Boxing Day Tour of The Pilchuck

Women, they're always late. 

Women, they're worth the wait.

My wife arrived on a late flight Christmas Day, up from the West Pole, just outside of Dallas, Texas. I am so pleased to have her here at The Pilchuck; still a construction site, but far enough along for me to call it home.

The Christmas gift opening upon here arrival at the house had come to a halt as Sue expressed more interest in falling asleep after a long day of travel, it being 3 AM for her, so we retired to bed last night (or was it this morning?) with the promise of extending Christmas into the 26th. And beyond.

Big changes have transformed the house. I was delighted to show her around once we and the northern sun were up. I had secret hopes that if I could build a fancy, whimsical and beautiful house for her, maybe she would never leave and never go back to Texas. Maybe she would be enchanted and stay a spell with me on The Pilchuck.

Looking up through the octagonal kitchen skylight

The wife explores her options in the kitchen pantry cabinets

Sue finds the place where I hid the tea mugs. Must have that tea!

A tour of the luxury bathroom downstairs. Note the streambed pebbled tile on the floor.

Stone counter tops throughout the house, this is downstairs bedroom before mirrors installed.

Boxing Day - time to renew the gift opening that was called due to darkness last night.

Sue had packed in her luggage a Christmas gift from Grant and Kaileen. A custom welcome mat to announce the official unofficial name for this place. Well done Grant and Kaileen!

We put it at the back door to welcome Inga and Sean as they plan to be here for a few days over the New Year. Hoping Grant and Kaileen get to use their welcome mat before it wears out.

Come one, come all, all are welcome for the Pilchuck Tour!

Hope to see y'all in 2023!

Country Christmas on the Pilchuck

Sue and I take a perverse pleasure in characterizing ourselves as 'we are not planners.' At times, some degree of planning is forced upon us. Apparently one cannot just show up at the airport and take a seat and ask the pilot to take me Seattle. The airlines insist that we have planned a specific day, a specific time and a specific flight to a specific destination. 

Wanting to celebrate Christmas 2022 together requires some degree of planning. We talked over the phone as she scrolled through travel booking options on her computer. One option was Jet Blue; inexpensive, but to get the cheapest deal she would have to commit to become a member to benefit from their discounts. Jet Blue travel would also require a layover. I suggested that Jet Blue was not the best plan.

Another option was Southwest Airlines. Convenient departure point in Dallas, but again a layover was required and I thought any planned layover during holiday travel was akin to planning on trouble.

We agreed to plan on flying direct from Dallas to Seattle on Alaska Air. For a few dollars more one could pretty much plan on the fact that once in the air, you were going to make it to Seattle. No layover, no fuss, no muss. No brainer.

It was a good plan. Winter weather across the continent had snarled air traffic and brought consternation to the holiday traveling nation. Southwest had a horrific meltdown in their system, stranding tens of thousands and sending their luggage to parts unknown while people stewed in hostile lines waiting for a way out of purgatory.

The Spirit of Christmas -
a lit tree fits my bay window perfectly

Alaska Airlines delivered my wife with a 40 minute delay. We plucked her bag from carousel #14 in Seattle as we passed hell's half acre of lost/unclaimed baggage heaped in front of the SW Airlines' office. Good plan, great call - especially for 'non-planers.'

It was a late Christmas Day flight anyway, and it was already a quarter 'til midnight when I unlocked the gate in the rain to take my Texas girl up the curved driveway to the new house. I paused as we rounded the curve so she could take in the scene of the house lit from down below.

After a moment or two of wondering why I'd paused, "You got a Christmas Tree for me!" she squealed in surprise. Yes. Yes I did. I knew she had not gotten a tree to decorate the house in Texas. It seem only proper to start Christmas in the 'Evergreen State' together next to a live Christmas tree. The first of a few more surprises.

I carried her heliotrope bag into the house, complete with two functional beds. I directed her to the tree, and she was again surprised to see several wrapped gifts beneath the boughs. 'Ooh, you know I didn't bring you anything for Christmas," she offered apologetically. 

Welcome to the Pilchuck Christmas

I corrected her with a kiss, "Not so. I got got what I most wanted for Christmas. I can wait to unwrap it."

I suggested she go first. She picked a festive box from the floor and opened it. We talked as she yawned. It was approaching 1 AM - 3 AM Texas Time. "What say we leave the rest of these for tomorrow. I'm kind of exhausted."

Sue's stocking, stuffed with Christmas goodies - and she can wear it too.

Sue selects a surprise gift

Photo of Cook Family barn that once stood on the property

I agreed and we slid across the sparse room to find a nice bed in the next room with clean, fresh sheets for a long winter's nap.

