Our Second Snowfall

We're an inch from the month's worth of rainfall, and it's only the 9th of December. (Click on images for larger version.)

Jo Jenner

A very special person, whom I was proud to call a friend, died last weekend. I met Jo Jenner at a discussion group we call The Salon in late 1992. She had recently lost her husband, Julian, and was spreading out a little into the community. I was struck, at the time, by her dignity and her sadness.

The Olympian had a very nice article about her impact on the community of artists in town and an obituary (link to search: search for ‘jenner’) with an excellent photo and details about her life that were new to me.

She was a generous, intelligent, sensitive, strong, and creative woman. The obituary has a story about her that gets to some of the kind of person she was, showing her sense of justice and her sense of humor:

Mr. Jenner's banking career led to a four-year posting in Hong Kong for the National Bank of Commerce in 1967, and Jo worked as a volunteer for several years with the Family Planning Council there. Her creation of a promotional poster featuring a pregnant man earned international media attention.

I hope that I am as creative, connected, and committed as Jo was when I’m her age. We’ll miss you, Jo.

Cross-posted at OlyBlog

Update 4/18: A commenter notes that there was a memorial for Jo this past weekend. I'm sorry I missed it. Our Salon had its own remembrance of her in a meeting shortly after her death. By the next meeting, we used the example that she set for us to re-energize the group.

Jo joined the Salon in its first year; she stayed with us for several years. She hosted our first feast. But as she got older and her energy waned, she made a choice to drop regular attendance and direct her energies in other pursuits. She did so with her usual grace and clarity, so that we all knew and understood what she meant.

The Salon is now in its fifteenth year. In the last year, though, it has been in a very low energy phase. Because of this, our last meeting was a discussion of whether and, if so, how to continue the Salon. Jo's example was our guide.

We wanted to honor her gift to us by making an open, clear, and intentional decision about continuing, rather than just fading away. Thanks to that clear beacon, we were able to realize that we did want to continue and recommitted to the Salon. Thanks, Jo.

Intercity Transit: Another Story

I write about Intercity Transit from time to time, most recently about a slightly wobbly trip home. I came across this story, on OlyBlog, describing our community's response to huge cuts in Intercity Transit's routes due to the dramatic reduction in tax support for the system due to I-695 (Eyman's $30 tab initiative).

When we heard how people were going to be stuck, some of us got together and organized the Oly Free Bus. We used our own vehicles on our own time paying for gas with our own money, and we tried to fill the gaps in transit service as best we could. At the time, I had a van equipped with a wheelchair lift, and I'm proud to say that for 13 weeks in the spring of 2000, my van was the only wheelchair accessible public transportation in Thurston County on Sundays. At first we tried running scheduled routes, to make our service as much as possible like what people had come to expect from IT. After a few weeks, we got enough publicity and enough public support that we were able to switch to more of an on-call service. A local business owner paid for us to have cell phones, and helped to pay for gas.

This is an example of the idealism and bias for action that I love about this town. Of course, no good deed goes unpunished, so the rest of the story involves a letter from an attorney, working for -- you guessed it -- Intercity Transit. I can't wait for Part Two.

The County Prosecutor Should Get It Together

This item in today's Olympian...

A former Thurston County paralegal secretary has filed an $86,000 sexual- and disability- discrimination and retaliation claim against the county and the office of Prosecuting Attorney Ed Holm.

Holm, who could not be reached for comment late Friday, was not specifically named in the claim, which was filed Jan. 9 with the county's human resources department by Susanne Davis of Lacey. Davis, who worked for about 14 years in the county's non-support office, left her job in fall 2004 on disability and was fired in 2005, said her attorney, William Michael Hanbey of Olympia.

Following this item from a few months back...

SHELTON - The Thurston County Prosecuting Attorney's Office discriminated against three of its former attorneys because they are women, and the county now owes them $1.52 million in damages, a Mason County jury decided Tuesday.

The jury also found that the Prosecuting Attorney's Office retaliated against each of the three plaintiffs after they came forward with their discrimination complaints.

