The for sale sign is in the front yard. The house is listed online. The time has come. After almost 10 years of residing in Oregon, my wife and I are packing up and moving back to California. I am starting a new job with a wonderful nonprofit organization dedicated to the scientific study of […]
It is often said that state capitols do not make for great cities. This is undoubtedly true along the West Coast. Sacramento is exceedingly lame compared to its much cooler cousins San Francisco and Los Angeles. Salem is fairly forgettable and not so interesting when lined up against Bend, Ashland, or Portland. And then there’s […]
A boat takes you from Vancouver to Victoria? I’m in. For reasons unknown to myself, I’m a sucker for traveling by boat. Mind you, I’m not talking yachts or luxury cruise liners, but neither am I endeavoring to brave the high seas on a clipper ship. You know, a relatively safe aquatic journey where you […]
I shouldn’t complain, so I won’t. My wife and I just spent a brilliant week on the Big Island of Hawaii in mid-December to celebrate her birthday. Warm, sunny weather, exploring black sand beaches, swimming with sea turtles, downing mountains of poke, and quaffing rum-soaked cocktails with little umbrellas. It was everything a Hawaiian vacation […]
The day’s final meeting had concluded. Following hours consumed with discussion of Puget Sound’s water quality, Clean Water Act intricacies, and prospects for litigation, my coworker and I fancied a beer. Thus, on a cloudless Friday afternoon in Seattle we ambled a block or two over to the pub, settled at a table, and ordered […]
Want some crack, eh? No, thank you. Ok, no worries. Sooory. Want some company for the night big guy? No, I’m ok thank you. Oh, ok, sooory. The drug dealers and prostitutes in Vancouver, British Columbia were most cordial. It was 2002, I was living in San Francisco and primed for adventure. While an undergraduate […]
The San Francisco of my youth was eternally foggy, cold, and wet. It was chilly nights on Nob Hill dining at Vanessi’s and aweing at the enormous Christmas tree in the lobby of the Fairmont. It was fog lingering for days outside the eighth floor window of my Park Merced apartment. It was braving a […]
In Ketchikan, Alaska, you can acquire an Omega Seamaster wristwatch on a stainless steel bracelet with the coaxial escapement. The 41mm version of the quintessential dive watch retails for around $6,000. The population of Ketchikan is a few ticks over 8,000. None of this made any sense to me as I stood baffled in one […]
The sun beamed gloriously as I motored into Astoria. That, in and of itself, was a revelation. Astoria is many ways favorable: historic, quaint, picturesque, fortuitously sited at the mouth of the mighty Columbia—but sunny it is not. Gray and silver, alloyed with an understated mousy ashen hue, serve as the team colors. It rains. […]
Dusky gloom holds court daily, refusing to yield but for a handful of colorless hours. Scant daylight accompanied by a thermometer declining a meaningfully rise. Christmas and New Year’s celebrations long passed. Wintry doldrums rest heavy on the psyche; emerging at daybreak from the blanketed cocoon grows increasingly burdensome. At this station on the annual […]
What’s it called again? Not Vashon. Vancouver, no, I know it’s not that! Brisbane? No, it’s… Bainbridge? Yes! Let’s take the ferry to Bainbridge Island! My wife and I were in Seattle doing Seattle things. After enough big city shopping, Pike Place Market touring, and clam chowder munching, we sought a new adventure. She had […]
Screen doors slumbered, sedans snoozed, spaniels snored. Subwoofers sat silent. Trucks denied their evening driveway idles. Cell phone blathering had long ceased or else faded toward a swallowing ether. Dinner dishes washed, dried, and shelved. Homework finished and the little ones off to bed. Crickets deigned to elicit a peep. Empty windless deserts; slipper-shod ghosts […]
At the firmament an assemblage of islands, inlets, fjords, and coastlines. Boreas a galloping cascade of sleeveless coattails descending the mountain’s face. Glacial, limpid waters define the arena; but in the naked open it is abruptly uneven and now eight-foot crests are blasting the bow in sonorous rhythm. The locals munch chowder and shrug. The […]
In the beginning a cathedral of trees. An ingress, a threshold to a world aloft. North through the enshrouding mist; striding ashore amid boggy seas teeming of unbounded ferns, fecund skunk cabbage, and fairy tale amanitas. Emerging from dusky Gaelic clouds, a locus bearing treasures: ancient promises, silver-handed kings, biophilic fables, and lesser esoterica. Behind […]