Hello, Dear Friends, thank you for joining me on a
beautiful, summer day.
I am sitting here on my deck (that needs its rails re-stained :)
with Whitey Bear and Kai, looking out at the very top
of majestic Mt. Rainier, listening to the birds twittering,
and the occasional buzzing of a hummingbird or wasp,
or small plane from the local airport.
Mt. Rainier looks more like this to my naked eyes -
the camera does distort distance and narrows the views.
The Mr. and I have tried to guess how far away it is,
'as the crow flies', and we think it might be about
30-40 miles. I know it is 60 miles by road, up the
two-lane state route, that sees nearly a million visitors a year.
There are several ways to drive to 'The Mountain' as it's called,
and we live a mere 2 miles from one of these roads,
which is the only traffic in town.
It slows down to a crawl with 3 stop-lights, now,
after many years of only having one,
and a new mini-mart/gas station,
when you come past the town.
Here it is, on a very hot, week-day morning, recently,
when I drove through town to check the mail at our
pretty brick post-office. Every pole, lining the main streets,
has a huge basket of flowers xx
I've lived here for longer than anywhere else in my whole
entire life - I came here quite by chance,
after growing up in rural New England.........
and settled here to build a home with my high-school sweetheart,
and raise our four children 'in the shadow of the Mountain'.
The town was incorporated close to the turn of the last
century - when this area of the country (The Pacific Northwest)
was just getting established.
We don't live 'in town' - we live in the County -
tucked up in the foothills that form the back-drop of the town.
The little town is on a high plateau formed by
a large mud-flow from one of Mt. Rainier's
'geological events' several thousand years ago.
In many ways, we are all fairly rugged, independent
individuals, to live so far from the mainstream,
with an active volcano hovering over us.
The town was founded by loggers and coal miners,
farmers and railroad men, and all forms of
dependent and independent entrepreneurs.
At the entrance to my driveway, we have the
remains of the once, old-growth forest that
filled this area with centuries-old trees.
This enormous cedar stump is starting to fall apart
and is propped on one side, but it still has the ax marks
that loggers, at the turn of the century,
made to construct the scaffolding it took
to cut it down.
I try to imagine what the forest was like,
and I say a little prayer of reverence when I walk
by the last witness to all of that splendor.
There was once a big saw-mill and a train trestle
down on the banks of the glacial river that runs
along the border of town and between two counties.
The historic houses and buildings are modest, but
charming, and life is very sleepy, except for
'Friday Night Lights' and Saturday morning
little league, high school car washes, plant and garage sales,
and once a year, a fairly rowdy event called
'The Logger's Rodeo', where the most skilled
of the forestry trades put on a hair-raising display
of chain-saw Olympics.
The town comes to life with a vintage car show,
tents of crafts and food,
a parade, and of course, a kiddie carnival, with
spinning tea-cups, a carousel, a fairly impressive Ferris wheel
and all sorts of colorful booths filled with prizes, cotton candy,
fried 'elephant' ears, burgers and spicy, curly fries.
And when the kiddies go home, the taverns and pubs,
and restored 50's 'burger and shake drive-in',
(this is a tourist town, now) come
to life with a city-wide street dance, complete with
beer gardens, food tents and live country music where
my kids like to go to connect with their old friends.
All four of my children went through 12 years of school
here, and grew up with all of their mates.
To put things in perspective, though, my son is celebrating
his 20th class reunion this month :)
Time just keeps flying.
Here he is, over the weekend, visiting with my little grandson - his son.
xoxo
I couldn't resist one more......
Helping 'G-nana'
(rhymes with banana)
with the watering.
Melts my heart <3
xoxo
Other than the old car shows and logger's rodeo,
the town remains pretty quiet.
Here, daisies grow on the corner of 'Cottage Street'.
Clematis vine growing near a hand-made gate
across from the library.
We lost our last and only IGA grocery store
not too long ago, and most business's come and go,
but the library, post-office, funeral home,
old drugstore, laundro-mat, and the pubs and diners
seem to stick around, along with
a scattering of antique stores where I always spend
too much time and money, when I dare to venture inside.
We almost lost the feed store, and it shut down forlornly
for a time, but someone stepped up and gave it their all,
and now it is up and running again, to the delight
of all those who love to feed their livestock and dogs.
And they have a great selection of gardening supplies
and galvanized stock tanks - something I want to
invest in for planters someday soon.
Last count, they had 6 or 7 churches of every denomination,
that is the bed-rock of society around here.
Ramblin' Man and I live on the outskirts, tucked up in the hills,
part of the town, but not actually, because we belong to
County laws and jurisdictions.
We live near what was once an old coal mining town,
complete with a hotel and bridge across the glacial creek,
now completely gone, except for history books and street names.
I have some local artifacts found at the old town-site -
a few bleach bottles and cold-cream jars,
revealing hints of the women who once lived here, too.
There was an old rose bush and plum tree
near the bottles that we found, one summer day
when my children were young.
They came across the old stone foundation off the trail,
on their way to swim in the creek, and came back
home to take me there.
We even found some perfume bottles.
xoxo
My kids grew up swimming in that creek
and taking the forest trail down to the end of the road
where the bridge once stood, so long ago, before our time.
