We spent most of the weekend in the Olympic Peninsula. We took a ferry from the downtown waterfront to Bainbridge Island, and from there travelled through the upper part of Bremerton, over the Hood Canal bridge, and onto Highway 101. We lodged by the unbelievably beautiful Lake Crescent. It was only one night that we spent but it was full of wonder, with strolls under trees the size of cathedrals and encounters with black-tailed deer, ducks, chipmunks and Oregon spike-moss (the stuff that drapes the tree branches green).

On the way home we took a right in Port Angeles and drove back into the Park to explore the 17-mile Hurricane Ridge road, which takes visitors a mile straight up into the Olympics. The view at the top was like something from an airplane, except that you could walk around and buy keychains.

Much heavy thinking ensued from all this exposure to nature. I often feel alienated from wilderness because I compare my mortality with its relatively eternal timespans. But this time I tried to think of us as cousins, both springing from the same clever set of antediluvian mathematical equations that spawned all of our respective, but related, complexities.