Our First PNW December – All it’s cracked up to be

   The warnings had come often and consistently since moving to Fidalgo Island in late February: “Wait ‘til winter arrives. Then we’ll see how you like it in the northern 48s.”
   In a way, the warnings were correct, though not in the way intended. 
Fowl Weather

Click to enlarge

   First, in early December, we suddenly found it important to drop everything we were doing and hop into Wes in search of migrating Tundra Swans (a.k.a. trumpeter swans) who, the locals claimed, could be spotted in the nature preserve ponds just outside of La Conner, the tulip capital of the world United States.
   After searching and searching in every cove we could find (I exaggerate), we gave up, and drove toward town for a beer and noshes at the Trumpeter Public House, which we considered fitting.
    On the way, however, we came across a little turkey farm, where we learned that turkeys can be extremely friendly. In fact, when I got out of Wes and said hi to them so they’d at least turn around and smile for the camera, they all thronged toward me like I was a vision of the Virgin Mary here to grant them clemency and peace. Really! Enlarge the picture. It was hilarious. They wouldn’t stop talking to me. Blah, blah, blah. Something about getting gobbled up, or whatever. I snapped my pictures and quit the scene in a flash. Turkeys. As you probably know, can fly.
   Now we really needed a beer.

   But, then, as if guided by fate herself, we spotted white flashes yon across the freeway, in Farmer Sven’s freshly furrowed fields, which, because it had rained wildly the night before, were brim full of water. It was in those lake rows we spotted our loot. Millions or hundreds, take you pick, of pristinely white tundra swans were floating in the furrows, some with their necks tightly craned, their heads submerged, others flapping their wings to dry them out or to stake a claim.
   Now we really needed that beer, which we indeed had, before deciding to press our luck and search for bald eagles catching salmon along the Skagit River shoals up the highway near Concrete, maybe thirty miles.
   We found no sign of the eagles because the river was flooded due to Thanksgiving's snow being followed by a forty-two degree heat wave.
   The whole flooding phenomenon, however, did hold our interest. SoCal’s rivers, which we are used to, are lined with concrete, not because it goes with the rest of the décor so much better, but because in urban settings, flooding understandably needs to be controlled in a highly efficient and predictable manner. Since Skagit County is the antithesis of urban, the natural river banks are what contain and channel the water down to the Sound. If there’s too much water, then the river floods, and the county puts up signs reminding motorists that driving in flooded areas is the major cause of storm-related deaths, which seems obvious, except . . .
   So we’re driving along the road, and I’m watching the GPS, and David asks, “What’s the name of that lake out there?” And I have to say, “It’s not a lake. It’s a farm.” So we understand why the locals may need to be reminded to not drive on their driveways during inclement weather and thaws.
   In Sauk Park, where we looked for the bald eagles, we got another picture of Davy inside our favorite tree (left, middle).
   Also at the bottom of that trio of pictures on the left is a gorgeous sunset taken on a stormy afternoon off the Coupeville Pier, after a JustWrite session. Two fellow writers and I were hiking along the pier to our cars, talking about how, as expats from California, the constant visuals the Puget Sound area provides never gets old, boring, or normal. It’s still been ages since I’ve seen graffiti.
Beat Army

   I have no idea why the Army-Navy game is no longer played on the same first weekend of December as the USC-UCLA game so you can land a spot in a sports bar and squat there all day to hopefully watch USC and Army writhe in misery.
   It matters not, because we had a fabulous time with Hank and Sandi Siebert at NAS Whidbey’s Officers Club watching Navy totally trounce Army with such plays as an almost-ninety-nine yard touchdown at the game’s start. Yahoo!!!
   As far as officers club decor goes, and I’m no connoisseur, NAS Whidbey's has walls thickly lined with paraphernalia and mementos, such as part of the rudder (above left) of the EP-3 Surveillance aircraft that went down in China in 2001, an incident, interestingly enough, which was assuaged by David’s USNA classmate Joseph Prueher, then Ambassador to China.
   There were also plenty of squadron plaques from this century’s war sorties. All we could do was imagine how the pilots got names such as Baggy, Hose, and Gramps, for our last visit to NAS Whidbey taught us that the names are earned by misdeed, rather than physical mutation or endowment. 
   Unlike the usual sports-bar environments in which we usually watch The Game, Whidbey officers brought the whole family, so there were tons of little kids tearing around the place, playing catch with midget footballs and running for passes between the formally set tables ready for the evening festivities. Besides being hilarious, it was bittersweet, for we knew this squadron, who’d been flying practice runs over the Sound for the last couple of months, would be leaving their families for Iraq and/or Afghanistan around Christmas. As I write today, the skies are silent and waiting for the new crew to rev up the engines and get to their practicing.
The Plasses

