Ramblin’ around the neighborhood being silly with my wife on a glorious summer evening back in 2024
William & Faithlyn, yeah, me & the Wife, laughing over by Shaq’s Big Chicken while we ramble around our neighorhood of Westminster Triangle and Highland Terrace, City of Shoreline, State of Washington. It’s a gorgeous summer evening just after 20:00 on the First of July 2024.
A midnight ride to see the Northern Lights so far south here outside Seattle revealed unexpected anomalies in the skies overhead. Were they airplanes? Stars? Or were they Alien UFOs/UAPs?
The Aurora Borealis as seen from the top bluffs of Richmond Beach Saltwater Park, Shoreline, WA, Saturday 11 May 2024 @ 12:14:07.
The Sun had erupted in a spectacular storm. Two massive solar flares burst forth from our star’s surface, a X5.8 class followed by an X1.5 along with two M9s. X’s are the most powerful of three categories of such storms, the other two being M Class, for moderate, and C for the smallest. Coronal mass ejections of plasma, or CMEs, often accompany such sunspot activity. This resulted in a G5 level geomagnetic storm, the most powerful on a scale up from G1. Various authorities issued warnings of possible interruptions of our electrical power grid including our various communications networks. They also predicted people may see the Aurora Borealis, the Northern Lights, around the world and as far south as the middle and southern belts of the United States.
Had arrived home from work around 22:00 on the night of Friday 10 May, and had to work the next day. I’ve heard these claims before: a massive solar eruption/solar storm/solar flares/coronal mass ejections or CMEs was or were in progress…our electric-power based global civilization was at risk as power grids could collapse…telecommunications, satellites, the internet, yadda yadda piñata … and, by the way, remember the Carrington Event of September 1859! And we may be able to see the Northern Lights, the Aurora Borealis, way down south. And then nothing would happen. Couldn’t see anything. So I had gone to bed and was about to fall asleep when my ex-wife Kristina, out at Seattle’s Matthews Beach Park on Lake Washington, and my buddy Edan, up on rural Whidbey Island, texted a whole group of us startling fotos of shimmering curtains and feathery rays of magenta and emerald lights undulating across the night skies. Continue reading
From a magickal evening at Lime Kiln Point State Park, San Juan Island, Washington
Ripples sparkle in the sunset on our honeymoon.
Faithlyn and I, newlyweds, sat in a restaurant on the edge of Friday Harbor and asked our server where do locals go to enjoy the best sunsets.
“At the old lighthouse at Lime Kiln!” she blurted as she stood up straight with a grin. “My parents used to run the lighthouse there back when it was a real, working lighthouse.”
So that’s where we went. Continue reading
Remembrance of Journeys Past with my Stepdaughter across the last month of 2008 and the first three months of 2009
Talia debates going to the top of Kite Hill at Magnuson Park, Seattle. Tuesday 31 March 2009.
She was my third and last child, the stepdaughter I read to while she was in her mother’s womb and caught in my hands as she was born after long hours of struggle. Kristina, TaTa’s “Chee Chee Mommastina,” called her daughter, “Little Sitting Buddha Girl,” for she would sit still and quietly observe everything around her with precision and presence. As her “DaDa William,” however, I called her my Li’l Butterfly.
Distant Olympics on a ferry ship sailing across the upper part of Puget Sound as we traversed the Salish Sea, Washington. Sunday 4 January 2009.
Sun of Godzilla
Staggered downstairs into the kitchen for a bite to eat, and thru the windows saw a strange, orange yellow red glow growing swiftly on the horizon. Forgot all about nom nom nomming on a post-midnight snack. Felt confused. Fear came alive as I watched the weird glow expand into a raw, giant, golden, Godzilla cloud.
Big windows looked west from the great, long hill in North Seattle called Phinney Ridge. I currently abide there within an old, dilapidated house built over a century ago. Shared it with two other single, divorced guys, too, plus two elderly brothers down below in the daylight basement. From an old, grandma kitchen we could look west over the top of Ballard across the Salish Sea into the Olympic Mountains. The United States of America maintained one of the world’s largest stockpiles of thermonuclear weapons right in the guts of Cascadia just over there across the water from Seattle.