...brings to mind questions about the competence of the Prosecutor. I don't care how good an attorney he is, if the shop he runs can't avoid these kinds of problems, then he's not the manager that the job calls for.

“President Bush is Insane”

So said Dwight Pelz, Washington State Democrats Chair, in a short speech this afternoon at the Heritage Park fountain, which followed a pretty successful (as far as success can be measured for these symbolic events) rally against the war along 4th Avenue today. Of course, his use of the word insane was based on the folk definition of insanity, which is doing the same thing repeatedly while expecting different results. Not a real diagnosis, nor even much of a rhetorical step above cliché, but it does make a good lead.

I went to the rally not because I it might bring about a change in policy (I’m not insane, by any definition), but because I thought it was time, once again, to stand out in public with others who think the same as I do as witnesses to our belief that the war is wrong, has always been wrong, and should be ended. Now.

There were more people out than a year ago and the responses from those driving over the bridge, going about their daily business, were more weighted to the positive side. Whether this was because of a change in thinking, which subsequently led to the recent election results, or because of those results themselves, I’m not sure. It’s probably both. I wouldn’t be surprised to start to hear whining about how hard it has become to support the war.

Cross-posted at Oly Blog.

Bruce Cockburn is a Treasure

My wife and I attended a great Bruce Cockburn concert at the Washington Center last Tuesday. It was a near thing – we almost missed it – and I’d have to say that it was poorly promoted. Perhaps the change from the Capital Theater, where I saw him perform to a packed house a couple of years ago, interfered. The audience that was there certainly seemed to enjoy and appreciate him. I know I did. His band of a drummer and keyboard player-and-singer were very good, as well. He played a pleasing mix of old and new songs, though many in the audience knew them all (I was behind on the new ones, though I think it’s time to pick up another CD).

For those that don’t know, Bruce is a Canadian songwriter and guitar player and singer from Canada. I’ve followed his work for decades and have seen him in concert eight or ten times, in Seattle, Olympia, and most recently, aside from this week, at the Vancouver Folk Music Festival.

He’s a superb songwriter, an amazing guitar player, and an inventive singer. He is also a person – and a musician – of uncommon integrity. He’s not much for the clever banter and never appears comfortable with the crowds, but he his very comfortable with his music.

Our host at our second agriturismo on our recent trip to Italy was a guitar player and fan of popular music. I was surprised and pleased that one of the names that he rattled off as influences was Bruce Cockburn (pronounced phonetically). He even played one of his songs for us (forgotten which, but one I knew). I see Bruce whenever I get a chance. You should consider it.

The Big Here 04: When You Flush Where Do The Solids Go?

This continues a series of ruminations, discussion on method, and answers to Kevin Kelly’s The Big Here, a query and challenge to know the space we live in, in its shape and relationships.

4) When you flush, where do the solids go? What happens to the waste water?

I live within the sewer district of the LOTT Alliance, which, according to its Web site, provides:

wastewater management and reclaimed water production services for the urbanized area of north Thurston County, Washington. Its four government partners (Lacey, Olympia, Tumwater and Thurston County) jointly provide programs and facilities serving a 23,000 acre area and more than 85,000 people. The LOTT system currently includes a central Treatment Plant (the Budd Inlet Treatment Plant), the Budd Inlet Reclaimed Water Facility, major “interceptor” sewer lines, and three pump stations. Services include flow management, long-range planning, financing, and design and construction of capital facilities. A Reclaimed Water Satellite Plant is currently under construction.

I have always lived in an area served by sewers, rather than septic systems or some other, more primitive methods, though I recently realized that my family’s house on Whidbey Island has a septic tank. It makes it easy to ignore what happens when I flush.

All of northern Thurston County’s “wastewater” is piped to a treatment plant near downtown Olympia, where it is treated and then “discharged” into Budd Inlet. Some of that treated water, a million gallons a day at present, is further cleaned and used as reclaimed water for irrigation and other purposes.

