The things you hear

[scarlettina]

One of the things I have long enjoyed about my neighborhood is that I often am reminded that I live near a lake in the middle of the city. Despite the occasional inconvenience of living on the side of the lake farthest from the freeway, it still gives me a great deal of pleasure. And though it's scenic, it's also a busy lake with a great deal of leisure and commercial traffic, both maritime and aerial. I often see the seaplanes that launch from the south end of the lake flying north up to Vancouver over my neighborhood. Sometimes, if I look between the trees, I can see a sail gliding by in the distance. I also can hear the boat traffic, specifically whenever some ship toots its horn requesting that the Fremont Bridge be drawn up.

Lately, I've been hearing one particular, very distinctive tooting about once a day. There's some boat--I'm assuming a leisure cruise vessel--that comes down the canal toward the Fremont Bridge that plays a music-box-like version of "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" punctuated by its baritone horn. It's the strangest, most comical thing, like the horn of some ship out of a children's book. That's probably the point, of course, but it's just odd, and it always makes me smile. It feels like a very Seattle thing, this peculiar bit of whimsy in the air.

I appreciate it for any number of reasons, not the least of which is that it reminds me of why I like living here and why I've stayed for so long.