Posts filed under "Talking Story"
The Sappho story
In 1889, a man named Martin Van Buren Lamoreux left his home in St. John, Kansas, along with 8 of his children, his second wife, and 3 of her kids as well. Quite a cross-country trek it would have been before he ended up in the Pacific Northwest. When he got to Seattle, Lamoreux briefly […]
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Pressure drop
Thirty knot winds all day, and gusts even higher than that. I could hear the wind in the trees before I got out of bed and it’s been in my ears all day. I have a long-running uneasiness with the wind, I guess. I first felt it in Newfoundland, ten years ago. I wrote about […]
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Mount Rose, and other tales of naming rights
Mount Rose, at 4301 feet, must have had a name before this one. It’s not a major peak, even for the diminutive Olympics, but I would expect the Squaxin, the S’Klallam and others would have hung some name or another on it before Lt. George Davidson, in 1857, anchored near what is now Seattle, put […]
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A Brief return to winter
The fire wood we brought burned up pretty damn quick. At least, I thought so. It was a cold evening following a wet afternoon. We made it to the washout at the end of the Dosewallips River Road, about 10 miles in from Highway 101, by 3:00 PM. The sun that had warmed our backs […]
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Dancing class at the end of the road
We’re heading out to the Dosewallips today on a family camping trip. A few months back, I mentioned to the boy that the Dosewallips road had been washed out by the river at one point and ever since then, he’s wanted to see it. I don’t know what he thinks it will look like and […]
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Here comes the wind
The weatherman, that crazy soul, is calling for winds upward of 50 mph this afternoon. I got the morning paddle in before it really started kicking up, but I can hear it out there now, slapping the tall trees about, along with the sideways-falling rain that clacks and pings at my window. The wind was […]
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Where are they now?
These signs used to be everywhere. Hoquiam and Forks, Port Angeles and Montesano. The plywood placards were all hand made and haphazardly stenciled, and sometimes the wording would be a little different, but most of them were roughly the same. Little yellow rectangles hung in windows or on the sides of homes and businesses, an […]
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Getting to small
I packed a test load the other day and I’m happy with the way it looked. There are a few more changes to make to the way the load will be tied down, but making it fit doesn’t seem like it will be the big problem I thought it was going to be. When I […]
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Airs of heaven
It is a half-hour before dawn and somewhere in the covered boat slips at the entrance to the Foss Waterway there is incense burning. It comes on suddenly as I paddle past, completely enveloping the senses before it is gone, as quickly as it came. For me, this olfactory delight is as much a part […]
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Summer plans
Most of my personal trips, my busman’s holidays, have come during the winter. Or, if not winter, then fall or spring, perhaps. It comes with the job, really. The summer, after all, is when most people seem to want to kayak; I don’t get many calls from folks who want to head out into the […]
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A story of sea kayaking and science on the rugged coast of Alaska. Coming – Spring 2014.
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