This topic is fairly timely, even so, because of a recent rash of sewer line extension and connection activities in my neighborhood. Last summer, the utility ran a connector line 0.7 miles up the arterial that serves my neighborhood. Once the construction and the attendant traffic snarls were completed, I appreciated the slick new road surface and wider bike lane on the street, but I wondered at the time about the timing of the extension.

This summer, I got my answer, with a major development going in less than a quarter of a mile to the east, just north of 14th Ave NW. They connected the sewer line to that new connector just this week. In addition, several smaller developments have gone in to the west, also along 14th Ave. And, this week, we got a flyer (PDF) in the mail announcing the start of construction on a new pipeline to the west, along 14th Ave.

Good News About the Nisqually River

I’ve been absent here for almost two weeks because of the press of events, but also because I’ve spent every available computer hour with any sort of mental energy on applying for a different job. I’ve finished that now, so we’ll see how that works out. In the meantime, I’ll catch up.

About ten days ago, I attended a session of the summer lecture series at the Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge (NWR). The series is an annual, summer event sponsored by the Nisqually NWR Friends group. The session was entitled “Recovering Salmon, Restoring the Nisqually Watershed and it was presented by Jeanette Dorner, the Nisqually Tribe’s Salmon Recovery Program Manager.” It was my favorite of the year, not the least because of the energy and passion of the presenter, but because of the good news she brought. Good news is rare in the salmon recovery, environmental restoration and protection world, at least from what I can see.

It turns out that the Nisqually River is better off than the other rivers that flow into Puget Sound. Its estuary is relatively intact (thanks to the Nisqually NWR and the effort during the 70’s to prevent the estuary from being converted to a “super port” for the shipment of logs overseas. The two dams on the river probably do not constrict the salmon bearing length of the river (a now-submerged, impassable waterfall previously served as the end of salmon habitat). There are no big cities parked along its length, as is the fate of the Puyallup and the Snohomish. Most of the land along the banks of the river is in some sort of protected status, either because it’s in the NWR or because of the type of ownership. Much of the course of the river and its tributaries is still undisturbed and useful for salmon and other wildlife. Its waters are visited by several of the species of salmon native to the area, perhaps all of them that historically used the river. And, most important, the river’s banks are home to a committed steward of the river, the Nisqually Indian Tribe.

Ms. Dorner talked about several of the restoration projects that the Tribe has undertaken in recent years and also talked about plans for more, as funding becomes available. The Mashel River is the largest tributary of the Nisqually and has been channelized through some portions of its length, which greatly reduces its value to fish, because it reduces hiding places, spawning areas, and increases flow speed. She described the construction of log jams – engineered log jams! – that help restore resting and hiding places for fish, as well as spawning habitat, by sorting gravel and creating deeper pools. The project led to a dramatic increase in fish usage and survival in the year after it was installed.

Ohop Creek is a significant tributary of the Nisqually that was straightened during the 30’s, which deepens the channel and speeds the flow of water. The Tribe and its partners have gathered over a dozen landowners into an agreement to restore the creek to its previous meandering course. This project has been in planning for some time and will begin construction next summer.

A project that anyone can see just by driving through the Nisqually delta on I-5, southbound is best. Most of the delta was diked many years ago to keep the tide out and create farm land. The 100 acres on the east side of the river, outside the NWR, is now being worked on to remove the dikes and provide a fresh water connection to the wetland between the freeway lanes. This will allow most of that land to return to a salt marsh supporting the estuary habitat. A pilot project of a few acres a few years ago was very successful, with fish following the first tide onto the new wet land and birds using it that first evening.

All in all, a very satisfying evening in a world that sometimes gives me the feeling of waking up in a hand basket, wondering where I’m going.

Cross-posted at Olyblog.

The Big Here 03: Trace the Water You Drink From Rainfall to Your Tap

This continues a series of ruminations, discussion on method, and answers to Kevin Kelly’s The Big Here, a query and challenge to know the space we live in, in its shape and relationships.

3) Trace the water you drink from rainfall to your tap.

