We spent yesterday walking in the local woods with our son and his partner Michele. We went to the high point above our house and looked out across the Salish Sea to the Olympic Peninsula. It was a warm gray day with flat skies and calm water...no bird activity and only intermittent noise, muffled and distant. The crunch of our feet in the dry leaves on the trail and our own occasional comments were our accompaniment as we walked to the viewpoint. Having absorbed the vistas and tried to identify the islands we could see from our perch, we returned to the woods and wandered through the fir trees and madronas to lower, more partial views. On our way we happened upon a secluded glade under a twisted madrona where people had built a series of fairy houses out of sticks. It wasn't hard to see why they had chosen this particular place, since the tree had created a sense of shelter on a shelf of rock set a little apart from the its surroundings. Some of the houses were open and airy, and some were almost subterranean. There were little plastic animals or dolls tucked into a few that made me think of Saskia and the household of the Old Bird King.
The deep quiet and the sense of having happened upon these little dwellings by accident created a pause in time while we contemplated the things we so easily pass by.
Later that night a thunderstorm crashed out of the clouds and the rain poured down. We don't get many thunderstorms here, so we were enthralled. The lightning flickered up from the south (the direction out of which we get most of our weather) dimly at first, and then in full and startling brilliance, punctuated by the loudest thunder I have heard in years. A day of subdued colors and sounds ended with an explosion.