I’m writing this post on my phone while traveling in Washington. So far we’ve camped and hiked in northern Idaho and the Cascades. We’ve explored Seattle, eaten some mind-blowing Thai food, and are now heading for the Olympic Peninsula. It’s been a great trip so far, with many exciting things to come.
When traveling I’m always struck by the size of the world. There are places where one can find absolute solitude, and those areas that are alive with the thrum of civilization. The world has amazing breadth, but it’s depth is what has been intriguing me recently. Of the kinds of people, in all their colors, personalities, and habits, we have heard much. We are also acquainted with the similarities between all people. Mankind, with all its virtues and vices, it’s kindnesses and vulgarities, has always been the same. Recently I’ve been surprised by the small havens of the world, and their relation to one another.
I have a favorite camping spot in northern Idaho; it’s a pine straw bed beside a moss-bound stream that always runs cool. There’s always a light breeze blowing downstream, and the tall trees cast everything in twilight shade. When I go there, I feel completely at home and can bathe in a deep solitude. What’s remarkable to me is that I found a similar spot in the very heart of Seattle. At the end of the long hall of an empty marketplace, I saw the beckoning wave of a fern. I went down the desolate walk, and out into a grotto full of ferns and shading trees. There were two or three people there, sitting in wire patio chairs and sipping tea or reading the paper. One person did nothing at all, and seemed quite good at it. There was a steep, winding stair that connected us with some uphill realm, and a noodle shop that had quietly labored beneath the trees for a hundred years.
My spot in Idaho was in the middle of the mountains, hidden beneath a forest I only know well because it was my office for several months. There was one other person within about four square miles, and he left as soon as he got his four-wheeler to start. Meanwhile, the Seattle grotto was only a hundred feet from the crowded streets of one of the largest cities in the American West. The two spots were so different from one another, and yet so alike. What is it that makes these havens coalesce? They seemed shaped to my preferences, one by nature and the other by likeminded people, or perhaps like a bubble thrown from the churning change of the city.
These sort of experiences make me wonder how many more secret havens are tucked away behind the trees, or around the bend of an alley. I like the idea of a story linking them. Maybe they are all doorways to Dunsany’s Land of Dream or passages whereby mortals may stumble into the Faerie Realm.
The Sensiahdword of the day is “waild”, meaning “to see”. Example sentence: Es rho waild cosa galacesh. I have seen many forests.