   Jane and Norm Wolfe, who’d been to Seattle to watch Lindsey’s dance recital, were supposed to visit the second week of December; sadly, plans went awry. Another time.
   But after Christmas, Beverly Plass (who’s still in my Louella Nelson Critique Group that I miss SOOOO much) and her family (husband Howard, son Tyler, and friend Jason) came up for the day from Black Mountain, Enumclaw, where Howard was raised.
   We went to the Adrift, a local restaurant that serves locally-grown food from the county and the San Juan Islands. It was great catching up with Bev, and I have no idea what the guys were talking about, but they seemed to be having a great time. Then we drove them around and showed the highlights of the island, except we didn’t take them to the top of Mt. Erie, because it had snowed that day, and we weren’t sure we could make it to the top on the icy road, or make it down alive.
   p.s.: For reference’s sake, in the picture of just Bev and me, I put a red arrow pointing to the hill upon which we live.
Postcards from Whidbey Island

   As Harry Anderson wrote for the Whidbey Examiner, “What would it have looked like if Garrison Keillor and Ed Sullivan had moved to Whidbey Island and started producing live, monthly variety shows together?”
   Anderson's question sparked our curiostiy, so David and I set out to discover just what this was all about on Dec. 19, a chilly Sunday afternoon.
   We drove over Deception Pass Bridge that links Fidalgo Island to Whidbey, past Oak Harbor and Penn Cove (home of Penn Cove mussels) to southwestern Coupeville, where we found the (now-heated) Historic Crockett Barn, lying west of Crockett Prairie (Whidbey Island has three prairies!), and south of Fort Casey.
   Inside the packed house, we enjoyed the recorded matinee, where, fun of fun, people from the JustWrite (on Whidbey) group I attend each Wednesday took part. Mary Rose Anderson read a stirring memoir about her enormous cat Harry who helped mother her daughter until his death. Sandra Pollard-Snowberger lamented about the trevails of being married to a Norwegian, and therefore having a Norwegian mother-in-law. And William Bell and Elizabeth Herbert who run Local Grown at the end of the Coupeville Pier emceed the production, as well as overseeing it all as producer/director. Listen! And here's part 2.
   AND there were cookies and a raffle to help the local animal shelter. Bayview Sound 
provided the music, which was amazingly good. The guy sounds like Neil Young and the fiddler had heart. Who can ask for anything more? Listen!
The Bus Stop: An update

   As promised, we’ve uploaded a picture of the maringally famous  Rosario Road bus stop, with its revolving holiday displays. Wonder what next month will bring!
   The other two pictures were taken at the insistence of Davy’s car, Wes, who likes to have his picture taken with the local scenery, perhaps as a testament to the fact that he’s in fact been out of the garage and in the weather. We, of course, cow-tow to his wishes because, frankly, we want him to start every morning.
   The middle picture shows him patiently waiting while we make our futile attempt to find swans in the wild-life preserve.
    The bottom photograph is a particularle favorite shot of his from Washington Park looking toward Skyline and its marina (where we almost lived, except the owner died and his daughter wouldn’t go through with the transaction so we live somewhere on the hill we pointed out in the Bev and Joanne picture).
Cold Sand

   Another surprising delight winter provides us are the beach walks. After a storm, it’s an adventure to spot the new logs that have banged onto shore, adding to the bone pile already gilding the sand.
   We shot this picture because we loved the little kid’s shoe prints juxtapositioned against his or her dog’s. If only we were around to see more than the footprints they left behind.
Where the Tulips Meet the Ferries

   Anacortest literally sits between the ferry landings and the tulip fields, the San Juan Islands and the Cascade Mountains, and the shipping lanes and the railroad highways. 
   Thus, ferries are vitally important, especially since they're a whole lot easier to build and maintain than a bunch of bridges connecting a natural archipelago in a windswept environment. 
   So it has been interesting to venture down to the harbor, which is like ten little blocks from the grocery store, to watch what the local ship industry's up to.
   For the last month, since they shipped the Cade Candies platform off to the Gulf of Mexico, they've been fixing ferries, which means they've dismantled them and set the top parts, where the cars and passengers travel, up on the dock, and left the rest in the water. It’s actually rather disorienting to drive by and see some ship’s superstructure in a lot next to the sidewalk. 
   One of these days, David and I will stop one of the workers on his way to his car and ask what they're doing to the ferries. Almost always the guys are thrilled and proud to describe their current projects and the part they play, which we think is fabulous. Very neat energy!!!
   The last picture on the left shows the local marina wildlife. Down in Alamitos, where Always is moored, the sealife clinging to the docks is either bright orange like a well-marketed orange or slug brown. These up at Anchor Cove Marina I think look quite festive, especially with the snow-covered Mt. Baker in the background, which you cannot see because I cropped the photograph.
Glade Jul

   Last, we had a delightful little Christmas, our first up here. Since we knew none of our kids would be making the trek northwest, we celebrated Christmas Eve with friends and spent Christmas recuperating.
   We had prime rib for dinner, which was a bit tough for my taste, but I'll figure out the meat shopping up here by next year. That's for sure! The chocolate souffles were delish, and so was our company: Linda Page, Carl Bergan, Ellen Kaiser, Bob Lane, Kim Adams and Bill Monteforte--all fellow members of the Fidalgo Yacht Club.