Category Archives: Salish Sea

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Slick

Careful, careful! That seaweed can be slick as snot and hiding a squelching tide pool. Not so deep that you fall in, but you may fall down and ouch! The rocks and barnacles are not soft.

Along North Beach, on the Olympic Peninsula.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: squelch.

Early morning light on the water.

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Touch

Think of the things the thumb and fingers have built
Hunt and home and hearth and healing and hearts
The eyes to look, the brain to decide, down the body tilts
This is the stone I choose to pick up, and toss, or collecting starts.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: thumb.

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Missing water

I miss my Salish Sea. At home I can’t see it from my house, but stand in the middle of my street and there it is.

All that water. There are mountains here and trees, but they are very different. Here it is high desert, 4600 feet and up. The Grand Valley is at 4600 feet and the mesas rise from here. I miss Port Townsend Bay, and the big trees.

Gold sky and blue water. Look! A grebe! Catching breakfast!

A pair.

And they dive.

Gone.

They are small on the big water.

Taken in November, 2018.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: contemplation.

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Wheels and gears

Ah, wheels! These photographs are from the Great Port Townsend Bay Kinetic Sculpture Festival, from October 2023. All of the machines are human powered and have to go on land, up a big hill, be able to brake, go through water (the Port Townsend Bay is COLD) and through a mud bog at the fair grounds! They have to have a theme, bribes for the judges, support teams (usually on bikes), a teddy bear on board and I think duct tape is required too.

It is three days of costumes, physical work pedaling the human powered machines, a parade, a dance, a Kinetic Kween, a brake test and the challenging trip through the water, the race itself (most mediocre wins) and the mud bog. There are many wheels involved and quite a lot of fabric and glitter. Some machines are thoroughly engineered and others involve more duct tape and improvised floatation attachments.

It is the Pacific Northwest, so there might be giant slugs too. Are there wheels involved in this tail or not?

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: wheel.

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There’s a boat here somewhere

Two of the ferries, that cross Puget Sound from Port Townsend to Whidby Island, are in this photograph from January. But it’s the sky that distracts. The ferries and the dock look small in the sound and the sky.

I do miss the Salish Sea!

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: boat.

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Dock and gangplank

As the tide comes in, the dock and the boat rise with the tide. The rings rise up the pipes of the pipe dock.

The gangplank is hinged so it can swivel. Stairs would not make sense, because the angle would change as the tide changes.

No hinges or swivels on the bridge!

I took these yesterday in La Conner, Washington. This is the Rainbow Bridge over Swinomish Channel.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: swivel.

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Painted sky

I think the sky and water here are more sophisticated than I anything I can imagine.

After my mother died, I wrote a poem about her and my kids. Her part:

I keep wondering
what the art supplies are like
and if you work on sunsets
or mountains
or lakes

The rest of the poem is here https://drkottaway.com/2021/09/23/painting-angels-2/.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: sophisticated.