The View from My Chair

Will you seek afar off? You surely come back at last,

In things best known to you finding the best or as good as the best,

In folks nearest to you finding the sweetest, strongest, lovingest

Happiness knowledge not in an other place but this place, not for another hour but this hour.

Walt Whitman

When I was very young my father served as a hydroelectric engineer, managing a dam on the Olympic Peninsula for Tacoma City Light. In the summertime our young family would join him, all four of us living in a small cabin on Hood Canal, a fjord that extends the length of the eastern edge of the Olympic Mountains. I remember very little about those years except for playing on the beach. I had a small bucket and a shovel and wore shorts so I could wade in the cold water searching for treasures. I also wore a ruffled white blouse, which I was fond of removing. This created considerable consternation in my mother and retribution I could never quite understand, since my brother was free to walk on the beach shirtless. Consequently I removed my blouse whenever she was not looking, a three-year-old’s act of defiance and new autonomy.

The reservoir created by the dam on the Skokomish River was Lake Cushman. In those years it was an isolated mountain lake, accessible by a dirt road from the small town of Hoodsport. In later years we brought a small boat to the lake, where my father would fish for cutthroat trout, a staple of our diet.

Many years later, whenever I drove by that power plant on the canal, I would seek out the cabin, and one day it was just gone, as if it had never existed and that portion of my childhood memory had just disappeared, along with my tendency to walk around shirtless. A state park was created on the shores of Lake Cushman, and real estate developers bought up the rest of the land that bordered the National Park, forever changing the landscape that had once been a wild place for a family in a boat.

In my early twenties when I first started backpacking alone my first trips were in the Olympics, where the trails and the landscape were familiar to me, and I felt like I was at home. In later years, as the crowds surged into those mountains, I decided I would have to find a less crowded place for my yearly backpacking adventures. I began hiking in the Pasayten Wilderness in the eastern part of Washington’s North Cascades, an area I came to love. The wilderness was immense. There remained unexplored areas without trails where I could walk along the ridge tops, taking in expansive views in all directions. I began increasing the amount of time I spent alone on the trail, eventually going on a trek that lasted a full two weeks without resupplying and requiring a sixty-five pound pack.

After moving to Wyoming I began to explore the Rocky Mountains, and when I retired my husband and I returned to the Olympic Peninsula. Our stay there was brief. Like many people he did not like the gray skies and drizzle of my home, and eventually we moved to the sunny side of the Cascade Mountains, where we found a beautiful log home nestled in the Okanogan Highlands with views of the Kettle River Mountains.

Following his death I thought I would remain there. I made many friends in my new home and have loved the quiet lifestyle in eastern Washington. My home is in the most rural part of the state and lacks a single stoplight anywhere in the entire county. The thought of leaving here is heartbreaking, but the hard work of shoveling the walk, building a fire in the morning, hauling firewood, and most of all the long drives for essential services such as specialty medical care have grown tedious.

When the idea of returning to the Olympic Peninsula first occurred to me I did my best to ignore it, but after some medical issues that required frequent trips to Spokane, a three hour drive, I finally made the decision to begin looking for a home in Port Townsend, reasoning that it would take me a long time to find the perfect house in the perfect location.

Of course you have to be careful what you wish for. A beautiful old Victorian home came on the market in December and called to me. It is located on the bluff above the harbor where I look out at those sunrises every morning from my living room window, watch the ferry come and go, and embrace the world that has never let me down.

But the sunrises are not the best part, though they are pretty wonderful. To the northeast from that window rise the peaks of the North Cascades, and though the more gentle rolling mountains of the Pasayten cannot be seen from that window, I know it is there and am comforted by that reminder.

To the west, also visible from that very same window, rise the eastern Olympic Mountains, where I can trace routes I have taken on backpacking trips. I have sat on rocks and logs and dirt and rocky beaches, sipping my tea while I admire the view. Now I sit in a chair.