I promised her a daylight tour of the place for Boxing Day. "But first, let's tuck you into bed and let you dream of sugar plums," I insisted.

White on the Outside, Warm on the Inside

 Inside looking out.

In a week comes Santa Clause. Now comes the Santa weather from the North Pole.

I have moved from the travel trailer parked under the grove of fir and cedar trees and into the house. Many details to yet to be installed to make this house a home, but the necessities of hot running water, a bed and most of a real kitchen are in place. And there was much rejoicing in my change of fortune.

Just in the Saint Nick of time, I settled in inside as the snow began to settle on the evergreen branches outside my window. It is better to be inside looking out than outside looking into the house, as was my fortune last year.

I have heat and air conditioning with an energy efficient heat pump, but also plenty of alder and proto-firewood all about my 50 acres that will feed my wood burning stove in the cozy chimney corner of my living room. 

The trailer under snow, a view of my erstwhile abode. Happy to be warm inside the new house.

Last winter brought several snowfalls from Christmas through February. Accumulations got to 14-inches and the house was yet to be dried-in, so my subflooring became an ice rink, unfit for habitation, fit only for dreaming of the day when I could be inside looking out. That day arrived December 14, 2022.

I sing, "Let it snow, let is snow, let it snow." I invite my wife in Texas to come on up, telling her, Oh the weather outside is frightful, but the fire is so delightful...

She promises I can pick her up on Christmas Day. I can't to wait to sit with her  by the fire as we conspire. It will be fun to unwrap her, my Christmas gift, as we play the Eskimo way. 

Day...

...and Night

A Visit form Ol' Saint Nick

 The stockings were hung with the greatest of care,

In hopes that Saint Nick soon would be there...

Looking for a bit of Holiday Good Cheer, if not a bit of Christmas magic; I put up a 6' Douglas Fir Christmas Tree in my otherwise vacant living room. I am making attempts to create some sense of normality and hominess after 14 months of a life filled full with disruptions. 

Living in isolation in a small travel trailer on our 50 acres sometimes wears me out and I lose track of the dream, even though it is just yards away in the form of a slowly rising to completion dream home. This season I like to look at the live tree I set inside my unfurnished house and dream of having my own stand of Christmas Trees to be harvested from our land and shared among kith and kin in Christmases to come. I believe at 65 it is still good to have Christmas dreams, just like ones I had years ago when I was 5.

It has been a difficult year in large part. However, with a change in season, I am striving to change the dismal attitude that descends upon me in these parts. What better way to improve one's demeanor than to assume the mantle of Kris Kringle, Dear ol' Saint Nick and become the embodiment of Father Christmas?

I've got the Santa vibe going, more by happenstance than by a purposeful channeling of the inner Jolly Old Elf. Since I've been otherwise engaged and have not seen fit to get out and get my hair cut for months, I have grown to look like a classic Santa if I don the conical red cap (otherwise, maybe I resemble the Norse god Odin). Some cynics may suggest I look more like the homeless drifters on the streets of Seattle. However, I do enjoy rocking the epic, natural and totally organic 'Santa beard'. 

The weather is doing its part to bring along the North pole vibe as well. Snow showers throughout the day today (Sunday, December 18, 2022) with snow in the forecast for several more days. I am expecting just normal rain by the time Christmas arrives in a week.

Let it also be known that I am not so concerned about hanging stockings with care; rather I am more concerned about getting the basement leak fixed, the flooring installed, the plumbing finished and some furniture moved inside the new house and assembled. It's always something, hobgoblins of building and maintenance know no holiday. 

Christmas is only a week away and we are much behind schedule. At the top of my Wish List is to have a real bed inside the house for Sue and me to sleep on when she arrives on Christmas Day. 

Second on the long Wish List is to have the indoor plumbing complete. I was hoping for an early Christmas, imploring Santa to bring me indoor plumbing when he came down the flue, instead it was the plumber who came down with the flu. Gratification delayed. Is Saint Nickolas really a Calvinist?

    ***    ***     ***

Dear Santa, 

I've been a very good boy all year living up here by myself. So please consider that I need a Master BR sinks and plumbing for my basement BR luxury bathtub, toilet and sinks. As you know they were supposed to be installed last Thursday.

                                                        Merry Christmas to you and the elves,

                                                                Mark

***

Third on the Wish List is for the shower and tub enclosures to be installed. The Christmas miracle for a complete bathroom is looking just like that - a miracle. 

