A New Addition

(I have to get one more entry in before the next month!)

Meet the newest member of our humble driveway:

We call him Shitty Blue.

Belgium For Sale

While seeking-out-then-catching-up-on international news, I discovered that Belgium is for sale. If you have the financial means I highly recommend considering this worthy investment. If not for the culture, history, and wonderful people, than at least for the food and beer!

Coming Up for Air

How embarrassing. I have to post before I hit the one-month mark. There have been many moments when I've thought, "That's got to go in the blog for my trusted-but-few loyal readers out there." But there have also been many distractions, not the least of which is going from no jobs to three in only a matter of weeks. And then there's the dissertation . . .

No excuses, though, just a few teasers and random thoughts:

• We are what we eat. Our move to the Northwest has included, among many wonderful things, an increased awareness of the origins of our food. Thanks in part to Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, Z and I have been making increased efforts to shop locally and rid our bodies of high fructose corn syrup. With a refrigerator full of kale and zucchini, we are at two weeks and counting!
• Back to the Presbys. After two years working in the Lutheran Church I've found a choir position with a local Presbyterian church in North Tacoma. Out with the sung liturgy, in with the praise music ...
• The women's choir at PLU is shaping up to be en excellent ensemble this year! And after our beginning-of-the-year retreat, which took place yesterday, I now know more than I ever wanted to about first crushes, favorite TV shows, and "most daring things you've ever done."
• I'm singing with a group in Seattle, The Esoterics, in a fascinating upcoming concert of contemporary Islamic sacred music. Check out the link and come on by if you are in the neighborhood. Tickets from Belgium should only run about 750 euro!
• A colleague and I have decided to join forces later this fall and put together an early music/contemporary choral concert of professional-level singers in an effort to set up an audience base in the Tacoma/South Puget Sound region. As you can imagine, the madbyrd in me is orgasmically excited about this opportunity.

Finally, I am almost-but-not-quite-as excited about the season premier of Heroes tonight. Let's hope that the writing has improved and that certain undesirable characters have been written off!

A Bit of Europe in the Northwest

Z and I recently took a short vacation (our second official one in seven years of marriage) to Victoria, BC. Recently voted one of the top 5 cities to visit in the world, Victoria represents the best of all my holiday dreams. It abounds with outdoor cafes, boutique shops, and beautiful gardens, all situated on a harbor and surrounded by majestic mountains. It is, essentially, a little taste of Europe nestled in the heart of the Pacific Northwest.

Victoria lies just a few hours from our doorstep. We hit the road around 9:30 AM, drove across the new Tacoma Narrows Bridge and onto sleepy Kitsap Peninsula. Two-and-a-half hours later we reached Port Angeles on the Olympic Peninsula, parked our car, had a quick diner lunch, and boarded the ferry for the 90-minute crossing. We had full sun, light breezes, and great views of mountains on all sides. Fifteen minutes after pulling in we had disembarked, walked to our hotel to check in, and were on our way to our first-of-many outdoor cafes.

Victoria Harbor, excuse me, Harbour, bustles with sea traffic. As we pulled in we were surrounded by other ferries, executive yachts, small sailboats, cute local ferry taxis, and seaplanes. Everything worth seeing in Victoria is right here. The Parliament buildings stand side-by-side with old, majestic hotels. Horse-drawn carriages rumble along tree-lined streets chock full of street performers, artists, and ice cream stands. Downtown is only a few steps away, and it only takes one or two blocks to trade in cheesy tourist shops for cafes, chic clothing stores, gourmet food shops, coffee shops, and pubs. Z and I literally ate and drank our way across Victoria in our three-day visit.

The only time we left the sunny streets of Victoria was to visit the world-famous Butchart Gardens. In the 1910s Jeannie Butchart had an idea to beautify an exhausted limestone quarry that had supplied her husband's cement plant. The Butcharts combined the natural outline of the quarry with an mixture of rare and exotic plants to create the Sunken Garden. Later they carved out the authentic Japanese, Rose, and Italian Gardens. Today the gardens see over 1,000,000 visitors a year, plays host to a summer music festival, and is one of Canada's National Historic Sites. While the Northwest's mild climate allows the garden to exist all year long, I would highly recommend a visit on a late summer afternoon. The crowds wane, the shadows grow long, and the view from the patio with a glass of wine can't be beat.




Put Victoria on your list of must-sees. Leave your car behind, loosen your belt, and bring your camera.

(P.S. This blog is turning into a PacNW vacation guide. If you're getting bored, not to worry! The vacation is nearly over, and soon I'll return to riveting tales of dissertation writing, breathy choral auditions, and exciting whose-turn-is-it-to-do-dishes-tonight debates with Z!)

Mount St. Helens

Mount St. Helens erupted on May 18, 1980. I can only vaguely recall it because it was my fifth birthday. At the time it seemed like it was happening in a different country. Volcanoes were exotic, far-away possibilities to one who grew up in sleepy northern Ohio.

Now Mount St. Helens smolders only two hours from my own back door. The site has been turned into a National Volcanic Monument, complete with visitor centers, hiking trails, and cheesy, kid-friendly theme parks. After a night of camping in nearby lush, green Seaquest State Park, Z and I headed towards the west flank of the mountain to visit this rapidly changing landscape. Here are a few highlights of the trip:


Even on clear days, the top of Mount St. Helens (upper left-hand corner) is often covered by a thin layer of clouds. We went hiking along the north-western edge of the volcano, mostly along a ridge above the primary blast zone. The mountain blew out its northern side, and below the cloud layer you can see the crater. There are currently two lava domes that are growing within it at a rate of a few inches every day. Below the mountain you see the wasted valley. There were once lush evergreen forests here, but now the land is scarred by the lava flow and very little grows in it.



