17 Mar

Finding Treasure

Stories say there’s a pot of gold at the end of each rainbow, if you can only find it–and if the silly things would hold still. Every child who ever chased a bright band of colors as it retreated across the sky is familiar with this difficulty.

Other, less frequently repeated stories say that fairy gold turns to leaves and twigs in the morning.

Taken together, these tales don’t exactly teach us to go hunting for riches in the wild. But in my years of wandering through the woods, I’ve learned a different lesson: treasures are hidden everywhere. There is a trick, though. If you’re barreling after the end of a rainbow, you may never see them. They often aren’t where you expect them to be, and sometimes you don’t notice them until after the fact.

Last August, Adam and I hiked up to Flapjack Lakes in the Olympic Mountains. Read More

24 Feb

The Last Slice

Safely contained? Ha.

Oh, last slice of baklava. Tonight, I am being good. I finish devouring your sister and fold up my napkin. That’s it; no more. But as I reach out to close your plastic shell, you whisper, “See how the light gleams in the pooled honey next to my wrapper.”

It’s true. The honey does gleam, lying there in sweet half-globes. It seems dark against the black plastic, but I know that if I should happen to get some on my finger and hold it up to the light, it would be yellow. Yellow, sticky, and so sweet. I still have the sweetness on my tongue from the slice I ate.

But I am done for the night. I want to sleep soon, and if I have more sugar it will keep me up. I shut your container and push it to the edge of my desk, turn away and begin closing tabs in my Internet browser. I reach for my water, next to you, and happen to look down. Read More

19 Feb

Goodbye, My Friends

Sheet moss festooning a vine maple. Totally not a many-tentacled swamp monster… okay, okay, maybe it’s both.

Sheet moss festooning a vine maple. Totally not a many-tentacled swamp monster… okay, okay, maybe it’s both.

Seattle is a fertile environment. Plants will grow on anything that stays still for too long. I’ve cleaned sprouts out from the crevices around the trunk of my car, and I have a friend who found a small carpet of moss growing under his windshield wipers.

The upsides of this include the lush greenery everywhere and the vegetable garden that delivers buckets of yummy tomatoes despite my black thumb. The downsides include things like mold, which is a real issue in many buildings. Today, I learned it is a problem in my home. Read More

18 Feb

Puppy Meets Puget Sound

Golden Gardens in Winter

I hope you all had a nice long weekend! I spent some quality time on Presidents Day trying to figure out which of the electronics in my apartment was creating that lovely “I’m about to catch on fire!” smell. Turns out it was my computer, which led to even more quality time frantically backing up files in case the power supply was about to blow. My (fantastic, wonderful, and perfect in every way, and I’m totally not saying this just because he might be reading this right now) husband was nice enough to clean the dust out of the innards of my computer and test everything out for me. He thinks it will be fine, but if this blog post ends with a sudden fiery bang, well, you’ll know why.

The rest of my weekend was less exciting, but I did make it out to a local beach called Golden Gardens. With volleyball nets, fire pits, plenty of sand, and a gorgeous view of the Olympic Mountains across Puget Sound, Golden Gardens is mobbed in the warmer months. This time of the year, though, it’s a different story. Read More

08 Feb

A Picture for My Mother

When my husband and I first began dating, we went camping in Massachusetts in the beginning of October. The leaves were beginning to pop with color, but it was still warm enough during the day that we could hike in shorts. After I returned from this trip, I gushed to my mother about this wonderful guy and the gorgeous hike we’d taken.

It should not have surprised me, then, that my mother requested a picture of my new boyfriend and me for Christmas. She loves pictures, and since she lives across the country from me, she rarely has an opportunity to take them in person. Read More