Nothing is easy when it comes to building this house. The tankless water heater was installed and I was told, "You'll love this, you will never run out of hot water." However, soon after installation, when I tried to fill the guest bathtub with hot water to sooth my aching muscles, I got only ice cold water and the beeping alarm on the tankless water heater flashing "Code 12". Once the plumber returns, he will need to fix Code 12 and get me into hot water again. Interesting that I do have hot water coming out of the shower in the Master Bedroom [for that I am thankful]. Go figure. Nothing is easy or simple.

Troubles not withstanding, I am grateful for two flush toilets indoors, some hot water and now a working refrigerator. 

The Spirit of Christmas -
a lit tree fits my bay window perfectly

Of course, Santa Baby now living up here close to the North Pole, is most excited to welcome Mrs. Clause arriving via Alaska Airlines from Texas to Seattle on Christmas Day. She should make everything better.

I'll put her at the top of my Wish List and let the rough side drag for all of the other punch list items.

It's getting to feel a lot like Christmas 'round here!

Merry Christmas and to all a Good Night!

Outside looking in. My Christmas house.

It's My Birthday Potty!

 

It's my Birthday Potty!

What's the best birthday gift your ever received? 

For me it is difficult to name a specific present over the last 65 years, but on this, my 65th birthday, I got an item which ranks high on my wish list and high in enjoyment. I got an indoor flush toilet installed. Whoop-Pee! 

As has been chronicled here, I've been living an isolated existence since October, 2020 (13 months and counting) in an old travel trailer on the construction site where my new home is being built. I paid $140 per month for a rental port-a-potty sitting next to my trailer home to be serviced once a week. 

The construction of the home had progressed enough by November to have the floors installed. And once the tile on the bathroom floor was down, the next thing in the building sequence was the ability to have an indoor flush toilet installed. Actually, a special request was made, and granted, by the plumber to deliver and hook up a single toilet. The plumber would prefer to not make several trips out to my house for fixture installation, rather, he'd prefer to wait for my floors and my counter tops to be installed first, then return to put in all of my sinks, faucets, toilets, garbage disposal, dish washer and water heater all at the same time.

As a favor, he agreed to make a special trip to put in one single potty in the master bathroom. It was a special birthday for me, I was flush with excitement when the plumber scheduled to show up on Wednesday, the 23rd.

Oh crap! When I returned from lunch on Tuesday the 22nd, I discovered that my port-a-potty had been removed prematurely a day too soon. Greenhaus rental had been notified that they were to pick up their outhouse on Friday, the 25th.  Yet, ahead of the Thanksgiving holiday, they came and took what was their's three days ahead of schedule, leaving me in the lurch - or out in the forest, where I could be said to be left in the larch. 

Was I back to au natural, using the woods like the proverbial bears? Yes, I was - but for how long? I hoped against hope that the plumber and his throne of porcelain would arrive soon. But how long must I wait?

Some autumnal mornings here in NW Washington the temperature dipped to 19 degrees (F), making for some frosty sittings. 

The plumber did arrive as scheduled - on my 65th birthday. 

Turning 65 and raking in all of those senior discounts and ditching Obamacare and using my Medicare eligibility would be an eventful milestone; but all of that paled to the visceral comforts of receiving an indoor flush toilet at age 65.

I treated myself to a lonely teriyaki beef dinner for my 65th birthday, served on a styrofoam takeout container.  

My birthday has passed, and so has my birthday dinner. The former passed totally uneventfully, the latter has passed in a most civilized style.

It's my potty and I'll cry if I want to. 

 

Frosty Flora

 It often escapes me, but there are plenty of things, small things, regular things that come with each day that I believe I should rejoice in.

It must be the weight of the hard things that makes them settle to the bottom. I'm told it is only natural to start at the bottom and then work your way up. So easy to feel like I'm at the bottom when I've been living in a small trailer for fourteen months, living in isolation, existing far away from my best girl, far away from her in so many ways. Eating microwave meals every night and bedding down not long after the sun slips away. It is difficult to not even be sure where home is for me. My soul sinks and rattles at the bottom with all of those hard things.

Then comes a frosty sunrise. The eastern light blazes through the bare limbs of the alder and cotton wood at the edge of Pilchuck Creek. I rise in the light for I need to open the gate for contracting crews to come build my house. 

The house, still a construction site, but edging toward completion...

A month ago, the autumnal maples dressed in a seductive red one October morning and delighted me with their fine, fancy colors outside the guest bedroom window. Fall has a tinge of melancholy, bidding farewell to summer's abundance but offering a crisp air of expectations, heralding the coming changes that fill so many senses. Autumn is rich in harvest tastes, rich in color, rich in thankfulness for what has come high in the summer.   