This picture was taken with Mount St. Helens at our back, looking northward in the direction of the blast. These hills, once covered with forest, are now littered with the torsos of trees blown off their trunks. It's a little difficult to see, but the trees still rest where they fell, all in the same direction.



The destination of our 6-mile hike was Spirit Lake, seen here. Spirit Lake has rested at the northern edge of Mount St. Helens for thousands of years, created by another eruption. Until 1980 it was the site of several homes and a resort community. One particular resident, Harry Truman, became a national icon for refusing to leave his home of 50 years in the weeks leading up to the eruption. He didn't believe that the eruption could possible affect his home, lying only five miles from the base of the mountain. As it was Spirit Lake not lay directly in the path of the blast, but it was also instantly buried under a mountain of lava. Harry Truman most certainly died instantly (his body or his home were never recovered.) You can't see it, but trees still lay strewn along the shores of the lake. Mount Adams is visible in the upper right hand corner.



We took this final shot as we were driving away around 6:30 PM. The clouds were finally parting from the crater, and the moon had risen. Look carefully and you can see a small plume of smoke that still rises from this still-active volcano.

Come Tread on Me

That's the motto of the Rattlesnake Hills Wine Trail in the Yakima Valley. This is followed by a small disclaimer stating, "No rattlesnakes, just Washington's greatest wines!" Not terribly clever (or true for that matter, there are indeed rattlesnakes in the hills high above the valley), but the quality of the wine speaks for itself.

Wine has a short but sort-of interesting history here in Washington State. Grapes were first planted in the early nineteenth-century by European settlers, mostly in the state's dry, four-season eastern half. Prohibition in the 1920's encouraged people to start making wine at home, with early commercial plantings only arriving in the 1960's. From the 1970's onward wine production grew rapidly in Washington--in both the east and the west--and today it is the second largest wine-producing state in the USA. The expansion continues, so nowadays it is estimated that a new winery opens every 2 weeks. All this would be nothing if the wine were of poor quality. Lucky for us Washington wine is superb--reds, whites, and roses--and continues to get better every year!

A couple of weeks ago Z and I headed east for our own afternoon of wine tasting in the Yakima Valley. The drive itself is impressive: 130 miles east of Seattle on I-90 over the Snoqualmie Pass and into the desert. And desert it is. As you come out the other side of the Cascades the trees disappear, the clouds disappear, and the temperature rises about 20 degrees. We had left a cloudy, 70-degree Puyallup for a piercingly sunny, 90-degree Yakima. And all in less that two hours!

The wineries spring up like green jewels across the desert landscape. Irrigation from the Columbia River makes this kind of growth possible in the valley. We had about 30 miles of wineries to choose from in this part of the state but stuck to the wineries associated with the Rattlesnake Hills Wine Trail. In four hours we visited five wineries, tasted plenty of excellent vintages, and took home nine bottles. We picnicked at our first stop under a shady tree and took an afternoon nap at our last. We ended the day with a fabulous dinner at Santiago's Mexican Restaurant in Yakima (BEST fish tacos I have ever eaten!!) and a longer, sunset drive through Chinook Pass along the Eastern edge of Mount Rainier.


Check out these links if you want to read more about our trip:

Rattlesnake Hills Wine Trail

Hyatt Vineyards and Roza Ridge

Paradisos del Sol

Portteus Vineyards

Kana Winery

Silver Lake at Roza Hills

Santiago's

Trading Birds for Mountains

Summers are supposed to be dry and cloud-free in the Pacific Northwest. While things have indeed been dry, this summer the clouds have rolled in too many times for me. The weather folks laugh nervously, saying "Well, another cloudy one on the way. This is highly unusual for us this time of year, but, well, what are you going to do? Ha ha . . . ha . . . " I think they must be getting some serious hate mail.

I'm exaggerating, really. It hasn't been that cloudy. The problem is that it's been cloudy every time Z and I have planned to do some serious outdoor hiking. A couple of weeks ago we went up to Mount Rainier, believing the reports that the sky would be clearing just in time for our amazing views. While climbing the access road to the Paradise Visitor Center, we entered the cloud bank and hoped to come out above. No such luck. We had to satisfy ourselves with a bit of low-elevation tramping. The forest was absolutely beautiful, of course, but no views of the peak.

Then yesterday we had planned to go down to the Columbia River Gorge. "Sorry to report another dreary one, folks. Kind of like the Mariners' last three against the Red Sox, eh, Bob? Ha ha . . . ha . . ." *sigh* We would have to content ourselves with something a little different. Z laced up his sneakers and headed to the racquetball court with a colleague, and I trekked down to the Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge just 20 miles south of Tacoma.

Nisqually provides one of the many cloudy-day alternatives to mountain-viewing here in Seattle. It's down by the water, it's full of water birds, and it has loads of trails. The Refuge is built around the Nisqually River Delta, the point where one of Rainier's largest rivers empties into the sound. It was an Indian Reservation for centuries, and then a private farm. In 1974 it was sold to create the Refuge.

I think this is one of the best-kept secrets in the South Sound area. The trails run unobtrusively through the Delta so that one can view migratory birds in their element. There are a couple of old photo blinds buried in the marshes for up-close bird watching. Surrounded by small ridges of evergreens, the air smells wonderfully of pine and salt. On the outer edge of the Refuge there are fantastic views of the Sound, including the Tacoma Narrows Bridge and Anderson Island.

I walked the full six-mile outer loop and ran into only a small handful of other people. I saw about ten Blue Herons, some Egrets, ducks and geese, one pelican, one woodpecker, and even a giant Banana slug. But best of all the sun came out--and stayed out--for my whole visit!