This one’s easy, because of how well the water utility of the town I live in, Olympia, Washington, reports to its customers. Each year, the city sends out a report which describes the sources of the city’s water, the results of water quality tests, and other information. To quote from the 2006 edition (PDF):

Our drinking water comes from aquifers. An aquifer is an underground deposit of sand and gravel where groundwater is stored. Aquifers are replenished by rainfall that seeps down through the soil.

From September through May, the water I use is piped from McAllister Springs, at the eastern edge of the built-up area, all the way across Lacey to the west side of Olympia, where it runs out of my tap. The brochure is a little vague on where my water comes from during the summer, but the best guess is that the McAllister Springs water is augmented by water from the nearby Allison Springs and Kaiser wells. There are a couple of storage tanks just north of my house, which is likely how the pressure is delivered to my pipes.

The Big Here 02: What Time is Sunset Today?

This continues a series of ruminations, discussion on method, and answers to Kevin Kelly’s The Big Here, a query and challenge to know the space we live in, in its shape and relationships.

2) What time is sunset today?

One of the pleasures of living in the north half of the Northwest is the difference in the length of the days, from season to season. Not like Alaska, of course, but they might be taking things a little too far up there. Here, at least, the sun comes up every day. Still, a lot of people have trouble with those winter days when you go to work in the dark and come home after sunset. I’ll take that because it gives us these nights in midsummer when it’s still light enough to move around at 10:00.

I tend to notice the sunrise and set times throughout the year, though for reasons that vary with the seasons. During the late fall and early spring, I notice the change because it’s a qualitatively different experience to talk to and from work in the dark, as opposed to during the daylight. I spend as much time in the woods as I can, especially, but not exclusively during the late spring, summer, and early fall, and the amount of daylight matters for what I’m able to do. Because of this, I know that the latest sunset for Olympia is around 9:10, at midsummer. I also know that the sun sets at about 7:10 at the equinox (and we have just over twelve hours of daylight – “equi” indeed).

Until I started looking at this closer in preparation for writing this, I thought I could estimate the sunset for tonight using a simple proportion between those two times, which results in 8:25. The real answer is 8:53, because the change is not linear, but a curve. In the three months between the solstice and the equinox in September, the sunset changes about two hours, with 20 minutes in first month, 40 minutes in the next, and 60 minutes during the last. So, a new method would be to use the new proportions and say that we’re a little past that first month, which gives an estimate of about 8:50. Closer.

I learned this from the data that I pulled from the U.S. Naval Observatory’s Data Services site. And I built this chart from it. (Click on the image for a full size view.)


So, my new method for estimating sunset, at least for summer, is to determine how many months from the spring equinox we are and assign 20 minutes for the first (one-sixth of the 120 minutes change), 40 for the second (one-third of 120), and 60 for the third (or one-half of the total). I can use the same proportions for partial months. So, August 1 is about ten days into the second month, so it gets one-sixth of the second month’s 40 minutes, or 7 minutes. Subtracting 27 minutes from 9:11 results in 8:44, which is right on.

The Big Here 01: Point North

This begins the first of series of ruminations, discussion on method, and answers to Kevin Kelly’s The Big Here, a query and challenge to know the space we live in, in its shape and relationships.

1) Point north.

I have what I like to think of as a good sense of direction. I think I came about it naturally, but I’ve learned, through some disruptions, that what we call a sense of direction doesn’t just happen. It has to be grown and refreshed.

My original sense grew as a result of the strong environmental cues in where I grew up. Seattle has a regular grid of streets, with the avenues running north-south. It also has salt water to the west and fresh water to the east and distinct mountain ranges to the east and the west. As a result, direction was well-imprinted in my mind, even when I ventured over those bodies of water and into those mountains.

My complacency with regard to direction was shaken somewhat when I moved to the Bay Area for college. The street grids on the peninsula south of San Francisco were not laid out north and south. Everything was a little off, although I could maintain my general sense of which way was north, I carried a sketchier idea of directions for those months.