A blended family returns to Olympic National Park and surrounding areas again and yet again in the Year 2008
*This is a work in progress. Enjoy anyway, woo HOO!*
Kate & Talia playing in the stinky seaweed. Makes Morgan retch, so she hangs back outa site. Friday 8 August 2008.
The Olympic Peninsula is almost a separate state from the rest of Washington. Kinda like West Virginia is to my native Virginia. It’s small, compact, remote, and rugged. Unlike West Virginia, however, it’s bordered by the Pacific Ocean on one side and the Salish Sea on the other two. Kristina, born in Seattle, grew up out there. Her dad, a dentist, a loner, and a survivor of US internment camps for Japanese-Americans, took her on numerous fishing trips deep into the river canyons of the Olympics and out into the straits even in stormy weather. We can see the peaks of Olympic National Park and the surrounding national forest wilderness areas from across the water in Seattle. I am always in awe of the everchanging views, even those of rain and clouds, whenever I gaze across the Salish Sea toward yon Olympic Mountains.
The ONP is also where Gwen & I came together as a couple back in the Summer of 1986. The wild combination of mountains, forests, glaciers, whitewater, meadows, and seashore made the ONP my favorite national park to explore. The proximity of the Olympics to Seattle is a primary reason Gwen & I raised our kids out here in Washington State as well as why Kristina & I continue to return there. At the same time, however, the Olympics are so close to Seattle yet so far away. Transportation times are long with the combination of big-city streets, ferry ships, and congested, winding, two-lane roads. Didn’t matter. For years we returned there time and again to nurture our blended families.
This little essay is my recreation of journeys and experiences in which many of the things often used to jog our memories and anchor ourselves across the fabric of timespace were destroyed in a 2010 catastrophic house fire. So many fotos were lost. So many journal entries and kids’ drawings were burned up or blotted out by smoke and water damage. If you see more pictures of some people more than others, well, the ones you see were those salvaged from the watersoaked ashes of the fire, not any judgment or demonstration of preference. The remains of recollection hereby present themselves. Enjoy anyway, and may we all learn even more from the many lessons experienced from living the lives we choose to live.
Once upon a long time ago, at least it felt so, felt so for me, I spent a full day sailing upon the Salish Sea, tipped a sailboat over so much the outermost lip of the starboard-side gunwale dipped underwater, and I ended up rocking a porta potty across the deep inner sea. It was a perfect summer day blessed with happy yellow sunshine and cool breezes. Sublime views of mountains, islands, and sparkling seas reaffirmed our decision to move out here to Cascadia. Gwen Hughes, my wife at the time and one of my exes today and still a dear friend, had moved together with me to Seattle from our native Virginia. We had previously been out here for parts of 1986-1987 and wanted to get back West. After living in North Carolina, Virginia, Georgia, and briefly even Vermont, we said farewell to the East Coast with our 1991 thruhike of the Appalachian Trail. In January of 1992 we returned to our beloved Pacific Northwest.
Gwen had worked for a small, model toy sailboat company during her earlier time in Cascadia. Tippecanoe Boats was founded in 1983 by a lovely, wackyfun couple from places back East. These were anti-electric motor toys back in those days, too, real sailing model sailboats, not merely whirring, radio-operated, mechanical robots. Years later, however, the company evolved into making exquisitely crafted, stunningly gorgeous, radio-controlled model sailboats. Back in the 80s, tho, Gwen helped cut and sew the sails from real nylon spinnaker cloth, pack and load up inventory, help sell the boats at art fairs, craft shows and outdoor festivals, and lots of grunty-grunt work.
Even I did some work for a few short weeks, soldering rudders plus a few other things. I was a lousy solderer, however, as too much made the rudder too heavy. Such distortions left the toy model sailboat off-balanced, and while my clumsy efforts became more refined as I progressed, even earning an occasional kudos, Will, the primary owner, and I realized I wasn’t playing to my strengths. The cool thing was Chris, one of our other T-boat workers, also worked at the magnificent Honey Bear Bakery. Occasional treats came our way, and even more as the primary owner of Tippecanoe disliked ingesting yummy bearilicious refined white sugar products. Aye, those were halcyon days for us early migrants to the then-Emerald City. The worldwide Cold War had ended, the forever Global War on Terror was a ways off, smartfone and socmed addiction was yet to be, and there were mountains to climb, trails to hike, and seas to sail! Continue reading