Red October surrounds shows around the Pilchuck

Now a month beyond the scarlet October's foliage, I find myself waking into a frosty November landscape, the long, dark night let the chilled fog slink into the trees and grasses.

With the sun comes hope and a magical change; all the world is shine with tiny encrusting diamonds which have grown on every surface overnight. Bright rays dispel the charming fog, giving me that crisp, enchanting view of the land. 

I rejoice in small things. I have been granted a new day, I rise from my warm sleeping bag and land of my feet with good health, and an abundance of small blessing of family, a faithful wife, a couple of kind kids who are nothing but joy and a chance to build a home that was once but a dream.

I grab my camera and look at the fields around me through the view-finder. A camera in hand, held to my eye, gives me a refined focus on the world. I adjust the settings as I stop and stoop into this dazzling, sunlit world as I make my way to the gate 1/6 of a mile down the graveled driveway. 

I capture the charm of the frosty flora before it melts away like fairy gifts. I am delighted and captivated by the simple beauty.

I share it with you.

Autumnal grasses grow silver

Encrusting crystals of ice dazzle my eyes

Bountiful Blackberries

 Blackberries - Bane becomes beatitudinal breakfast bowl.

All year I cursed the thicket of thorns; they encroach and smoother the old apple orchard, denying me access to the noble fruit of Washington State. Those clawing canes of the brutal berry vines now cover the paths that were opened as late as last March, preventing me from wandering my own land. Squatters with a million million stickers have overwhelmed me with their verdant vileness.

Those prickly bastard blackberries have been the bane upon my surrounding landscape while living here on the banks of Pilchuck Creek, have now bloomed and born fruit.

What was cursed has become sublime. I rise with an early sun to slip the key into the locked gate to open my drive to contractors and their construction deliveries, and along the way to the gate, I gather sweet, sublime berries in their prime. 

Early September is bright and mild upon land. In reply, the land offers up a bounty of sweet, juicy delights. There is nothing finer than ingesting the  promises of late summer's dawning sunlight directly into ones soul. Plucking the perfect blackberry from its dew-drenched vine and popping it past the lips makes me think this fresh day is already perfect.

One for me, one for the bowl. One for the bowl, one for me. My fingers, stained purple by the berry's ripeness run nimbly past the gauntlet of thorns. I have soon gathered a bountiful bowl of blackberries. Breakfast on the Pilchuck is a blessing.

Around The Mountain

 I rose early. It was going to be a tall day; a day of renewed friendship, a day of exploration, a day away from the home building job site, a day to celebrate life in the Pacific Northwest. My dried fruit, water bottles and peanut m&m's for the trail were packed in my pack the night before.

I was grateful for the invitation from my longtime friend Ruth and her husband Garry to join them for a day in Mount Rainier National Park. I met Ruth in the summer of 1975 at a National Science Foundation course involving marine biology, oceanography and mathematics held on the Humbolt State campus in Arcadia, California. Ruth and I corresponded over the last 47 years, now mainly on birthdays, but made efforts to visit one another now and again in the course of our lives.

Three adventurers on Mt Rainier for a day

 

Knowing that Ruth and Garry have a daughter living in Seattle, I invited them  earlier in the summer to consider coming to visit me when they are in the Seattle area, once my house 50 miles north of Seattle is finished. Ruth replied that they were going to be in Washington and offered to meet me at the National Park Inn inside the Mt. Rainier National Park. I checked my schedule, no contractors to meet that weekend, so it was a go for me. I checked their location and planned a route the day before. It was a good route.

When I was locking the gate behind me, I audibled into my phone; "Driving directions to National Park Inn, Mount Rainier, Washington." Against my better knowledge and judgement, I followed the directions given to me by my dull-normal phone. If my phone was truly a smart phone, it would have distinguished 'inn' for 'in'. It didn't - my mistake. Result, I came into the Park in the northeast corner and I wanted to be meeting Ruth and Garry in the southwest corner of the park. It is long distance on two-lane mountain roads, one of which was washed out, meaning my navigational no-no was going to take hours from which to recover.

There is limited cell signal around Mt Rainier, but I managed to communicate that I'd made a navigational mistake and it would be a long time before I got to my intended destination to join them. I felt bad about wasting hours of their day waiting for me, I almost just turned around in shame and planned to text them my regrets for getting lost and wish them an enjoyable day to themselves once I got back into civilization with a cell tower. Instead, I tucked my tail between my legs, lowered my head and pressed on in my guilt and was warmly received around 1 PM far from the scheduled 9 AM reunion.

