Backroads

Elliot is our newest grandchild, and she is fortunate to have parents who have jobs,

which is to say, we coordinate our visits with their work schedules, or days off.  

Mostly.  When we can.  

As we calculated, we had just enough time to get to Portland by going the ways less taken.  

The boat in its own house, we worried our way east of Seattle, through small towns and road repairs; places whose names I had learned a long while ago, only half-knowing where they were.  

I did know where Eatonville High School was:

 in Eatonville.  Once upon a puberty, I was a Cruiser.  (A Cruiser?  Look up forestry management!)  We had lunch, I suppose it was, in Eatonville, surrounded by ancient Cruisers, current Cruisers, and perhaps even an authentic Cruiser.  

We exchanged "Whereyoufroms" and when it was, and I was assured that I could not be all bad if once I had been a Cruiser.  Nailed me!  A few good parts.

My real reasons for driving those back roads were two:  we had to go slow, anyway, towing a trailer, and higher up in those logging town hills was Mossyrock.  I have nearly indelible memories of Mom talking about Mossyrock, where she and Dad had lived when they were first married.  I am quite sure it was not in the little town, but near enough, and the name alone is worth a visit.  

In by nine, Out by five.

Then west to the coast of Washington, near Raymond, then south to Ilwaco, there where the Columbia River has almost reached the Pacific Ocean.   We stayed there, overnight.  

At dinner, we were entertained by what I guessed was personnel from one of the boats moored a few yards away.  Not one of the local fishing boats:  visitors, convincing themselves that the loudmouth entertaining them was worth the pain because he owned the boat and had learned to shout through the fog.  

In the morning we drove across the Columbia to Astoria, Oregon, where once before we had visited the Maritime Museum.  It was worth a second visit.  

My favorite exhibit, this time, was a small boat that the tsunami in Japan 

had taken, and washed up near the mouth of the Columbia.  Even with a hole in its side, when it arrived on this side of the ocean, it had three fish in it from Japan.  One of them is in an aquarium in Seaside (I believe it is).  The Japanese owner of the boat had agreed that it should remain in America, where the sea had taken it.  It was, he said, "a good boat".  

We visited a now decommissioned lighthouse boat that had once anchored at the mouth of the Columbia.  Life on a lighthouse boat must have been hell.  Life below decks in steel rooms, a thundering fog horn atop the short mast, anchored in one of the roughest patches of water in the world.  

 But the lure of the sea is primordial.  Life probably began there, maybe at its fumerols, maybe where sweet and salt waters meet.  We are, at any rate, just about as salty as the sea, and little boys still imagine what it might be to go back.  

At mid-day we drove to Portland, actually crossing the Columbia twice to get there.  The roads have to go where the earth allows them.

Elliot was expecting us.