodle shop. Being there for the first time, wow, I was so excited I could hardly breathe. I mean, it wasn't just-a-bookstore-so-who-cares (which is what I expected and why I hadn't bothered to make it to Powell's on the previous eight medical visits to Portland) but TOTALLY BOOKSTORE, pulsing with energy the way midtown Manhattan does if you just stand there on the street. It was full of people buying armloads and even whole shopping baskets of books. It had shelves and shelves of Loeb Classical Library. No pix, I was too dumbstruck to fire up the camera. I had to close my eyes and leave altogether when I got to the natural history section. The store was so intoxicating I was about to forget that I am a lifelong public library user and only buy books sometimes, as much as possible buying via Port Book and News to help keep them in business...

All the time I was wandering through Powell's, I was thinking of a poem by Miriam Sagan (my co-editor in the once-was Santa Fe Poetry Broadside).

Miriam Sagan:
"Library", from Inadvertent Altar:
            Standing in the stacks of Widener Library
            For the first time, I could have found
            The Federalist Papers in Urdu
            If I'd looked hard enough
            Narrow space between the shelves, beneath a catwalk
            Scholars walked over my head, or graduate
            Students hugging tight cold Cambridge streets
            Avoiding deportation to some terrible regime back home.

            Level A, B, C
            Translucent floors are other ceilings
            Down at the bottom, books
            In languages obscure by the time
            Alexandria burned
            What Scythians spoke, or Assyrians
            Down here, I'm seized
            Not by a desire for knowledge
            But by desire
            Surrounded by the smell of paper
            Pages curling upward, I want to make love
            To anyone, myself, some old boyfriend
            Or current one
            For I'm alone.

            I told this story
            Twenty-five years later
            To a Buddhist scholar, who said:
            "Oh yes, that's bodhichitta,
            The thought of enlightenment."
            A nexus point
            In a diamond web.
            I'd always thought
            Bodhichitta was the smell
            Of the incense stick
            At the funeral
            Some wake up to impermanence
            Not this lovely sensation
            Of too much to read.

I've lived so long in smaller places (by choice) that I forget really what a city is, what it does, how it feels. It was great sparky fun. In the morning: streetcar to the medical center, appointment, then streetcar to light rail to airport to home.

This post is for CF and AO, with whom I have been talking about 'urban'; and for IJ, who claims, "I am immune, immune I say to any blandishment offered up in any book store. But just on the tiniest off chance that I don't know myself all that well, I don't darken the doors of the places. Well, not very often, anyway." And of course for the Other Miriam.

Double Rainbow on Saturday

It keeps raining. Not a whole lot of precipitation, here; but it keeps happening; and not a whole lot of sun breaks and horizon clearings in between. But sometimes...

Double rainbow over the alley. December 1, 2012. (Click for larger image.)

Precipitation, yes, all up and down the west coast, and across the Northwest. Look at all that blue, yeah?

Basin Precipitation Map, December 4, 2012 (Click for larger image.)

But on the whole, it's too warm for the snowpack to be building. The Olympics and the Sierras are doing ok for snow-pack (after a couple of bad seasons for the Sierras), but the Cascades are looking scary.

Basin Snow Water Content, December 4, 2012 (Click for larger image.)

Fresh Drought Monitor maps(1)(2) will come out on December 6. So we don't have to look at that bad news right this minute.