Category: Uncategorized

Sharing smiles where I find them

The Prince of Whales whale-watching boat zips past my lunchtime viewpoint on Upright Head, Lopez Island.

IT’S BEEN TOUGH keeping up with the blog in these troubled times. We all have plenty of worries as the Trump Regime does its best to bully the world, trash our constitution and cripple the economy. Almost every one of us has seen our life’s savings swirling down the toilet.

But I resolved to help support my community in the face of the onslaught, so I’m here to tell about the good things in my island life.

Tiny calypso orchids are blooming with gusto on Center Island this spring. This flower is about 3 inches high.

Spring weather has finally arrived and we have a bumper crop of calypso orchids, aka fairy slippers. Buttercups are in bloom and ferns are uncurling new fronds like the gentle beckoning of an octopus tentacle. When I tap away at the keyboard in Wee Nooke, the cedar writing hut on the rocky knoll behind my cabin, I might still crank up the heater at first, but by afternoon I’ve opened a window to admit soft and salty breezes.

My big news is that I’ve landed a gig with Road Scholar, the not-for-profit tour operator that offers educational trips catering to travelers 50 and older worldwide. My Friday Harbor friend Barbara Marrett, retired from a career as communications director for the San Juan Islands Visitors Bureau, went to work with Road Scholar a year ago. She convinced me it would be a good fit for me, and kindly recommended me to the local leadership affiliated with Mount Vernon-based Skagit Valley College, which has a branch in Friday Harbor. I will be involved as a paid trainee with three of their week-long tours in my San Juan Islands starting in mid-May. Next year, I will likely be a group leader.

It’s a bright spot on my personal horizon. Living with just a fuzzy feline companion on my remote island, I need more human interaction. And some 20 years of exploring these islands with my family aboard our sailboat, writing about the San Juans as a travel journalist, and making a home on this little island nobody’s heard of seems to uniquely qualify me to help newcomers learn about the San Juans, too.

So far, the Road Scholar leadership has been tremendously accommodating and good to work with. When I told them I had been reserving the summer for overdue cabin projects that got a bit neglected last summer, they responded by assigning me to trips in May, September and October. Perfect! Itineraries will include boat trips to Sucia and other outer islands, a kayak tour and a three-island sampler.

I’ve already attended three training sessions in Friday Harbor, including a first-aid and CPR refresher course, a general leadership orientation, and training in how to safely drive their fleet of 11-passenger vans. That’s kept me busy in recent weeks traveling back and forth to Friday Harbor, a significant endeavor when I don’t yet have my restored 1957 cruiser, WeLike, commissioned for the season. (We’ve not had the weather for it until now.)

Ranger Rick looking spiffy and clean.

So I booked passage on the water taxi from Center Island to Hunter Bay Public Dock on Lopez Island ($76 round-trip), where I keep my good old pickup truck, Ranger Rick. I drove the pickup 25 minutes to the ferry terminal on the north end of Lopez and either parked it there and walked on the state ferry (for no charge to Friday Harbor) or drove aboard ($28 round-trip) when I wanted wheels at the other end. On one trip, I took advantage of the opportunity to drive Ranger Rick to the Friday Harbor car wash where I gave him a much-needed bath. There are no car washes on Lopez. He had gotten positively mossy.

These outings have made me thankful that I don’t often rely on Washington State Ferries, plagued by staffing shortages that commonly cause last-minute cancellations of scheduled runs. When one of my Friday Harbor boats was canceled and the next wasn’t for two hours, I “made lemonade” and took my sack lunch on a pleasant hike to a viewpoint in the San Juan County Land Bank’s Upright Head Preserve, adjacent to the ferry terminal. Couldn’t have been better if I planned it, I thought, as I watched whale-watching boats and big cabin cruisers plow through the water below the mossy bluff where I munched my tuna wrap.

Lumberjack Brian: A newly cleared building lot meant felled trees were available for firewood.

