Twin Peaks, Waterfalls, and Getting Perspective: Happy Midsummer Night’s Eve and Supermoon!

Yes, sometimes we have to get away from it all to get some perspective. After feeling worn out and sick as a dog for two weeks, today I woke up with the sun shining and feeling well enough to get around a bit. So we decided on a day trip out to Snoqualmie Falls (the Salish Lodge there was used as the site for Twin Peaks) and to Ollalie State Park Falls, a somewhat smaller and less touristy nearby waterfall hike.

It was 79 degrees, a breeze was blowing the waterfall’s mist up in our faces, and there was a rainbow. It was the biggest we had seen the falls in sometime – we have had some rain and snowmelt, but whatever caused it was amazing! It was great to drive into the cool mountains in the heat of the day, to watch Glenn walk around a tree about ten times as wide and wall as he is, to watch deer and eagles and stop and buy local honey, to see the storefronts with the famous “Cherry Pie!” discussed in Twin Peaks and antique trains.
This all reminded me of the things I love about where I live – twenty minutes from an ocean, twenty minutes from the mountains, it’s just the traffic and life that get in the way of getting to either, most of the time! And also helped me get outside of my own head – not worrying about jobs, or money, or books, or anything other than – should we make corn chowder out of that fresh corn we just bought? Or – what kind of odd duck and ducklings are we looking at? Was that a flicker or a stellar jay? This was one of the things I missed most about Washington when I lived in California – the Northwest mountains and waterfalls with their cool pines remind me of growing up in the mountains of Tennessee. It seems like taking these little breaks – no more than a few hours, but still a break – helps me remember why I am a writer, why I love where I am, helps me feel a little easier about a body that can be unreliable and cranky. I cut some sweetpeas from my garden, where our first strawberries are getting ripe, and put them in a vase by my computer.  This is what a midsummer night’s dream is all about – the enchantment of a glowing giant moon in the sky, the flowers nearby and water and feeling warm from the day’s sun, the birds still calling outside your window.