Beauty and the rain

BELLINGHAM, Wash. - There are in this country distant edges that few Americans reach … where the people are scarce but the landscape is rich.

Northern Michigan is such a place. So, too, is Vermont.

Meghan and the San Juan Islands

And along the Pacific Ocean, there’s Northwestern Washington.

We’re visiting this week, thankful on Thanksgiving that daughter Meghan has moved to this verdant area to do graduate work at Western Washington University. We flew up Thanksgiving morning – Zach, Cindy and myself.

I’ve had brief glimpses before of the Northwest. We came to Seattle in 1995 for a convention and enjoyed tourist spots like Pike Place and, remarkably, five days of sun.

Then there was a trade show in Portland, Ore., in 2008, where the highlight – actually, a true joy – was a visit to Multnomah Falls. And a friend who lives in Bremerton, Wash., sends occasional photos via Facebook of his favorite Pacific Coast hiking spots. All so stunning.

But those were and are mere glimpses of the beauty this area holds. A closer look this week during hikes and other travels revealed not only white-faced mountains and massive, moss-covered trees that pierce the sky, but carpets of soft pine needles, blankets of green ferns, the smooth shadowy beauty of bay islands distant to the west and pure glacial streams where the salmon run free.

Yes, water … so much water.

Bellingham, just 30 miles south of the Canadian border, has all of those things, and much more.

The city, which started as a fishing, logging and coal-mining community, today often appears on those “Best Places” lists … best place to live, to retire, to re-create yourself. I especially understand the last one. It seems ideal for redefining one’s life – to slow down, reassess and, if necessary, begin again.

That’s because there’s a mellowness here despite all the coffee. People mind the speed limit, almost to a fault. There’s a quiet, cheerful confidence that abounds. Called the “City of Subdued Excitement,” Bellingham seems to embrace this nickname, not with embarrassment but with a quiet chuckle.

And while residents of other cities fight nature toe to toe – we curse the snow because it slows our commute, despise the hot because it burns our grass, fear rain because it floods our basements – here, life meets nature in a splendid dance.

Meghan and fiance Eric, tree huggers

“Green” in Bellingham isn’t some hot new branding technique embraced by Madison Avenue. It’s a way of life.

Ahh, you ask. But what about all that rain … and so little sun?

“Here comes the rain again,

falling on your head like a memory.”

Yeah, the song was originally done by the Eurythmics, but it's  enthusiastically sung by Death Cab for Cutie, a Bellingham indie band.

All the rain is true, although mainly in these colder months. But life carries on. You won’t find umbrellas here, because you’d be opening and closing them 50 times a day. The rain seems to come in small, gentle waves – often just a mist. So a hat, scarf, good water shoes and some sweater-coat-hoody combination will do.

There’s pride in the rain – it is nature’s sustenance, and so it is everyone’s.

Certainly, none of these attributes is unique to Bellingham. Much the same is said about Portland, Seattle and the rest of the Northwest. But Bellingham seems a microcosm of this region’s relaxed style.

Cindy and I talk a lot about a transition plan and other places to put down roots. We’re certainly not at the Bucket List stage of our lives, but we’ve been planted in the central part of the country since birth. We think change would eventually do us good.

And so we came to Bellingham with eyes wide open, not necessarily to consider this city our next stop. But certainly to consider the Northwest.

On the Fragrance Lake trail

Interestingly, we measure each new place against the yardstick of Northern Michigan and our beloved Glen Lake.

Meghan and Zach both commented when they first arrived that Bellingham reminded them of that home away from home … beautiful water, tall evergreens, cottages dotting shorelines.

It’s comforting that there are other places like Glen Lake.

It’s telling that it is so very hard to let Glen Lake go.



(Click here to see Fragrance Lake, up close and personal!)

The Great Apple Wars

It’s fall and apple-picking time.

Reminds me of the war zone we called our back yard while growing up.