The arrival of spring weather already has me busy with outdoor projects around the cabin. When a nearby lot got cleared for construction of a new cabin the cut trees were available for firewood. Time to fire up my chainsaw and start replenishing my wood stack for next winter. (I had to watch a YouTube to figure out why the saw wouldn’t start after hanging in my shed for the winter, but soon had it roaring and spewing sawdust. When you live on a remote island, you learn to fix stuff yourself.)

My other adventure has been digging on hands and knees with a hand trowel to locate my septic drainfield so I can install capped, upright 4-inch PVC pipes that function as inspection ports, now required by the county if I ever wish to sell my place. One port is installed, one more to go. The joys of home ownership. Nothing that a clothespin to the nose can’t make more pleasant.

Amid all this, daughter Lillian visited to help me celebrate my 69th birthday and neighbors John “The Mad Birder” and Carol showed up with recently dug razor clams they were generously willing to fry up for friends. (Yum.) Lillian showed off her new skills as a patisserie baker by making me the world’s best sugar-free chocolate cupcakes with buttercream frosting. (Ditto yum.)

That’s the April report from Center Island, friends. Find joy where you can. Remember to support your friends, family and other good guys. We all need it now more than ever.

Season of hope is more welcome than ever

The miniature daffodils outside my cabin are a welcome harbinger of spring on Center Island.

DESPITE WHAT THE GROUNDHOG SAID, spring is arriving early this year. The equinox for my friends on the West Coast occurs overnight tonight at 2:01 a.m. PDT, on March 20. Not the 21st as we often experience.

Here’s what the equinox is all about, according to the National Weather Service, part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (which I value and respect even if Trump and Musk don’t, which says something about how much I value and respect them):

EQUINOX: There are only two times of the year when the Earth’s axis is tilted neither toward nor away from the sun, resulting in a nearly equal amount of daylight and darkness at all latitudes. These events are referred to as equinoxes (spring and autumn). The word equinox is derived from two Latin words – aequus (equal) and nox (night). At the equator, the sun is directly overhead at noon on these two equinoxes.

That’s the scientific explanation of spring’s arrival. The esoteric and spiritual part of spring, the season of hope and renewal, is what most of us grapple to our bosoms.

The misnamed Purple Finch (with flashy red plumage) has returned to the Nuthatch cabin’s feeder after a long winter.

Boy, do we need it now, with the dumbest, meanest, biggest lying snakes of all time running our government into the ground and targeting their sputum at the most vulnerable among us. (Yes, it’s time to speak plainly.)

Wild currant blooms outside the cabin. Recently cut firewood rounds in the background show that I’m already prepping for next winter.

On my little island, I gauge spring’s arrival by the blooming of the wild currant, the arrival of birds I’ve not seen all winter, and the blooming of daffodils in my yard. Spring brings hope for warmer days, wildflowers and long walks with old friends.

Maybe find one of those vulnerable people and walk with them, too. Make a new friend. Shield them from the storm.

Happy spring! Cherish the hope. Hold it close.

From my remote island, Monday is now ‘Call Congress’ day

You don’t need a plane ticket. If you have a phone or a computer, it’s easy to reach the U.S. Capitol.

ANYONE WHO WORKED REMOTELY during the pandemic knows you don’t need to be in the city to be part of what’s happening in the world. That applies equally to those of us who live on small islands nobody’s heard of, where it’s easy to feel isolated and powerless.

Connectivity is a good thing to keep in mind in these fraught times as vandals in the other Washington try to bulldoze our constitutional democracy. I have a phone on my island. I have email. While we may be far from the action, there’s nothing to stop islanders from putting in our two-cents’ worth in hopes of minimizing the harm to valued institutions.

The U.S. Capitol switchboard can be reached at 202-224-3121. The switchboard makes it a breeze to call your elected officials in Congress. If you don’t know who represents you, they’ll look it up and connect you.

We can also be as well-informed as the next guy. I have long subscribed to the online New York Times, and to the daily political reports of Boston College historian Heather Cox Richardson, one of the more astute observers and commentators on the scene today. Yesterday I got on the Substack app and subscribed to the postings of Robert Reich, Dan Rather and U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy (D, Conn.).

