When the Almond Tree Blooms

For someone who grew up in one of the more damp, green corners of the world (Seattle, WA), I've always loved deserts. When I was a kid, I would go with my dad to Ernst Hardware Store in the University Village (back when the U Village had stores that actually sold useful stuff) in Seattle. Sometimes, if I was lucky, he would buy me a cactus or a little plant. The old man's beard cactus still sits on a desk in my parents' house, not much taller than when I bought it at least twenty years ago. So for me, deserts are pretty cool places, especially if they have cacti. After leaving Flagstaff last Wednesday, I planned to spend a few days drifting back to the Bay Area through the deserts of Eastern California. I am glad I did. I turned off I-40 a bit further west than Needles, CA and didn't get back on the interstate until I reached Stockton yesterday night. So what did I find out there in the desert? Solitude, for one thing. Having spent the past three weeks on Bla...

Fog and Seastack, Olympic National Park, Washington Coast Pelicans near mouth of Hoh River, Oil City, Washington Rounding a headland north of Oil City Recently, I read an excellent book, Ivan Doig's "The Sea Runners". It's a sort of historical fiction, following four indentured servants who escape from the Russian outpost of New Archangel (now Sitka, Alaska) in a canoe and travel down the coast towards Astoria, Oregon. Doig tells the story wonderfully, making it difficult to put the book down, and bringing the perils that the four men face to life. The book also invokes the Pacific coastline of the northwest, a place I love and know well. For most of my childhood, we went camping out on the beach on the Washington Coast in Olympic National Park. We played on the sand, roasted hot dogs and tried to keep raccoons and bears away from our food. We also endured hailstorms in July, caught a glimpse a rare gray whale breaching right off a rocky point, and dodged wav...