The next location I spent any time in was in west central Nebraska. That required more attention to rebuild my sense of direction. There was the river, but it didn’t take to much travel to leave it behind the last hill. And, north of town, the Sandhills spread for hundreds of square miles, with nary a directional cue, except the ever-present sun. So, I began to rely more on the sun as reinforcement to my sense of what direction was what.

I finally settled in Olympia which, though it’s near Seattle, has a different set of cues. Here, the water it to the north, I-5 runs east-west (at least north of Tumwater), and the mountains you can see are to the north. Just as with the other two examples of being out of directional sense, I remember the period where, in spite of the fairly regular street grid, I had some trouble rebuilding my sense of what direction is which way.

So, in answer to the question, I rely on my internal map of my local world to find north (or the other directions). It’s quite reliable, because I regularly refresh it with observation. That same process becomes, clearly, more important and explicit when I’m in a new place. The tools most useful to me in rebuilding my sense of direction are maps and observation.

Maps help me to understand the relationships of the major features in the area and help to identify the things I should look for as I move about. Topography is especially useful. On foot, especially, it’s hard to ignore whether you’re moving up or down and that can help you to know, if you’ve been able to gather that information, which direction you’re traveling in.

Observation is critical in three ways. It’s an important means of gathering information about the space I’m occupying. It serves as a means to integrate the information I collect through the visual observation. Most important, though, is that the observation itself actually builds my internal map. I can sketch out a place in my head by looking at a map, but it doesn’t become useful until I actually see the place.

In thinking about this question and reading the recommendations for this query, I noticed the mention of the analog watch method. I found a description of it in this WikiHow entry. Since I always have a watch and can usually tell where the sun is (we learn how to do that in the cloudy Pacific Northwest), it seems like a useful tool for recalibrating the internal map.

Beach Walk - Purdy Sand Spit

On a Saturday almost a month ago, my wife and a friend and I went on a beach walk at the Purdy Sand Spit, presented by a collection of local and state water quality agencies. The weather was terrific, the tide was -2.8’ at 11:08, and the beach was teeming. There were a good fifty people of all ages in attendance.

The guide for the walk was the local celebrity Alan Rammer, who is a Conservation Education Program Specialist with the Dept. of Fish and Wildlife, and who has spent thirty years or more walking the beaches of Washington and any place else near sea level and talking with people about the life that can be found there. He’s a local celebrity because he was the model for the character of the professor in Jim Lynch’s novel set in south Puget Sound, The Highest Tide. Lynch shadowed Rammer for a year while preparing the book.

So he started with a speech, well practiced and aimed at the kids in the group in expression, but also pointed at the adults, in which he described the beach as the living room of its inhabitants. His specific advice was to put everything back where you find it and make sure that you leave the rocks you overturn or pick up as you found them, right side up. I thought it was a nice touch.

We then headed down to the beach and looked around. Mr. Rammer knew the name and history of everything that anyone brought him, including the squid egg sacks and a deep-water fish that grows up in the shallows (forgot the name). We saw moon snails – they’re big! – and their egg sacks, which look like broken toilet plungers. There were sand crabs and rock crabs and hermit crabs, geoducks and horse clams and mussels, and sand dollars in stacks.

After the walk, we headed over the bridge to the Beach House, where we were treated to a local history exhibit and a nice lunch. Since we ate the lunch, we decided to stay for the talks after lunch. Lolling on the beach on a sunny afternoon in June is pleasant enough, even with a couple of talks about septic systems and water quality. The speakers were a Kitsap County Health District employee, Leslie Banigan, and Teri King, who works for the Washington Sea Grant Program.

It turned out to be quite excellent. I’ve always lived in houses that are connected to sewers, so I thought to learn a little about the effects of septic systems on water quality, but in a somewhat disconnected way. It wasn’t long into the presentations, however, before I realized that I am a septic system owner, at the Whidbey house. Damn. (At this point, I can visualize my mother rolling her eyes at my cluelessness. I’m slow on the uptake, but I remember once I get there.) So, I listened with new interest and learned a lot. I’ll have to find out more about the system we have out there at Whidbey, since it doesn’t get much of a workout and it’s perched right over the beach.