Per the urging of Reich, a former labor secretary under President Clinton and currently a professor at UC Berkeley, this morning I phoned the U.S. Capitol switchboard, connected with my congressman’s office and contributed my ardent wish to purge Elon Musk from our government. If there’s a “nuclear option” Congress might employ that would blow this unelected fascist-loving billionaire out of the District of Columbia, now’s the time to push the button.

I also urged my congressman to find some way for his legislative body to flex its constitutional muscle and stop the illegal firings and shutdowns of agencies that Congress established through intricate and inclusive dances of legislation.

This morning I expected a tedious wait on the phone, listening to canned music, because of the high volume of calls. Amid Trump and Musk’s antics earlier this month, reports said the U.S. Senate phone system was receiving around 1,600 calls each minute, compared to the customary average of 40 per minute.

Much to my surprise, the phone call was quick and easy.

The phone number Reich provided in his post (202-224-3121) rang through immediately to an automated system asking me to name the member of congress I wanted to reach (or say “I’m not sure”). I was quickly put through to the office of Rep. Rick Larsen, of Washington State’s Second District. Within three rings, a live human answered my call. I was a little shocked.

U.S. Rep. Rick Larsen

The aide I spoke with listened to my concern and engaged in a brief conversation, basically agreeing wholeheartedly and obviously stating a bit of Larsen’s (and the Democratic caucus’s) talking points. But he wasn’t an automaton, and promised to pass along my concerns to the congressman.

U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell

On my second call, a live Capitol switchboard operator (perhaps the nicest sounding woman I’ve ever spoken to on the phone) directed my call to U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell’s office. There, I got voicemail and left a recorded message. Not as satisfying, but even a voicemail should add to the tally of calls. U.S. Sen. Patty Murray also used voicemail, but at least she (unlike Maria Cantwell) recorded her own voicemail message.

U.S. Sen. Patty Murray

I’ve decided that Monday is my new weekly “Call Congress” day. An effective use of my time and energy? Will it make any difference? Who knows. At least I’m helping to build the numbers of calls from outraged voters. More than one news story has cited that statistic in recent weeks.

What’s more, the calls were easy, they sure can’t hurt, and this is something I can do. It’s something all of us can do.

Yours in the struggle, from a small island somewhere in the San Juans.

Building a resistant community, one island friend at a time

A February squall brings surf in to Orcas Island’s Crescent Beach. A squall of political resistance might come to these islands as well.

IN THESE CHAOTIC POLITICAL TIMES, change is to be expected. It looks like the change for me on my little island means, ironically, no change. For now.

Following November’s presidential election, I announced that I would relocate to Olympia to become an activist in support of the United States Constitution in a power-center of Blue America.

That was then. Now, with the red-hatted D.C. wrecking crew carelessly trashing our federal government with shocking speed, and with their brazen talk about gutting Social Security, Medicare and other social programs upon which retirees like me depend, I can’t see my way to relocate.

I’m not inclined to move to low-rent Arkansas or Mississippi. And as long as I stay in the high-rent Pacific Northwest of my birth, any move would mean more costs. If the economy remained as robust as it was under Joe Biden, I might have made that work. But with the new guard on a bender to destroy the world’s faith in the United States, our promises and our dollar, I suspect they will trigger the second Great Depression before all is said and done. I’m putting my head down, sheltering in place and hoping to ride it out on my remote island.

I may be down, but I’m not out. My new mantra: Support my local community — my island and all of the San Juans — like never before. We all must stick together to weather the political storm of our lifetime.

I’ve started preaching that gospel. On a just-completed five-day visit with friends in Friday Harbor and on Orcas Island, I chatted it up with people I met along the way. Simply talking to strangers and newly minted friends about the national tensions we face together and the need to unite in our own towns formed an immediate bond. Such bonds can help build stronger communities, with citizens who can stand up to this attack on the traditional American values of equality, democracy and the rule of law. I’m sure of it.

As federal support vanishes, supporting local arts can be an important part of community bonding. I had a happy taste of that in Friday Harbor when I accompanied my chum Barbara Marrett and two of her friends to a performance of the play “Art” at San Juan Community Theatre. The San Juan Islands Museum of Art, the production’s co-sponsor, hosted an after-theater reception with wine and platters of fresh Westcott Bay oysters.