I met Garry for the first time, a dedicated breeder and cultivator of iris species. Ruth and I caught up on families, careers and old memories as I piled into their van and we were off, bound for adventure and sight-seeing on the slopes of Washington's iconic volcano.

Christine Falls, a short hike for our first stop

Upper Christine Falls

Garry drove us to Christine Falls, and we took a short hike across the bridge and descended down the slope to get a great full-faced look at this beautiful cascade.

Lower Christine Falls

We soaked in the beauty and I collected several images on my digital disk before we returned and headed up the mountain for more vantages.

 

Nisqually River rushing down the flanks of Mt Rainier

 

Snow-fed Nisqually River

 One never knows if the mountain will be 'out' from one day to the next. Or for that matter, one never knows if one will have a view of Rainier's peak from one moment to the next. The clouds can cover the mountain for days and then he will show against the blue sky in all of his pristine white mantled glory. 

We lucked out and pulled into a vantage point and got a glimpse of the peak between clouds runs.

 

Snowy whiskers of a wildman against the snowy crown of Mt Rainier

It got to be time to break out the trail snacks for a lunch, Ruth suggested we dine at Reflection Lakes. And so it was done. The peak came in and out of view, the sunshine was bright, the alpine air crisp and the company outstanding.

 

Garry and Ruth enjoy the scenery on the sunny shores of Reflection Lake

Rainier Rises above the crystal waters of Reflection Lake

We parked at the top of Narada Falls, Ruth with a sore knee, was not sure she wished to do the hike down and back up to see the falls at their fullest. But the spirit of adventure prevailed and we all three walked around and over the edge of this magnificent falls.

In the proper spot, when the sun breaks through the clouds, the heavy mist is illuminated with the colors of the rainbow. Ruth was especially pleased at the rainbow spectacle found before us and she declared it was worth the effort to see such a sight. Ruth is a an indulgent fancier of rainbows.

Narada Falls, Mt. Rainier National Park

Rainbow mist at the base of Narada Falls

We concluded our day of excursions with a easy loop interpretive hike across from the National Park Inn where early entrepreneurs and advocates for Mt. Rainier had built primitive mineral baths and tourist accommodations in the 19th Century.

We enjoyed a Sherpa dinner together outside the park before we parted ways. I checked in with sister Sheri for the night in Tumwater, Ruth and Garry had more adventures planned around The Mountain for the morrow.

It was a grand day of reacquainting and sight-seeing - once I overcame and rerouted my phone GPS and landed in the proper place, even if it was beyond the proper time.

Here is to long time friendships and intermittent adventures! 

Enjoy the journey!

Independence Day: High Hopes - Empty Pots

 I enjoy a standing invitation to join by brother-in-law Bob and his wife Ann for a weekly dinner at their La Conner table. One long summer evening Bob says to me, "Mark, you got to get yourself a Washington fishing licenses so we can go out and catch some crabs."

Bob speaks the truth. I want to live the Washington-way and catch crabs and salmon and ling cod and other good and fresh delicacies from the briny depths of Puget Sound. As the first act of an official resident of the State of Washington, I obtain my fishing license using my local Washington address. 

Bob readies his craft to launch from Coronet Bay

 

 

Into the crab waters we sail

My licensed (empty) crab pot

Bob calls me and says that I should come on out for the Fourth of July and we'll go launch his boat from Coronet Bay and pick up the crab pots. The hope is we'll be feasting on Dungeness crab this Independence Day.

Bob navigates using GPS locations marked on his phone toward a 'hole' off the beach of Fidalgo Island where our crab pots have been set. I hold the gaff hook, snagging the buoy. I haul the 100 feet of weighted rope up from the depths, only to be disappointed that we have trapped undersized red rock crab. Not one of the three crab pots has a keeper inside.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bob gives me a boat tour as we sail out under the Deception Pass bridge and then circle back to Coronet Bay. Spending the 4th of July trying to haul in crabs was a new and wonderful activity for the holiday for me.

Deception Pass Bridge from below - I've never seen it from this perspective

 

Bob pilots his boat through the narrow Canoe Passage under Deception Pass Bridge

 

To make things up, Bob grilled and served me a big steak and corn on the cob  and then it was time to take me and the family and his grand kids into La Conner. Between the municipality and the Swinomish Indians on the adjoining reservation, the most spectacular, long-lasting display of roaring, flashing, booming and bursting pyrotechnics filled the night sky in the most impressive show I have ever witnessed.

I love America. 

It was a grand Independence Day.