Yearbook (7.3)

Hiked along the beach from Ft. Worden to Port Townsend harbor (huge cascades of ivy along the bluff—“like a superhero melting into the sea,” said Michaela—, a log that looked like a hippo’s head, sea urchins) and ate huge scones at the Tyler St. Bakery. Sleep in a tent is delicious but unsatisfying. We hiked past Boulder Lake up a steep scree path we thought might go to Boulder Peak, took a scary scramble up to a rock outcrop and sat there, way up the mountain with a view of three other mountains, quite as if we had flown there or been dropped from a plane; then scrambled back down, swam for maybe a minute in the icy water (there were occasional heaps of snow on the ground), shared an apple etc. on a log, hiked back. Ha ha now we’re at the Thunderbird Motel in Aberdeen. The time though cannot be repaired, or the patches of snow in the mountains in case of when they are broken yeah they’re broken, collecting silts and needles. The descent was as effortless as it was unsettling, like the passage through zero when counting backwards from one to negative one. Today a row of 6-to-13-year-old kids in bright lifejackets drifted down the river, exclaiming: “Help us!”—“It’s so freaking cold!”—“Help, I can’t feel my fingers!”—“Oh, dude, it’s draggin’!” (or, “dude, a dragon!”)—“Try swimming the other way!”—“It’s too hard!”