Tag: seattle

Northwest Urban Lakes

While I was in Seattle, I randomly decided to go to a place called Green Lake. I thought it would be some small pond of no importance in some public park, but I was very surprised at its reality.

It turned out to be a decent-sized lake, with people all around swimming, diving off the diving boards, sun bathing, sailing, fishing and paddling. The water was remarkably clear for it being in such a densely populated city, and its shore was lined with a path with lots of lovely trees, flowers and blackberry bushes.

I was surprised at how clean the water was, I actually got in for a bit and went for a walk, far enough that the water would not hit the tip of my shorts. Others enjoyed the park by circling the lake, and there were lots of dog walkers, parents with strollers and joggers that look like they came there a lot.

Back in Portland, I wanted to go check out Laurelhurst Park in Southeast, the urban lake I am most familiar with. Though not Greek Lake, it is a pleasant place to daze off at the brown waters and watch the turtles basking and the ducks waddling.

I was surprised to find this lake had been immensely reduced. It was locked off entirely by a steel fence, and some sign said that they were draining the lake and taking the fish out.

There was one part where you could get sort of near where the lake used to be, and this was fortunately the area that you could also feed the ducks. The sign on the fence said that the birds would go elsewhere and then return once they refilled the water, but I guess a few of them were too stubborn to move. These birds were all funneling their beaks throughout the bleak mud, to navigate their new fraction of a swimming hole that was really a small puddle.

We fed them some burger buns through and over the fence, and talked about how strange this place now looked.

Trip to Seattle

This weekend I did a mini-excursion up to Seattle. We found a ride off craigslist and drove up through the cloudy greenery from the Oregon border of the Columbia River up through Washington State.

I’m getting to know this three-hour drive a little better each time I go through it. I know we pass through a suburban sprawl area around and north of Vancouver, WA, and then enter an area of vast greenery with lots of RV truck lots on the sides. There is also some redneck sign that’s always standing strong half of the ride through, with a giant cartoon of Uncle Sam dressed in red, white and blue, which always displays some right-wing banter like “Guns, Glory and God: You Keep the Change!” I’m always excited to see what they have to say next. Then down the freeway is the long journey through Tacoma, with the domes and big box stores and malls all glorifying their own development with huge, colorful signs.

Getting to Seattle was fun. Upon entrance in the automobile, I always see the vaguely distinguished skyline with the Space Needle off to the left in the distance, with the beautiful water and hills; also the vast industrial lot of cranes, warehouses and cargo to the immediate left of I-5. The traffic always slows down upon entrance to Seattle’s outskirts, with people changing lanes and getting off and on and around the cluster of connecting roads.

Unfortunately the rainy weather followed us, but despite the clouds and precipitation, it was fun. I enjoy the walk from the Capitol Hill district downhill to the downtown area, past the skyscrapers and to the convention center. I like the faster-paced urban experience and passing some landmarks that I vaguely remember from times before, be it a bleak Greyhound station or a funny pink elephant car wash, to the back and forth journeys of the monorails.

Folklife, the festival I went to, was interesting. Got to walk in and out and above and around examples from lots of different places, seeing little kids kicking off traditional Cossack dances to people playing strange Asian instruments I’ve never seen before but vaguely recognized in some background music I’ve certainly heard at some point in my life.

Folklife had lots of crust punk bands playing washboards and walking their dogs, and some older people strumming guitars and patting wooden boxes to bluegrass beats on benches.

We checked out the urban scene too of course, shopped around at bookstores and record stores, ate at the fine eateries that had pescatarian and ovo-lacto vegetarian versions of Pad Thai, and even a place that prided itself on its New York style pizza, full of illustrations and photographs of good ol’ New York. Rode the city buses and observed the different looks and accents and attitude of different people.

The ride back was nice and sunny. These three hippie girls picked us up in Seattle, who were doing some farm training workshop up at Orcas Island. Back we journeyed to Portland, and everything looked so much different with the golden touch from above. Back down south through the little bridges over the regional rivers to the large bridge over the Columbia River, back to Portland yet again.

Waiting for Summer

It has been very rainy lately. I’m looking forward to summer but this constant rainfall and teasing so-called “sunbreaks” really make it seem like a distant imaginary thing rather than something that will be spur of the moment. Someone told me before that the real summer of the Northwest really starts after the Fourth of July weekend, but I was in denial because it was so nice around this time last year.

I have a few summer plans I’d like to turn into reality. I’m supposed to head up to Seattle for the Northwest Folklife Festival this Saturday. Hopefully I’ll be able to make it happen, and hopefully the clouds will finally give us a break. I went last year and it was an eventful time of marching around a new city and seeing a variety of musical acts and dancers I would never expect in the same place, all conglomerated under the Space Needle.

I’m also trying to decide what to do for my birthday in mid-June. There’s a concert I want to see in the Bay Area, plus I have a lot more friends there than I do here, but there are supposed to be some fun things going on around Portland as well. I suppose that is a good problem to have!

I talked to a couple friends recently and also may have some visitors crashing at my place this summer, which is always fun. It gives you an excuse to step out of your routine and actually check out the city you live in but take for granted.

I’ll also be going to New York from June 30-July 13. New York City is a wonderful place in the summer, maybe crowded and full of car fumes and hot concrete, but definitely also full of enhanced delight from the millions of people who wait so long all year to have the sun.

I want to try to make it up to Binghamton, NY, where I went to school. I spend most of my time in NYC whenever I’m back on the East Coast, but I’m most nostalgic for my past summer drives up Route 17, where you finally get out of greater suburban New York and into upstate, from Bear Mountain, then past Orange County, along the Catskill Mountain borders, cutting through the little fishing villages on the bridges over the gushing river. I’d like to test what I actually remember from that drive, from the strange names of towns like Downsville and Fishs Eddy, the Beaver-something Log Cabins all beautifully situated on a grassy incline, the bleak-looking factory town of Deposit, and then an entrance into Broome County, under a highway overpass, where the surrounding hills would magically get shorter, the skies darker and cloudier and the air more humid, until you voyage into its post-industrial decaying city of Binghamton, a strange place of so many of my memories for better or worse.

Well, the sun just came out…