San Juan Island artist Aimee Dieterle’s acrylic painting of Mount Rainier is part of the current exhibition, concluding this weekend, at San Juan Islands Museum of Art.

The director and actors from the play were at the reception to answer questions, and those in attendance got a free viewing of the museum’s current exhibition of the works of more than 100 San Juan Islands artists. One of my favorites was a wall-mounted sculpture of an octopus, its suckers represented by the caps of real acorns, with outer skin constructed of thousands of tiny seed leaflets from Douglas fir cones. The unique media lent an unmatchable texture and natural color to an artwork representative of the rich vein of local talent.

At the art museum, as I made new island friends, I talked up the need for community unity. I felt like a socio-political Johnny Appleseed, sowing resistance one person at a time. The next day, about 75 islanders gathered outside the Friday Harbor Courthouse to join in the national “Not My Presidents Day” protest. I’d have joined in, but didn’t hear about it in time. Maybe we’ll all find each other eventually!

My new whim didn’t end there. On Orcas Island, my friend Tom Willard and I scrapped our Tuesday plans to lunch at a fancy restaurant in Eastsound. In the spirit of community-boosting, we instead went to the Orcas Island Community Foundation’s weekly free lunch, cooked and served by volunteers in the basement of Orcas Island Community Church.

The recently renovated and reopened Olga Store, a project of dedicated Orcas Island residents, is an example of what a strong community can accomplish.

Just revived after a COVID-related hiatus, the community lunch on Orcas has long been promoted as open to all, not just for senior citizens or the needy. A Facebook promo describes it as “an opportunity to build connections and nurture the feeling of community and belonging.” Perfect for these times. We ate hearty split-pea soup, salad and the best whole-grain crusty bread I’ve chewed in a long time. At a shared table, we made a lovely new friend, Sadie, who agreed that we all need to stick together. Simply lunching with other islanders of every ilk in a church hall felt like an act of resistance and unity. A year ago I’d have gone to that fancy restaurant. Maybe I can volunteer to cook and serve next time.

When the time comes for a Twenty-Million-Person March on Washington, D.C., I’ll get my plane ticket. Until then, I’m taking small steps, working on local connections.

Life, death, COVID and recovery among the wonders of winter

A gray squirrel pauses after raiding the Nuthatch’s bird feeder on a snowy February morning.

LAST NIGHT AS I WATCHED NETFLIX between frequent refueling of my cabin’s woodstove on a frozen February eve, outside the Nuthatch’s dark windows new snow came unbeknownst to me. It arrived secretly and silently, as if on little cat feet.

OK, apologies to Carl Sandburg. But I did get a poetic surprise when I peered out of the sliding door at bedtime and discovered the pristine new blanket of white seamlessly spread like a puffy down comforter across my deck.

FOG

The fog comes
on little cat feet.

It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.

Carl Sandburg

No flakes were falling then. They had come while I wasn’t looking, anointing my island with a fresh and lovely purity.

This is the peaceful time of a San Juan Islands winter. No raging winds, no worries of losing lights and firing up generators.

This morning I relished the view from my loft. Having trundled back to bed with a gripping Michael Connelly novel, fragrantly fresh-ground coffee, and toast satisfyingly smeared with avocado, I watched through my front wall of windows as sunshine first lit the tall firs’ white-frosted branches.

Ahhhh.

I have a certain license to be lazy, and it’s kind of nice. On a phone consult yesterday, my Seattle hematologist told me it could be six months before my hemoglobin levels return to normal after a bleeding ulcer sapped my energies at Christmas. It means I’m anemic. So I’m giving myself permission to take it kind of easy. To devote myself to eating and sleeping well. Gradually building up my exercise routine.

The morning view from my loft.

I’m dedicated to all that once again after a drastic diversion last week. My dear Aunt Jeanne McLean, my mother’s youngest sibling and the last survivor of that family’s five children, died at age 96. I made the pilgrimage to South Dakota for her funeral.