One day when I was at the bottom of my little mountain,
parked and waiting for my children's school bus,
an elderly couple driving by, stopped and asked me
if the bridge was still there.
The man told me he used to live
near here and would cross the bridge to get to the
next town up towards the mountain.
I didn't know there was a bridge......
Then off they went.
I wish I had asked them a lot more questions.....
My son found an iron coal cart wheel in the
glacial silt along the creek bank, and it took my two sons,
their Father, and a sturdy pole to haul it home.
And that, apart from a bare mention in some local history books
that I found at the library, is all I know
about this little mountain that I live on.
I do know that it is riddled with coal mines,
and the Dept. of Interior
and the Dept. of Interior
came to our door and that of our few neighbors,
back in the late eighties,
back in the late eighties,
to ask us if we knew of any mine openings,
and promptly came to fill them in.
With truck loads of cement.......
but there are one or two, still in the forest,
that could not be reached and drop down for hundreds of feet.
My Father, who lived down the lane with my Mother,
covered one on his property, with a huge industrial grate
that he found at a salvage yard,
after a dog fell in and cried for weeks.
There was no way to get it out.
It was the only reason, tragically,
that they knew the mine was there :(
My Father, who was not one to believe in anything
unless it was clearly in front of his eyes,
finally conceded there might be ghosts,
when one appeared at the foot of his bed
when I had my Mother away one weekend
to visit my sister in Oregon.
It was the ghost of a miner, complete with a sooty,
kerchief covered face and dark, sad eyes.
My Father was prone to telling tall tales,
but when he told this story, there were no crinkles
around his eyes, a tell-tale sign of blarney, only
sadness to think of the men who gave their lives.
Now these hills are farmed for timber and you can see the
edges of the clear-cuts when you zoom in to the shadows.
They are introducing Fischers,
an endangered relative of the Wolverine,
an endangered relative of the Wolverine,
to the forests around Mt. Rainier, and the day I come across
one on top of the woodpile, is the day I adopt a Mastiff.
Haha.
Seriously, though, this is wild country,
and not for the faint of heart,
and not for the faint of heart,
because you never know what is going
to show up in your back yard.
to show up in your back yard.
I finally had to admit that feeding the birds was an ill-advised
pursuit when the dogs got sprayed by a skunk lured to the feeder.
Due to the feeder, we have been visited
by everything from bears to cougars
(hunting the raccoons who were eating the seed),
by everything from bears to cougars
(hunting the raccoons who were eating the seed),
and were contributing to the increase in the rodent populations
and feeding the hawks, too.
and feeding the hawks, too.
When my children were young, we had two or three
big dogs at all times. Those dogs have a special place in
my heart for guarding my precious children so diligently
and loyally through the years.
We had a couple of fierce ponies, too, that
would drive off stray dogs and coyotes, and rub off
the occasional visiting child against a tree, if they so rudely demanded a ride :0
Now I have a third generation of dogs to guard
this little clearing in the forest.
And the occasional 'visitor'.
This is Charley, a long-haired dachshund,
whom I am pet-sitting for a friend,
while his owner travels cross-country to visit family.
Weenie-Baby, my daughter's dachshund,
will join the fun next week,
and I am watching a friend's cat, too.
She likes to help me sew :)
I have the cutest little project I will show you next time......
This is what Maggie thinks of the whole thing.....
The new dog chased her off the deck....
the new cat took her favorite bedroom,
and now she can't relax on her favorite deck
chair, curled up on the pillows with the
occasional drink from the water fountain.
She's holed up on the 'west wing' which
consists of our bedroom with the unfinished loft,
and the laundry room with all the clean laundry
to lie on. And she hogs the whole bed.
When I am not pet-sitting, I am at my daughter's house,
baby-sitting two afternoons a week for this little guy......
He's snacking on this very handy little thing -
I have no idea what it is called,
but it opens up to fill with frozen cut fruit,
perfect for a teething baby!
I can't resist those cheeks!
I'm so enjoying being a 'Gamma' or
G-Nana :)
xoxo
In between I am doing a little of this and a little of that,
read a couple of great books (which I will share soon)
and doing a lot of watering and taking care of plants.
I even gave the dogs a nice bath.
We haven't had rain in nearly a month.
We have 9 mos. of rain and then, boom!
Nothing.
It's been so lovely, but I do hope we have some rain soon.
The plants are still very green and the weeds have gone wild
due to our very, very wet spring, but forest fire danger is starting
to rise and there is a burn ban in our area.
I've been showing you some unedited
photos of last night's sunset on the hills.
Mt. Rainier was hidden in the clouds.
The sunsets are very long this time of year,
here on the West coast. They last for about 30 minutes-
long into evening.
This is between 9 and 9:30 at night.
It's my favorite time of day.
The forest sounds stop and there is complete
silence .
The atmosphere changes - there is an electricity
in the air. You can hear the creek far below, as it
rushes and gurgles - sometimes sounding like
lost voices in time.
Then you hear the birds.
They gather on the highest tree tops, where
the sun sends her last, golden rays -
and they sing.
They sing the best songs of their day,
sitting on those golden tree-tops,
and watching as the day fades away.
I hope that you are enjoying these long summer days,
my friends, and making time for some relaxation,
even if it is only at the end of a long day.
xoxo