The whole thing, for free, was a great way to spend an early summer, sunny day: a little walk, a little beachcombing, a little lunch, a little sun, and a little learning. The whole thing was put together by Pierce Conservation District and the Puget Sound Action Team.

Lindens Blooming

The linden trees lining the street next to my work building have started to bloom, filling the neighborhood with their deliciously sweet scent.

The linden, also known as the lime or basswood tree, is famous in central Europe, where it appears in legends and poetry.

If only there were some way to send you the scent. Instead, I’ll show you a map with a few Olympia linden locations I’ve noticed over the last few weeks. I revised this on 7/20 with a little more detail and a few more trees.

Greater Tacoma Convention and Trade Center

Last week, I attended Government Technology’s Digital Government Summit in Tacoma at the Greater Tacoma Convention and Trade Center, a new building downtown. The “Summit” was interesting, I went mostly to find out where the state information technology organization was headed, as a defensive measure, and I thought the facility was very nice.

I grew up in Seattle and so was trained from an early age to look down on that city’s local rival for leadership in the region. We had Seattle history units at least twice in my grade school career and the major theme was the wonderful destiny that was to be Seattle’s. Tacoma, of course, suffered by comparison, even though it did win the first rail line to Puget Sound. It didn’t help that, between the pulp mills (since reduced to one and that cleaned up) and the smelter (since demolished, though the toxic legacy continues), Tacoma’s air quality was, well, it smelled.

That’s very different now. Tacoma has grown up, even as Seattle has greedily grasped the destiny and fame it always knew it deserved. Tacoma has renovated what was a pretty seedy downtown. (Seattle had its own strip of downtrodden, and still does, but it had other sections of downtown that weren’t home to the homeless and drunken. Tacoma had little else downtown.) Union Station was renovated years ago, the State Historical Museum went in next door, the new Art Museum and the Museum of Glass anchor the waterfront side, new condos are springing up, old warehouses are being torn down and replaced with buildings like the Convention Center or renovated as offices, and Sound Transit is running a streetcar line through the middle.

It’s nice and the big, gleaming Convention Center looms over the center of it. It’s five stories of steel and glass, with some nice touches, especially the flooring on the ground floor that suggests a duckweed-covered pond, with a connected street fountain outside. For art, there’s an installation of a half-dozen rough-hewn beams suspended above the walkways and stairs in the vaulting front-side windows. They were obviously removed from an old warehouse – they show signs of nail holes for flooring or ceiling material. It’s not much as an artistic statement, but it is a nice juxtaposition of Tacoma’s industrial past with its hoped-for technological future.

Double Bluff, Whidbey Island

My wife and I visited Double Bluff Park on south Whidbey Island the first weekend in June. It was a terrific find and an off-leash dog park, too. Daisy had a terrific time chasing the ball in the water.

The park runs along the beach below Double Bluff (pictured below), with views of the Olympics (I think – it was cloudy) and across Admiralty Inlet. The bluffs are tall sandstone and clay banks, pretty classic for Puget Sound, and, in some places, actively eroding. We walked to the point on the left of the photo and then back to the parking lot off the right side of the photo.



We saw lots of wildlife. There were a good-sized group of pigeon guillemots along the second bluff, to the left. This is, I believe, one of the sites of an on-going study of pigeon guillemots nesting around Puget Sound. They were clearly nesting on the bluffs and hanging out in the water alongside. A little further along, there were a goodly flock of goldfinches perching on the shrubs growing along the top of the bluff, but also fluttering around the cliffs and on the beach. Every couple of hundred yards, there were great blue herons fishing the shore. The stars, though, were the four bald eagles, including a couple of juveniles, sitting on snags along the top of the bluff.

Hang up and Drive

I walk along a busy arterial on the way to and from work and have done so for a couple of years, now. Lots of people are talking on their cell phones while they’re driving and it seems to gotten worse.