I debated whether I was strong enough to travel, but my family had always been close to my aunt and her family. As a teen I had invested paper-route money in a Greyhound ticket from Seattle to visit the Dakota relatives on my own. I wanted to go now. I needed to go.

My brother Doug, who would also attend the funeral, made it easy for me. His partner, Lori, whose career tasks included travel arrangements for a globe-trotting employer, suggested I hop a direct flight on Alaska Airlines from Seattle to Denver. Doug would drive from their home in Santa Fe, New Mexico, to meet me and we would have a brotherly 400-mile road trip from Denver to Rapid City in his new Outback, sharing hotel rooms along the way.

Your scribe with cousin Tami McLean Bishop of Rozet, Wyo.

Smiling weather gods gave us a week of sunshine, the funeral service was nicely done, and reconnecting with cousins from across the West was soul-nourishing.

I moved more slowly through airports than is my norm, but I managed fine. And my brother and I saw a whole lot of scenery, from the snow-frosted Colorado Rockies, to the wide, wide wilds of Wyoming, to South Dakota’s beautiful Black Hills.

At 80 mph on U.S. 85, my brother Doug and I traversed hundreds of miles of snow-frosted, wide-open Wyoming.

I returned to the Nuthatch last Saturday just ahead of the snow, and I’m happy to hunker down here again. I’ve returned to what amounts to a Center Island COVID epidemic, affecting at least eight of my neighbors, some 50 percent of our winter population. So I’m being more of a hermit than usual.

That’s OK, Galley Cat is keeping me company. I hope my fellow islanders feel better soon. I plan on staying warm. I plan on staying well. Wishing the same for you.

My Aunt Jeanne McLean was buried at Black Hills National Cemetery, S.D., in the same plot occupied since 2006 by her late husband, Calvin McLean, a Korean War vet.

Relieved to be home on my rock after Brian’s Dreadful December

AT LEAST IT DIDN’T HAPPEN on my remote little island nobody’s heard of. No helicopter evacs were involved, thank God.

That’s the best thing I can say about my recent up-close-and-personal encounter with America’s emergency health-care system.

Your faithful scribe and cat, happy to be back at the Nuthatch.

Loyal readers, if you were wondering about my long absence from the Reef, it was because I was busy living Brian’s Dreadful December.

When last we shared screen time, I was in the midst of a six-week housesitting stint in the lovely bayview home of friends Daniel and Jean in Olympia. In fact, after the presidential election I had resolved to make Olympia my next home.

That housesitting assignment was to conclude December 15. My plan was to return to my island for a week before hotfooting it back down the highway to spend Christmas with Portland friends Ken and Kate. Their daughter had orchestrated a plan for Christmas Eve dinner at Portland’s posh Ritz-Carlton hotel, followed by a couple of nights for family and friends at her Oregon Coast holiday home.

For me, all those holiday plans began to unravel on Friday the 13th (just like a bad movie).

After three days of serious digestive dysfunction in Olympia, I was on the phone at 7 in the morning to an old college friend — Kathy Pruitt, to whom I’m forever indebted — begging a ride to the nearest Emergency Room.

I had managed to pick up a nasty intestinal bug that over the course of the week had dehydrated me such that my blood pressure registered just 60/30 when they cuffed me in the St. Peter Hospital E.R. Never had I seen so many medical professionals swoop around me so quickly with armloads of I.V. bags, tubes and needles.

I was in the hospital four days before I.V. hydration, a liquid diet and a course of serious antibiotics set me right.

The lost time canceled my December return to Center Island. After a couple days of convalescence with my now-returned Olympia hosts, I packed up Galley Cat and drove straight to my Portland friends’ floating home on the Portland shore of the Columbia River.

On a back channel of the Columbia in Portland, my friends’ floating home is moored behind their sailboat, outlined in lights.

We had a nice few days. Toured a collection of Paul McCartney’s photos at Portland’s art museum. Shopped a holiday bazaar. Had a lovely little solstice party.

Then my digestion went south again. At 7 in the morning on Christmas Eve, I asked my hosts to drive me to another E.R.