First, the scene: As youngsters, I and neighbors Mikey, Bill, Tommy and Johnny made a habit of playing “army” in the back yard. We’d wield plastic guns, rubber knives, hollow toy hand grenades with the heft of a wiffle ball. It was not unusual.  Many kids still do it.

But our battleground included the entire southern half of our block … patches of territory separated by hedgerows and wire fences, all under the thick canopy of towering trees. For us, raised on the TV hit “Combat,” it was our own French field of fire.

But in the late summer and fall, things got serious.  Next door to the east were a couple of apple trees long abandoned by their owner.  By August and September, they would produce tight, round, green bullets perfect for throwing.  And just like when we shed our plastic weapons for bottle rockets around July 4^th, we eagerly took up J. Appleseed's ammo by Sept. 1st.

Military strategists know that as threats escalate, so must defenses.

So it was with us. We’d long ago learned our lesson: These green beauties can sting like a bee if they zip through the air and reach a leg, arm or your butt.

Take one on the head? Guaranteed shiner.

So we’d pad up. I remember Johnny favored shoulder pads and a football helmet. Tommy the same, though his helmet was the old leather style worn by some ancient gridiron great. Don’t know where he got that.

Me?  I had an old shell of an actual World War II helmet that I wore with pride … though it was about two sizes too big.  It fell off every time I’d reach down for a new apple.

But the best defense was something we called “the trench.”

A pause for gratitude: My folks tolerated a lot from me while growing up. Spook houses in the basement; spook houses in the attic; life-size Gemini spaceship mockups made of old chairs and sheets; a miniature golf course in the front yard involving scalped grass, leftover boards from the basement and the digging of nine strategically placed, 4-inch holes.

And the backyard “trench.” The word doesn’t do it justice.  Each year, we would spend multiple weekends with shovel and spade digging a hole at the back end of our lot to a depth not seen since Verdun. Only when we could stand up, our heads just clearing the surface, would we consider it deep enough.

As for surface dimension, it was always longer than wide … I’m guessing 6 x 3 foot.  And we’d cover the bulk of it with plywood, though we'd also leave a hole large enough for one of us to pop up, hurl an apple, and quickly hunker down again.

It was impenetrable. During the Great Apple Wars of Hawthorne Avenue, it was a game-changer.

Now, naturally, my parents’ tolerance for this backyard chasm had its limits. So we’d have to fill it back up each year once Armistice was reached.

But in the digging and filling, we learned a lot about the geology of that spot of ground.

Rumor had it that it was once a sinkhole – a place of mystery, really.  The word was that earlier owners of our house would toss junk into it. The hole then, like the toothy sand-pit monster of Star Wars, would suck down the trash, presumably to the depth of the Earth’s molten core, and render the rubbish to liquid.

It’s at least partly true. Although we never felt the hole’s vacuum grip as we dug, the digging was always easy, and on occasion we’d uncover an old tea pot, a busted tool or a rusty pie plate.

But the real prize was uncovered many years later.  I didn’t witness this but was told about it by my parents' neighbors.  The new owners of our house apparently were having some work done back there. And the ground burped up a hand grenade. 

Not the plastic sort.  A real one … vintage World War II.

This caused all sorts of consternation on the sleepy block.  The fire department and police were called. I believe the news crews, too.  I don’t recall whether the city of Webster Groves had a bomb squad –  doubt it – but they successfully removed it without a boom.

We speculated that our Uncle Bob might have dropped the grenade into the pit. Before we moved in, Bob had frequented the house quite a bit. He also was a World War II vet, and he had the no-nonsense personality to seek quick solutions to troublesome problems.

What to do with an old souvenir hand grenade?  Toss it to depths rarely seen.

I might have done the same thing.

Anyway, it’s all fitting.  To think that we were hurling green grenades while a real one lay buried nearby.

Imagine a blast from that baby. Talk about a game-changer ….