I made a casual count a couple of years ago and the number of people who passed me on the road while using a cell phone was 3 to 5% of the drivers. This time, I thought I’d be a little more precise.

I counted along Cooper Point Road from the intersection with Evergreen Pk Dr, near the freeway, north and west through the Auto Mall, across Black Lake, along Yauger Park, across Harrison, and north as far as 14th Ave. – about 2.5 miles. I started between five and ten minutes to 5:00 PM and finished about 40 minutes later. I did this twice, yesterday and last Thursday.

I counted all the cars traveling in my direction, including the commercial vehicles, but skipping the buses and motorcycles. There were a few drivers I couldn’t see, either because the car was behind another or had tinted windows. I didn’t count those.

Out of 1280 cars counted, 115 were being driven past me by people using their cell phones. That’s 9%, significantly more than a couple of years ago.

Too many, in my opinion.

Walking Outside

In an earlier post, I described some of the experience of walking to work and back. The first thing that I described was dealing with the weather, because that’s first thing that people ask about, but I wanted to make a larger point. It’s not just the weather, but the exposure to the outside, especially compared to driving in a car, that makes the walk different from the drive.

We’re so used to being protected by our cars when we travel that I think there’s a distinct feeling of exposure when we’re out of our cars. The weather – especially the rain and wind – is the most obvious and most easily talked about aspect of being outside. But there’s more. For one thing, people see you out on the sidewalks – anonymity is more assured if you’re in your car. I occasionally have people tell me that they’ve seen me walking to or from work. For another, there are more potential interactions with strangers, someone who falls into stride with you or whom you meet when you stop at a crosswalk. There’s a greater potential of coming face to face with a stranger on foot, even when there are very few people out, than there is in a car in heavy traffic. I think that some people would consider that a problem or a danger.

Ultimately, that exposure is part of what I like about the walk. I think it’s part of what I like about hiking, too, that it gets me out. I like the feeling of freedom that moving about the world on my own two feet brings me.

Walking to Work

I walk to work as many days as I can. It’s about a three mile trip and takes me just under an hour. I’ve been doing this for about two years. As exercise, it replaces the jogging I did in the middle of the day. But, I also walk to reduce the number of miles I drive, for the social and environmental benefits that creates. Before I went to work on the West Side, I worked at the Capitol Campus. I lived almost to the crest of the Harrison hill, so that walk was shorter than the one I now have. I walked to work most of the time in those days. Walking to work, as an experience, is quite different from using a car.

The first thing that people mention when we talk about the walk is the weather. While I carry some gear to help with the weather, experiencing it is one of the things that I like about walking. Now, we don’t have very dangerous weather around here and it’s really severe only a few times a year, so, generally, the weather is a problem only if you think it is. I like it.

For me, the thing that most influences what the walk is like is the separation from the traffic. It won’t come as a revelation to anyone that our streets are built for cars, not people walking. And a lot of those streets don’t provide pedestrians enough separation from the cars for comfort. Separation can be vertical, like a curb, horizontal distance, or structures, like a barrier. My usual route to work provides a range of separations, from almost nothing (a narrow bike lane with no curb and a ten foot drop at the edge), to all three, as when I walk down a walkway through an empty strip mall.

The second factor that provides annoyance is, of course, the traffic – how many cars there are, how fast they’re going, and how much attentive the drivers are. Separation, of course, insulates one from traffic, so these factors diminish as separation increases. Still, there are times when there is no separation, most often when I have to cross the street. I’ve been pleasantly surprised by how easy it’s been to cross the streets, including the busiest intersection in town. Except for some folks turning right, I’ve had very few troubles at intersections, which is a big improvement from when I jogged on these same streets. Traffic has an influence on the walk even when I’m not crossing it. Walking against traffic along Cooper Point in the afternoon is unpleasant. The sidewalk is not very wide, there’s no strip between the sidewalk and the curb, the traffic is heavy and it’s traveling at 35, most of the time. I generally avoid that route.

