San Juan Islands
Our world is a like puzzle, a unit composed of multiple and varied facets. One could begin with the whole, view the entirety first and then narrow one's focus and attention to smaller and smaller fragments. Or one could start with the component parts piecing them carefully together to construct a completed image.
From the distance an island is a sloping shoreline edged with trees, tall and dark, their roots anchored somehow in a minimum of soil. A band of gray skirts around its edge, broken here and there by bleached remains. It is here that the sea surges forward and then slips back churning itself into a foamy froth, tumbling and polishing unsorted glacial till. But if we sit on the shore, on a rock or a log, our eyes are drawn first to these glimmering jewels, rounded, glistening and colorful. Each pebble is different, torn from its parent rock and transported in a flowing river of ice. With time, patience and knowledge their route could be reconstructed and a story told. Not far away an islet is scarred and grooved, the furrows writing another chapter in the tale of where a glacier went. Steps away Douglas fir reach skyward, their newly formed cones attracting flocks of chickadees. Against their trunks brown creepers climb and red-breasted nuthatches descend probing their tweezer-like beaks into fractures in the thick protective bark in search of insect prey.
We could spread a map upon the table and look at the picture of where we were today, pointing our fingers at a cluster of islands hidden from oceanic moisture by the Olympic Peninsula and the mountains of Vancouver Island. We could look more closely and find a protected bay, Friday Harbor on the east side of San Juan Island and another called Mackaye on the southern tip of Lopez Island. And that would create an image of our day. Or we could start with bands of pastel pinks and blues in an early morning sky. A ball of orange crept through a foggy blanket casting golden light and painting a rounded grassy mound upon which a lighthouse stood. A tiny town bustled. Boats came and went upon a mirror of black, where a duplicate world echoed their lines and colorful images. We sailed away and were engulfed in white, seemingly a ship alone on an endless sea. The sound of the foghorn reached out, searching for humankind and contact was established as others repeated the haunting sound. Once anchored, Zodiacs ventured forth. The first to shore found their memories built from the details to the whole as the curtain of fog gradually was drawn away. Others looked from afar and saw the whole before reaching out to touch each rock.
Our world is a like puzzle, a unit composed of multiple and varied facets. One could begin with the whole, view the entirety first and then narrow one's focus and attention to smaller and smaller fragments. Or one could start with the component parts piecing them carefully together to construct a completed image.
From the distance an island is a sloping shoreline edged with trees, tall and dark, their roots anchored somehow in a minimum of soil. A band of gray skirts around its edge, broken here and there by bleached remains. It is here that the sea surges forward and then slips back churning itself into a foamy froth, tumbling and polishing unsorted glacial till. But if we sit on the shore, on a rock or a log, our eyes are drawn first to these glimmering jewels, rounded, glistening and colorful. Each pebble is different, torn from its parent rock and transported in a flowing river of ice. With time, patience and knowledge their route could be reconstructed and a story told. Not far away an islet is scarred and grooved, the furrows writing another chapter in the tale of where a glacier went. Steps away Douglas fir reach skyward, their newly formed cones attracting flocks of chickadees. Against their trunks brown creepers climb and red-breasted nuthatches descend probing their tweezer-like beaks into fractures in the thick protective bark in search of insect prey.
We could spread a map upon the table and look at the picture of where we were today, pointing our fingers at a cluster of islands hidden from oceanic moisture by the Olympic Peninsula and the mountains of Vancouver Island. We could look more closely and find a protected bay, Friday Harbor on the east side of San Juan Island and another called Mackaye on the southern tip of Lopez Island. And that would create an image of our day. Or we could start with bands of pastel pinks and blues in an early morning sky. A ball of orange crept through a foggy blanket casting golden light and painting a rounded grassy mound upon which a lighthouse stood. A tiny town bustled. Boats came and went upon a mirror of black, where a duplicate world echoed their lines and colorful images. We sailed away and were engulfed in white, seemingly a ship alone on an endless sea. The sound of the foghorn reached out, searching for humankind and contact was established as others repeated the haunting sound. Once anchored, Zodiacs ventured forth. The first to shore found their memories built from the details to the whole as the curtain of fog gradually was drawn away. Others looked from afar and saw the whole before reaching out to touch each rock.
