I'm sitting at my favorite little coffee shop in downtown Poulsbo. If I lean to the left, I can see the masts of boats docked at the harbor. If I walk outside, I can walk along Liberty Bay, down a boardwalk by the glassy water dotted with sea birds fishing, along a little path dotted with daffodils.
On clear days the Olympic mountains rise up behind the water, jagged peaks frosted with snow. I am not telling you this to crow my good fortune. That would be annoying. I am just writing it because I want to remember this good place where I'm lucky enough to live. The peculiar thing about living anywhere is that we forget so quickly how wonderful it is. We must continually remind ourselves of the beauty that lies at our feet and expands over our heads. During the first year we lived here, we couldn't stop gawking, but too quickly that passed and now I have to remind myself to look down the hill to the water and to the all-too-often cloudy sky that hides the mountains.
When the mountains emerge from the curtain of clouds, I do not have to remind myself to be filled with awe. I am always. Those mountains make you gasp, even when you've seen them a thousand times. Some people I know regard the mountains with great personal eagerness--they want to be in them, to climb them, to camp by their clear glacial lakes and stand on every peak. Not I. But it doesn't mean I don't love them. I love them like I love great people, like the writers and artists that shape the way I think about the world and about beauty and people but who are often dead. I don't need to speak with them, nor do I spend a lot of time dreaming about meeting them or having long conversations with them. But the fact that they exist, that I can sit at their feet and absorb their wisdom--too, that such people live and lived on this earth--I am content. So am I content to behold the mountains. I feel no drive to conquer their peaks or scramble down their shale slopes. If I get to encounter them in minutiae--say, a field of spring flowers at their foothills, I am content.
I just received a letter from my favorite living philosopher, J. Aultman Moore, who described this exactly. His sons are smitten with Alaska and spend much of their time there, guiding and beholding the Northern Lights, but as he put so bluntly (and I paraphrase): I don't like that state much. It is too wild; it absorbs people into its wildness. I prefer wilderness in small doses, in the coziness of the east, for instance, mixed with marks of civilization.
I felt so companionable and justified when I read that sentence out loud. Exactly! I've often told people that I wouldn't mind climbing a mountain if there were a tea house on top, with little tables covered in white clothes and tea pots with properly brewed hot tea and a plate of dainties. That and perhaps that alone is enough to make me want to strap on the pack and pant up a series of switchbacks.
So a place like Poulsbo--in fact, any of the towns that cluster along the shores of the peaceful Puget Sound--is perfect for me. One can sit at a table, as I am now, with a big salad to eat and the purr of the espresso machine, and lean to the left and see the harbor. In the summer, one could finish such a salad and go down to the water and rent a kayak for a few hours, poking around the shallows and saying hello to seals before walking to one's favorite fish and chip shop. One could end the evening with ice-cream. Or, if summer is still months in the future, one could just sit and order another cup of coffee.
Which is perhaps what I will do.
On clear days the Olympic mountains rise up behind the water, jagged peaks frosted with snow. I am not telling you this to crow my good fortune. That would be annoying. I am just writing it because I want to remember this good place where I'm lucky enough to live. The peculiar thing about living anywhere is that we forget so quickly how wonderful it is. We must continually remind ourselves of the beauty that lies at our feet and expands over our heads. During the first year we lived here, we couldn't stop gawking, but too quickly that passed and now I have to remind myself to look down the hill to the water and to the all-too-often cloudy sky that hides the mountains.
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| Photo from www.cityofpoulsbo.com |
I just received a letter from my favorite living philosopher, J. Aultman Moore, who described this exactly. His sons are smitten with Alaska and spend much of their time there, guiding and beholding the Northern Lights, but as he put so bluntly (and I paraphrase): I don't like that state much. It is too wild; it absorbs people into its wildness. I prefer wilderness in small doses, in the coziness of the east, for instance, mixed with marks of civilization.
I felt so companionable and justified when I read that sentence out loud. Exactly! I've often told people that I wouldn't mind climbing a mountain if there were a tea house on top, with little tables covered in white clothes and tea pots with properly brewed hot tea and a plate of dainties. That and perhaps that alone is enough to make me want to strap on the pack and pant up a series of switchbacks.
So a place like Poulsbo--in fact, any of the towns that cluster along the shores of the peaceful Puget Sound--is perfect for me. One can sit at a table, as I am now, with a big salad to eat and the purr of the espresso machine, and lean to the left and see the harbor. In the summer, one could finish such a salad and go down to the water and rent a kayak for a few hours, poking around the shallows and saying hello to seals before walking to one's favorite fish and chip shop. One could end the evening with ice-cream. Or, if summer is still months in the future, one could just sit and order another cup of coffee.
Which is perhaps what I will do.
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