I didn’t know it at the time, but the bug I’d suffered had a common side-effect: ulcers of the bowel. Admitted to a hospital in Vancouver, Washington, I got transfusions of five units of blood, then underwent emergency surgery on Christmas Day to stop the bleeding from a duodenal ulcer. Four hours on the table with only a local anesthetic while a surgeon probed my arteries. Ack.

Five more days in a hospital. My holidays were a culinary blur of green Jell-O and steaming yellow broth rumored to have once met a chicken. A far (and gastronomically anguished) cry from the Ritz.

Throughout the ordeal, my chums in Olympia and Portland showed me what true friendship means. The day after Christmas, daughter Lillian flew out from her new home of Philadelphia. Three weeks of her unsparing help and support was a godsend as I convalesced, first at my friends’ homes down south and finally at the Seattle-area home of my ever-generous sister-in-law Julie. I struggled to overcome stamina-robbing anemia and low blood-counts. In a quick trip to Center Island last weekend Lillian helped me transport my belongings and a carload of groceries homeward before I had to return to Seattle for final medical exams.

Tuesday night I drove Lillian to catch a Philly-bound plane. Wednesday, already halfway into January, I finally returned on my own to Nuthatch Cabin for some long-anticipated nesting and recovery time with Galley Cat.

With temperatures stuck in the 40s here, last summer’s fuchsias are still blooming on my deck. Blazes in the wood stove cheer the cabin nightly. Awakening mornings in my loft, I look out to watch each day unveil itself, whether wrapped in mist or warmed by the sun’s first lemony fingers caressing the treetops.

I’m getting back into my fitness routine, including a daily half-hour on the stationary bike. So far, so good. (Thursday I included two naps in my day’s itinerary. So I’m not overdoing.)

I’m working to boost my hemoglobin count, including another in a lineup of steak dinners tonight. Red meat isn’t my dietary norm but it helps bolster my blood, along with iron supplements.

For now, Galley Cat and I are both just glad to be home on our island. She’s back hunting the mice that live under the woodshed. I’ve returned to pleasant afternoons tapping the keyboard in my writing hut. Day by day, I’m encountering the rock’s few winter neighbors and chatting them up after my long absence. Sunny skies and coppery sunsets are a healing balm.

For now, I want to pull up the drawbridge and never leave. I hope your January offers comforts as dear.

Capital times in Olympia

Mount Rainier dominates the horizon above downtown Olympia, as seen from the West Bay Drive home I’m housesitting.

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.”

A Tiffany-created chandelier hangs inside the Capitol dome.

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.

The mist-shrouded Capitol dome rises above Capitol Lake in Olympia.

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.

Lillian’s pumpkin pie, delicious despite a slight crust malfunction.

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.

I’m thinking Oly for my future

Autumn color helps frame the Capitol dome in Olympia. At 287 feet high, it is the tallest self-supporting masonry dome in the United States. Dome trivia: Washington, D.C.’s U.S. Capitol dome, made of cast iron, is just one foot taller.

THIS DECISION WAS MADE FOR ME, by millions of unbelievably misguided American voters.

Until November 6, I was uncertain where my next move would be after more than six years of living full-time on delightful Center Island.

The morning the presidential election result became evident, I knew Olympia would be my new address. It was as clear to me as the town’s famous artesian water.

While I hate to leave the lovely San Juan Islands and my friends there, I was already considering this. I need more social interaction and community involvement than I get on an island with only 15 winter residents. Even the “big town” of Friday Harbor feels too removed from the action now.

I’m currently housesitting for friends for six weeks at their comfortable Olympia home overlooking Budd Inlet and downtown. It’s not my first time here, and I’ve always liked the town. I got my B.A. here at The Evergreen State College in the 1970s, and I still have college friends in town. My late parents chose this as a retirement community, so I visited many times in the 1990s. My daughter was part of Evergreen’s Class of 2013, so I was here for dorm move-ins, parental visits, and graduation.

This election was a sea change. As soon as I knew the outcome, I was certain I wanted to be in this little center of power in Blue America.

