Gazing west across the Salish Sea to the Olympics from aboard the MV Issaquah. My car, a blue Ford Taurus Wagon from the turn of this new century, sits over on picture right with a chock block wedged against the tires. It’s 09:36 on a cold, clear Saturday morning on the 5th of December 2009. Love being out here amidst open water, mountains, sky, the early morning sun, and a Waning Gibbous Moon still high in the sky. The Moon was full just three days earlier.

Cruising across Puget Sound, a major arm of the Pacific’s Salish Sea, on currently calm waters. In the quietness, even with the clanging chugging of the old ferry ship, built and launched in 1979, I felt open to the sacredness of nature and felt the presence of the Divine itself. Nature has been my church of sorts ever since boyhood.

Don’t recall what brought me out here on this ferry to the West. It may have been a day hike, tho more likely was a solo trip out to Port Townsend for a personal training and development seminar or a men’s group event. Could have been a Native American Church event, and most likely was to attend a gathering put on by local wisdom elders of note including Daniel Duane Deardorff, aka Danny or 3D. “3D” was a brilliant and remarkable musician and mythologist who called himself the Mythsinger. As a survivor of childhood polio who struggled with post-polio syndrome, Danny also served as a disabilities rights advocate. On top of these matters he was a bit of a spiritual contemplative outside the pale of any one organized religion. Now am pretty sure he’s the main reason I’m off to Port Townsend over on the Greater Olympic Peninsula. Maybe I’m in error, it’s been over 15 years now. I do recall a deep and intimate gathering.

Approaching land. The MV Issaquah sailed from Edmonds to Kingston here in Washington. The old ferry has served on many routes. I wondered if MV stood for “Marine Vessel.” Right? Wrong, LOL! MV stands for “Motor Vehicle,” and, yes, the Issaquah is indeed a big, old motor boat ship. I love ferries. They’re the backbone of the marine state highway system. The ferry network here in Washington is the largest and most robust in the United States. There are smaller ones up and down the East Coast, Alaska, and elsewhere, but here, across the Salish Sea, ferries rule. The waters are too wide and too deep to build bridges at reasonable and pragmatic costs, altho such bridges have been considered. The deepest point in the whole Salish is around 2,000 feet deep. The deepest in the Puget Sound arm is about 938 feet deep, altho its average depth is 230 feet. Away I go, yo, aboard this ferry to the West!

Gliding in closer with engines humming.

Nature. God. Machines. Humans. Aliens, too, yes? The Cosmos is a dynamic vastness.

Moon over the Olympics,

Mountains across the water.