PNWSights

5 entries · by Astrid

Notes from the road.

Trips, weather, light, and the drives in between. First-person dispatches from the Pacific Northwest, one day at a time.

A park ranger stands beside a wooden sign for the Bainbridge Island Japanese American Exclusion Memorial and Joel Pritchard Park, set on a leaf-covered wooded slope in bright morning light. Tall evergreens and bare deciduous trees frame the scene, with scattered rocks and mossy undergrowth suggesting early spring.
Precise

6 min read

Five Degrees of Morning Light

A September crossing to Bainbridge Island for the story wall's raking hour, then six miles north to a lighthouse that could not compete with it.

Read the entry
A narrow dirt trail winds uphill through a dense old-growth forest, with moss-covered roots, ferns, and tall conifers filling the frame. The light is soft and shaded, but there is no view of Lake Crescent or the summit overlook.
Melancholy

10 min read

Waiting Out the Crowd at Storm King

A September morning on Mount Storm King, climbed too late in the day for solitude, and what I noticed while I waited my turn for the view.

Read the entry
A museum destroyer is docked beside a narrow waterfront gangway, with gray gun turrets, rigging, and masts rising against a clear blue sky. The calm inlet reflects the ship and nearby shoreline, with distant hills visible beyond the harbor.
Weary

6 min read

The Light That Didn't Come

A second visit to Bremerton's waterfront boardwalk, years after the first, arrives under a different sky and finds a different kind of picture.

Read the entry
A brown Hoh Visitor Center sign with the National Park Service arrowhead logo stands at the edge of a mossy rainforest trail, surrounded by ferns, damp gravel, and tall dark tree trunks. Small posted trail rules sit to the left under the green canopy.
Restless

4 min read

Chasing a Light That Didn't Come

A shot I had wanted from the Hoh for years, and a drizzly August morning that gave me almost everything except the one thing I came for.

Read the entry
A rocky alpine trail winds through dense evergreens and scattered deadfall beneath steep granite slopes, with jagged mountain peaks rising in the distance under a clear blue sky. The scene feels like an early morning approach into the Enchantments, with no lake visible yet.
Contemplative

7 min read

The Day the Sky Changed Its Mind

A forecast of ten percent rain and a summer sky that decided otherwise, up at Colchuck Lake on a Thursday in July.

Read the entry