Ruth Dorsey’s “Four Days Worth”

Another episode of “my Gita”**

**Italian for short excursion

I love the habit of setting out without an organized agenda, traveling where the spirit leads– this time from Anacortes to Westport.   I take the ferry to Port Townsend, then on to Sequim where everything is wrapped in lavender, and street corners have purple tee shirts and purple flags. I revel in two festive farms for more photo ops.

Next, I feel wind and wave power down on popular Dungeness Spit—11 miles walking, round trip.  I did not engage.  Instead, I hopped down the trail to see it (and the lighthouse) from afar, and then discovered a culinary surprise of those eensy weensy blackberries on the trail–yum.

Day Two: my Camry heads southwest up to our drop-dead-gorgeous Hurricane Ridge in the Olympic Mountains. Thousands of years ago Lady Bird Johnson’s forebearers must have planted these roads with floral borders of striking yellows and blues.  First, the drive yielded a bit of tunnel vision through the rock faces, bursting out the other end to scenic vistas.  Teddy Roosevelt did a good thing in creating our national park system.  At each turn of the twisting road, a new surprise.  A new wildflower book helps with their identity.

I stop at the Visitors Center where one wall boasts painted trees and has bright blue spiggots for filling water bottles.  (Remember, only one percent of all the water in the world is for us to use.  The rest is in oceans and ice.)  On a nearby dirt-and-roots trail a brave ten year old skips all the way down, but I long for walking sticks! It is so refreshing to see parents on the trail reading the signs about nature to their children, teaching them stewardship. (It takes 450 years for a plastic six-pack ring to decompose.) I notice  that eating and drinking in nature’s atmosphere enhances the salivary glands.  Here, trail enthusiasts were bar-happy (as in eating energy bars).

People complain about paying for  passes required for both state and national parks, but many spend it on foolish things.  Why not delight in the real thing–life in the natural world.

Next, it is on to Forks, home of Twilight and 120 inches of rain per year!  Teens mug for the camera with the life-size paper “stars” of Bella and Edward. The food choice was not great. But  why do we want to have our destinations be like home?  All over the world, in spite of strip, mini, and giant malls–and don’t forget Starbucks –all looking alike, there are always intriguing nuances in the unusual that we need to appreciate. So often people travel somewhere expecting certain givens, but it turns to another thing entirely and your experience then is very different–and that’s good.

The afternoon hurries on, and a long drive down the coast, without seeing it.  Finally, the ocean reveals itself in all its glory, including all the tsunami evacuation roads.

Well-trod asphalt trails through the pine-filled dunes bring out the people watching in me. Someone with a little newborn in a sling, four year olds with state-of-the-art sunhats, a young girl in pink bike, pink shoes, and pink helmet.  Everyone is happy in the natural world.  Surfers miss waves, dogs fly through surf, and, of course, bikini-clad girls mostly sunbathe.  To culminate the next morning’s adventures,  I even take the time to do a “drive on the beach” thing.

Leaving Aberdeen to return home, I see a chiropractic sign that says “crawl-ins welcome”.  A good laugh is what I need, since I have a long ways to drive.