The Northwest, Day 5: The Island

By mid-morning we again left the city in search of the real world. We went by ferry to Bainbridge island, where a Shire worthy of Tolkien exists like a beautiful passage written on aged vellum, hidden quietly away until curious readers unfurl and fall in.

It is vast and secluded, a world within a world, with long winding paths connecting discrete habitats and havens.

Entering the lake regions, where the waters are mirror-still but for the wake of the ducks, the Garden's entrance and your past lives are left behind.

I won't waste words on descriptions better left to Muir or Thoreau, but the moments you spend here are purely a nature trip, that shroomy perspective that comes when one steps outside civilization to visit the Earth.

To have no job, no schedule, no social burdens - to discard the litany of obligations written on the inside of your skull seven days a week - is as essential and restorative as sleeping. This is life, and here you are simply living it, and without critical thought or analysis are free to wonder at your trajectory in it, and the wake your movements make around you.

And so considering my purpose, sorting through my dreams and futures, I remembered that even the searching is a fine thing.

Because in searching you find important things you didn't know you were looking for, hidden along the paths between the trees, perhaps on a small island off the Northwestern shore, one fractal edge of infinity.

Here an earthwork seat grows from moss and loam. Rest for an hour or an age and watch the seasons pass.

Here an immaculate Japanese minka house bridges the worlds of nature and spirit. Its dwellers have long released their mortal forms to glide along the eternal lightstreams of the æther.

The reflecting pool keeps its own secrets.

And the shining house at the end of the lake remains a furlong away no matter how persistently you approach it.

And the moss, like the algae blooms that cultivate life and the micro flora that sustain mind, enfolds the soul like a fuzzy sweater.

If I had not stopped to watch
a feather flying by
I would not have seen its landing-
a tiny pure white feather.

Gently, I blew a soft breath
and sent it back to the spring.

If I had not looked up to watch
the feather gliding over the roof
I would not have seen
the crescent moon
hanging at midday.

- Dang, Sister Dang Nghiem

The majesty continues at the local Indian restaurant. I cried.

We got back to the ferry before sundown. These giant ferry barges are wild - three stories and so girthy it takes a good 15 minutes to walk all the way around. The local commuters read newspapers while the tourists point and take selfies with the distant city and looming Mt. Regnier.

After resting and reacclimating to city life, there was one more Seattle holy site that sounded like a good place to chill.

The massive Starbucks Reserve. A brasspunk coffee temple and study in Fitzgeraldian decadence and idealism. Coffee idealism. Two coffee bars; one liquor bar; a library; heirloom roasting machinery; ample lounge space. We reclined with lattes.

The informational ticker in the ceiling clacked out messages, and I spent a good 30 minutes trying to find corroborative evidence that Machinedrum was sitting over Lizett's shoulder.

And indolent with the weight of the day and the week, we kept it a quiet night with dinner in a dark Vietnamese joint.
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Darwin stopped by when he got off work, and we had fun catching up one more time. It's nice to know that long-diverged paths can cross again, in the worlds beyond home. He gave us a ride back to the hotel in the same workhorse truck he drove in the Antelope Valley, and we exchanged hopes to meet again when his journey crosses the desert.