Here I can work for the American resistance. For now, Washington state, and its capital, remain something of a refuge. While the national results were not what I chose, our state “had a very good election,” Pramila Jayapal, my congresswoman when I lived in Seattle, told an online national gathering of almost 150,000 resisters a couple days after the election. “If anything, the state went bluer.”

Visitors play on the Rainbow Rails, a decorated stretch of abandoned railroad trestle on Olympia’s Budd Inlet. When someone repainted the rail ties black and white during last June’s Pride Month in what some labeled a hate crime against the LGBTQ community, volunteers immediately stepped forth with paint brushes to renew the rainbow colors.

Every statewide office went to a Democrat on November 5, and the Dems’ control of both houses of the Legislature grew by a few seats. The new governor-elect, Attorney General Bob Ferguson, was a national leader in filing largely successful legal challenges to the blunders of the first Trump Administration.

That galvanized my thinking. For me, Olympia can be a bastion of kinder, smarter public life. I will support the resistance by supporting this community, doing what I can to make it stronger.

If I live in Olympia, I can testify before the Legislature when good laws are being debated. It’s familiar ground: As a college student, I interned with a public television news program covering a legislative session. Living in Oly, I can add my boots on the ground to the causes of publicly minded nonprofits. When the red hats come to town, I will join the defenders of democracy waving signs on the Capitol steps. I can be a noisy old fart working for the good guys.

The choice seems simple now. This is a time and place, like 1930s Europe, when nobody gets the luxury of sitting innocently on the sidelines. My physical move will take some time — a year, or even two. But our free nation is under siege. For the moment the bozos who want us under their thumb have the edge.

It might be a battle for the rest of my life. It’s time to get started.

Salmon stream eases worldly woes

Chum salmon face many obstacles as they struggle upstream to spawn in Thurston County’s McLane Creek.

THERE’S NOTHING LIKE WATCHING salmon battle their way upstream to spawn to help take your mind off a disastrous national election.

Friday, with late-afternoon sunshine beckoning, I grabbed the camera, jumped in the car and headed out Delphi Road, southwest of Olympia, to McLane Creek Nature Trail, on the edge of Capitol State Forest. It was another step in my quest to get better acquainted with Olympia and Thurston County during my six-week housesitting sabbatical from Center Island.

McLane Creek feeds into Mud Bay, one of Puget Sound’s southernmost fingers, crossed by U.S. Highway 101 west of the state capital. The area is a lush and peaceful patch of forest, pond and stream any time of year. But on most November days the creek is asplash with hundreds of chum salmon with only one thing on their mind: making little salmon.

A determined salmon lunges through shallows in McLane Creek.

Indeed, you hear splashing well before the trail reaches the creek, because it’s a shallow stream that requires the big, determined fish to waggle their entire bodies to lunge ahead over pebbly shoals, sometimes zooming forward like a Seafair hydroplane. It adds a distinctive percussionary note to the lilting stream song.

Ferns grow from mossy maple trees along McLane Creek.

Along the looping mile or so of boardwalk and trail, admire the fuzzy cattails edging a pond that teems with newts and waterfowl. Frogs chirp and hiccup in the forest understory and flowing ferns decorate the mossy trunks of towering maples.

A footbridge over the creek offers a prime salmon-viewing spot. You’ll see (and smell! ) both living and dead fish. By the time the big fish make it this far up the stream — almost three miles from the Sound — they are battered and exhausted. After the females lay their eggs and the males fertilize them with their milt, both die. Their rotting bodies feed other wildlife and fertilize the forest.

Spending an hour marveling at this phenomenon up close was a pleasant stress-reliever. If you need to get your mind off the troublesome future, I recommend it: Go find peace in nature.

Sunday, November 10, is the annual McLane Creek Chum Salmon and Cider Celebration, 11:30 a.m.- 2 p.m. Enjoy hot cider and snacks while learning from trained Salmon Stewards. There will be a craft activity for kids. Free admission; Discover Pass required. 5044 Delphi Road S.W., Olympia.

Click on this video to see and hear the drama of McLane Creek at spawning season, with salmon both living and dead.