Capital times in Olympia

SO WHAT’S HAPPENING IN OLY TOWN? It’s December already, my six weeks of housesitting time is winding down, and somehow I got distracted by the news of November.

Here I sit looking out from West Bay Drive to the snowy majesty of Mount Rainier looming over downtown on a blue-sky afternoon. Other than trying to ignore the news in recent weeks, I’ve had some nice visits with friends and family and gotten to know this town again.

Some of my visitors probably won’t believe Olympia can be sunny and that Rainier looms large here. We’ve had our share of socked-in days of featureless low clouds, especially on days when I’ve had visitors. My buddy R.J., whom I call the Unitarian Librarian, was here from Moscow, Idaho, for three gloomy days in late November. He’ll never believe the sun shines on the state capital. Same for yesterday when longtime friends Dave and Jill from Port Orchard came for lunch and a genial hike around the Billy Frank Jr. Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge. Despite the glum day, we enjoyed sighting two Bald Eagles in the top of a tall fir. Among troops of migrating waterbirds on the tideflats, a flock of maybe a hundred Dunlins performed their signature aerial acrobatics in which the flock navigated amazing hair-trigger zigzags above the Nisqually tide flats, seeming to disappear in thin air and then astonishingly reappearing on a different tack. Worth the trip!

But today I’m on my own, and the day is blue and beautiful. I won’t complain.

With R.J., I revisited McLane Creek to see the spawning salmon. It was a new and mesmerizing experience for my friend, who grew up on a farm near Spokane. Because he’d not explored Olympia before, I took him to the Capitol building, thinking we’d poke our nose inside briefly. But at the entry we met a tour guide named Terry. “Are you here for the 1 o’clock tour?” he asked. We shook our heads. “Would you like a tour? It’s exactly 1 o’clock and nobody else is here.”

So purely through serendipity, we got a delightful private tour of the Capitol. I had spent a lot of time in that building during a reporting internship in college days, but on this visit I learned much more about it. For example, I never knew that there are 42 steps leading to the entrance, celebrating the fact that Washington was the 42nd state admitted to the Union. I never knew that the giant chandelier hanging inside the dome was crafted by Tiffany (as were light fixtures throughout the building), or that the Capitol campus was designed by the Olmsted Brothers, famed landscapers whose father was one of the lead designers of New York’s Central Park.

I especially enjoyed stepping into the foyer of the governor’s office, where huge portraits of past governors looked down on visitors. Caught up in a moment of wonder, I recounted to tour-guide Terry my “six degrees of separation” links to a handful of those governors. “Arthur Langlie’s granddaughter is a friend of mine. And my daughter just finished working at Rosellini’s Bakery in Seattle, run by a descendant of Albert Rosellini. Dan Evans was president of my college and I got to know him a bit in my tenure as editor of the college newspaper. And I had dealings with Dixy Lee Ray when I interned here.” It was a reminder that I am definitely a Washingtonian.

The day after R.J. returned to Idaho, my daughter Lillian and our friend Lux arrived to help me celebrate Thanksgiving. We enjoyed several days of exploring the town, where Lux had grown up and Lillian had gone to college. Both enjoyed seeing Olympia looking like it’s on an upswing, they said. Some boarded up storefronts remain, but new shops and eateries are moving in along with more residents as new downtown apartment buildings have gone up.

After a misty morning walk around Capitol Lake, we joined in a fun all-day collaboration cooking our Thanksgiving feast. Meat-eschewers Lil and Lux’s main dish was a Trader Joe creation, a Vegan Breaded Turkey-less Roast with Gravy, while I roasted my first-ever Rock Cornish Game Hen. Side dishes included roasted Brussels sprouts and golden beets, sage-crazy stuffing with walnuts and celery, mashed potatoes, mashed rutabaga, and Lillian’s specialty, luscious mushroom gravy. Her rich and delicious pumpkin pie with plant-based whipped cream concluded our evening’s repast.

For years, my daughter and I reserved a special day to go Christmas shopping together at Seattle’s Pike Place Market. But with her imminent departure for a new home in Philadelphia (prompted by a new job for her partner), we decided Friday was perfect to go shopping in downtown Olympia. We enjoyed hours nosing about a delightful local bookstore, the Traditions shop specializing in fair-trade artisanal imports, plus several lively boutiques and specialty stores. We ambled back up the hill to West Bay Drive laden with holiday packages and good secrets.

That afternoon, the three of us jumped in the car and headed out Highway 101 to Kennedy Creek, another well-known salmon-spawning stream. We got to chat with two knowledgeable docents there who told us this year brought a larger than usual run of 40,000 chum salmon to Kennedy Creek. The only downside, one of the experts told us: In their effort to find good nesting areas among the pebbly creek bottom, later-arriving fish tend to destroy the egg nests built by earlier arrivals. A bittersweet ending for all the effort these fish expend in returning from the ocean to the freshwater stream of their birth.

I’ve 12 days left here before friends Daniel and Jean return from visiting with their new grandson in California. I have one more special dinner on the calendar, with an old college housemate. I’ll put a bit more energy into looking at housing, and maybe I’ll take in a Christmas show before I go.

Then it’s back to Center Island for me and Galley Cat for a week before I join Portland friends for my first Christmas without family around me. But that’s really a misstatement; my Portland friends Ken and Kate are really family to me, as are so many others I’ve mentioned. Happy holidays to you all.