Onboard Orion?
Ah Orion. On to your next life. A tale for another time.
For now I sit land bound gazing out at the giant cedars, the fall flowers, the final hummingbirds, the beginning of the grey and wondering what there is to write about. What do I have to say? No more boat in the water. Can’t raise the anchor to move the home so easily, to go find a new adventure. The anchor has set, in a more permanent manner. Perhaps it’s time to shift the game a bit. Maybe the writing won’t be a chronologically correct accounting of places been and experiences had, but more a few shotgun blasts of the current state of the brain.
If someone asks this is where I’ll be.
Port Townsend.
Upper left pretty much as far as you can get. A small town with a lot of bubbles.
Bubbles of crusty bearded boat workers stopping for lunch at noon, shaking the sawdust out of their hair. Bubbles of loose patchouli dancers on a Sunday morning getting down early. Bubbles of white haired retired hippies, looking to do good.
Then there are the younger farmer types of Chimicum who have gotten pushed out of the overpriced uptown-on-the-hill-with-the-view housing market, growing organic veggies in the farmlands and going to Finn River cider to listen to tunes and play corn hole with their kids.
The welcoming musicians with pockets of greatness. David Grisman lives here. The Flying Karamazoff Brothers. WTF. The Unexpected Brass Band with Aaron on Tuba and Doctor Gary playing the big drum who seem to show up at every parade or town party.
Music Festivals every weekend all summer from Jazz to Blues to Uke, to Red Hot Strings, Chamber, Choro from Brazil. There’s a film festival and voice works and writing and much dancing. Fusion dance, ecstatic dance, contact, swing. Lots of ways to do the boogie.
The Race To Alaska starts here in early summer. Boats and the super humans on them race to Ketchikan with no motors allowed. First price $10,000 nailed to a post. Second prize, a set of steak knives. Crazed looking single-handers mingle on the street the day before making last minute adjustments. Expensive racing sailboats are modified with their engines pulled out and fitted out with jury rigged pedals on the back deck for the calm times. Monohulls, Trimarans, Kayaks, rowboats, stand up paddlers and many in-betweens start the voyage. Logs, tides, breakdowns doom many. On land we follow their track on the map and dream.
Early fall brings the Wooden Boat Festival. Second largest in the world after Tasmania. The beauty and the craftsmanship of the old wooden ships are truly profound. Many deep conversations about varnish, sails, chisels and planes. Days of seminars of audacious people doing truly epic watery deeds. Susan the paddling diva going 750 miles to Alaska solo in her kayak. Karl Kruger standing on his paddle board crossing the Arctic Circle dodging bears as he hunts for a place to rest.
Thursday evenings in summer the whole town turns out for free concerts on the dock to dance and listen to music and perhaps walk out on the pier to be surrounded by the Salish sea. Snow covered Mount Baker rises in the North, Mt Rainer to the southeast, Hurricane Ridge in Olympic National park to the Southwest.
And then the water. So much water all around. One must hop in a boat to truly appreciate the tides, the currents, the islands that stretch north to Alaska. And where the water meets the land the endless beaches. Not the white sandy beaches of the Caribbean, but rocky, seaweed strewn expanses that disappear and reappear with the tides. When the water is out the tide pools expose bullwhip kelp, seaweed, mussels, pink starfish, and random jets of water from the spitting clams. Ginormous driftwood logs are pushed up against the glacial carved cliffs. Seals and otters pop up to say hi. If you’re lucky you might see an Orca swimming by.
Such a sweet bubble we stumbled into.
Home, is where I want to be, but I guess I’m already there.