One of the advantages of walking is that you see your town differently, in more detail. And some parts of town are more interesting, more pleasant to walk through. None of the routes I have to work are unpleasant in the sense of being dirty or dangerous, but some are more interesting than others. The walk I used to do over the Fourth Ave. Bridge and through downtown was most interesting. Even though the traffic was bad and the separation worse, the bridge was a high point, because of the views out over the bay and the waves of migrating birds passing through spring and fall. The walk I now do doesn’t have the interest of the bridge and downtown, but it still has some features. The most important is that I have several routes to choose from. Some of them pass through alleys, which are mellow and interesting. The part of the walk that skirts the mall, above Yauger Park, offers a good vista of the Black Hills and any approaching weather.

And walking offers the best chance to see some birds and animals. The bridge, as I mentioned before, offered a regular series of migratory birds as they passed through. Last year, I saw a set of four raccoons working their way down by the mall toward Yauger Park. Earlier this year, I saw another crossing Cooper Point Rd. ahead of me. The alleys usually, if the weather’s good, offer the chance to see a few cats lounging in the sun. I regularly see rabbits near my work and around Percival Creek. A run-off retention pond by the Auto Mall supported a redwing blackbird for several years, though he seems to have moved on this year. There were a couple of killdeer hanging around that same pond, more recently. And, the skies sometimes offer a glimpse of a hawk or an eagle soaring overhead, if you only look up.

It’s a lot easier to look up if you’re not in your car. And it’s easier to stop and stare if you’re not in traffic.

Wooden Boat Fair

Believe me, my young friend, there is NOTHING--absolute nothing--half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.

The Water Rat, Wind in the Willows

I spent a couple of hours on Percival Landing at the Wooden Boat Fair this afternoon. For several reasons, I don’t get down there very often, so I was glad to have the chance this weekend – and that the weather was as nice as it was. (It isn’t always nice at all, this time of year.)

I have to admit a weakness for small boats, though I’ve managed to avoid getting sucked into owning one very often. For a long time, I was able to mooch a boat fix off of friends and acquaintances, but that hasn’t worked well at all for a long time. It’s a big step, in terms of time commitment, to go from an occasional day-sail to being responsible for a boat.

Most of the boats on display at the Fair are medicine far too powerful for the paltry boat-weakness that I’m infected with. Still, they are often very beautiful and the people who keep them looking that way are candidates for a certain kind of sainthood in my book.

There were two highlights for me. The first is the Sand Man, which just gets to looking better and better. The last time I saw it was on blocks over at Swantown Marina, with its deckhouse sitting on the pavement. Now, it’s floating and looking pretty. They had the engine running while I was on it and it sounded very good: smooth, relaxed, and powerful. The Sand Man Foundation has done a wonderful job with this relic of an older Olympia.

The other is that the Grapeview Point Boat Works had an array of small, wooden boats in classic designs. There was a beautiful Caledonia yawl, a cute little peapod-type with a lug sail, and a Shellback dinghy. I was pleased that a local builder had brought some new work to show off, in amongst the classic Monks and Gearys.

Almost enough to get me on the water again. Here are a couple of other interesting little boats. The first is a little sailing dinghy. I hope I look as good at its age; it was built in 1937.

The second is the cutest tug I've ever seen. It's only 14 feet long.

Intercity Transit: The Verdict

Thumbs up! I rode to work again today and then downtown for a little after work socializing and then back up the hill to home; all without a hitch. Once I was past the anxiety of missing the bus, I found it less effort than driving (and certainly less than walking).

The system has improved a great deal since I last used it. The buses are new, clean, and comfortable. The routes make sense and integrate well. The drivers are courteous. Not only that, but Intercity Transit does a great deal more than just run buses – they are involved in just about everything transport-related in the county. They have the Dial-A-Lift, vanpools, connections to Pierce Transit, Mason Transit, Grays Harbor, and Sound Transit, and the new downtown shuttle, the Dash.

I walk to work almost half the time and have been driving, alone, the rest. I think I can replace about half of those drives with bus rides.