House: not the TV show
Today we went to visit Ross for the day, and spent the morning and afternoon driving randomly around the Olympic Peninsula area. I saw some backroads and places I'd never been before, and absolutely loved it.
It was one of those days that seems to go in slow motion. Where details are vivid, and you find beauty in every wet tree branch that lays on top of the others in glittery, rainy iridescence; like birdfeathers.
Everything was so green. Green and grey. We found two small towns that I especially loved. In Nordland - which consists of several older, weathered houses all along a small inlet, as well as a General Store and an old icehouse - there was a herd of sailboats docked in the cove, getting shelter from the wind. The water was a stormy dark grey, the color and gleam of a nickel.
I was reminded that I have an unexplained fascination with old and (especially) abandoned houses and buildings. Doesn't matter what kind. Victorian, farmhouse, shack....it's all the same to me. I love them. I want to stop and take pictures of each and every single one. They make me daydream - something I am not prone to doing usually. Who built this place? How old is it? Who lived here? How did it become abandoned and decrepit - who left, when, and why? What series of events caused this once stately place to fall into ruin?
Maybe it's because I love stories, and each one seems to have a biography it wants told. Instead of the dog whisperer, they want me to be the house whisperer or something. I also find something inherently karmic and metaphorical about an unloved home surrounded by overgrown plant life and lush, wild greenery. They are all dowager queens to me.
If I could, I would swerve off of the road abruptly, park, and explore all of them. Since trespassing isn't exactly something I want on my resume, I don't. However, I feel almost a compulsive urge to stride right up and go inside for a look. Is anything in there? What people leave behind is just as telling as what they bring with them. What people find useless says as much about them as what they treasure. It might also tell me the last era the building was inhabited in. I am unafraid of ghosts or the like, the prospect of being inside a dark, rickety, abandoned building does not creep me out.
We drove through Fort Worden campgrounds. Took a random, impulse turn down a side road to Skunk Island, and I fell in love. Skunk Island consists of nothing except a crude boat ramp (a word I use generously...."dirt hill sloping into the water" is more accurate), the Ajax Cafe with its multicolored mismatched chairs and its resident Malamute dog sleeping on the stoop, a wooden boatbuilding school, and about six small cottages for rent. That's it. The entire "town" encompasses one short block. You could have kicked me out right there and I would have gladly spent all day wandering around taking pictures until I finally remembered to start hitchhiking home.
After that it was on to Fort Worden State Park for a peek at the beach. This visit, we saw abandoned bunkers and rusty metal gun turrets from when it was an active military defense site. Some of the barracks are now artists' residences and seminar facilities. I found Alexander's Castle, a small historical building that I also want to come back and poke around at.
Another thing I adore are the simple chapels on the older military bases. They are plain white rectangles with a single spire and bell. No fanfare. No readerboards. No stained glass. I can appreciate a well built cathedral as well as the next person, but these are all the more beautiful to me because of their unadorned peace. Considering who they were built for - soldiers and their families - their intended congregation would have been solely people who see a considerable amount of suffering and stress. They are inviting because of what they don't have - distractions. Like the Zen of Christianity, they imply comfort and solace in their unfettered peace.
Oh, and deer. Around every corner, was a mama deer and two babies, blithely helping themselves to the apples in someone's yard, or watching the humans slog through wet sand.
And now, some pictures:
