A Professional Dilettante

Back on the last weekend in September, when the weather was much warmer and sunnier, I took a trip back to the Okanogan, partly because I’m about to set another novel in that part of the world, and partly, well, mostly because it’s been a couple of years since my last visit, and I wanted to make one more weekend trip at the end of the season.

The trip over the mountains was beautiful. The trees were just starting to turn, and once I crossed over Blewett Pass and coasted down into the Wenatchee Valley the fruit stands were all overflowing (with fruit and with customers). The sky was clear and blue over there, too, unlike at home.

My first stop for this trip was at the Wenatchee Valley Museum and Cultural Center, which is housed in the city’s original post office, fronted, unfortunately, by a flight of granite steps.

I say unfortunately, because somehow as I was getting out of my car, parked along the curb in front of the museum, I managed to trip, fall, and strike my kneecap painfully against the very edge of one of those granite steps. All I can say is wow, that hurt.

But the museum itself was great, once the throbbing in my knee subsided enough for me to enjoy it. A temporary exhibit on Indian basketry, a permanent exhibit on transportation which included an adorable coin-operated model train, and, most interesting of all to me, a large and well-designed exhibit on the history of how Washington became world-famous for its apples. Wenatchee is at the heart of apple-growing country.

After a stop at a drug store to pick up some painkiller for my knee, I crossed the Columbia River and headed north towards the Okanogan. The highway parallels the massive river as it curves north between dry brown cliffs, the space between river and cliff covered in orchards. It really doesn’t look like most non-Washingtonians’ idea of what Washington should look like, but actually far more of Washington looks like this than it does the heavily-wooded west side of the mountains.

An hour or so north of Wenatchee, the highway crosses back to the west side of the Columbia on a bridge dwarfed by the scenery. At the small town of Brewster, a large chunk of which burned last summer in the Carlton Complex fire (the largest wildfire in Washington’s history), the Columbia River turns east. This is also where the Okanogan River adds its flow to the Columbia, and where my highway turned north.

This is the beginning of the Okanogan Country, and the confluence of the two rivers is where, back in 1811, Fort Okanogan was established as a fur trading post. It used to be a state park, but the site is on the Colville Indian Reservation, which covers a big chunk of northeastern Washington, and it’s now run by the reservation authorities, with a terrific little museum telling of early white settlement from the Indians’ point of view. It just reopened this summer under its new ownership, so I was very pleased to stop and take a look. The view from the museum’s portico is gorgeous, too.

And so on up the Okanogan River to the twin towns of Okanogan and Omak, where I found myself a motel, then decided, since it wasn’t that late in the afternoon, to take the fourteen-mile side road to the town of Conconully. My novel Sojourn is set in a highly-fictionalized version of Conconully, mostly in the beginning because I just loved the name, and then because of some historical events that happened there.

And I was lucky enough, as I happened to drive by the Conconully Museum, which is only open by appointment (cell phone coverage in Conconully being practically non-existent because it is that far out in the boonies and down in a canyon to boot), to see someone coming out of it.

When I caught up with her, she invited me in, and so I got to learn more about the history of the real Conconully, learn about an outdoor quilt show they hold every summer, and pick up tidbits that will be fun to put in my next Tale of the Unearthly Northwest, called Reunion, which will be coming out next year!

Mirrored from Repeating History.

This past Monday my friend L and I decided to take advantage of the clear (if rather chilly) weather and make a jaunt up to Mt. Rainier. Our goal was Paradise, at 5400 feet, but that depended on how clear the roads were, it having snowed up there the day before.

The roads were only a bit icy in spots (we only slid once, and that for a few inches), and the rewards were spectacular. Six inches of very sticky snow coated everything, from the Inn to random plant stems. It was clear when we arrived, but the clouds did start building up while we were up there, which is why I have no pictures of the actual mountain from this trip.

It was cold. 31dF, to be precise, with a bit of wind. So we didn’t stay up there long, just enough so my friend could try out her new snow boots, so I could accidentally step in a plowed pile of snow up to my knees, and to eat our picnic lunch in the car.

Then we headed back down, stopping at Narada Falls (where the trail to the falls viewpoint was completely iced over), and at Longmire (at about half the altitude of Paradise), where we walked one of my favorite trails in the park, the Trail of the Shadows.

The Trail of the Shadows leads around the edge of a meadow dotted with hot springs and partially filled with a pond. It’s also the site of the first settlement in what is now the park, where, in the 1880s, James Longmire discovered the hot springs and decided to build facilities so that people could come and soak in them (and drink the water, although its reputation is foul-tasting).

This time of year mushrooms are quite abundant and varied. But the trail wasn’t underwater, which parts of it can be in late fall.

It was my first real outing since recovering from pneumonia last month. I’m quite pleased to report that I made it all the way around the mile-long trail without getting tired, as well as doing all the driving on the 3-hour round trip. I must be well!

Mirrored from Repeating History.

I spent most of today giving Sojourn its last read-through.  So, finally, my “highway patrolman crashes his car out in the middle of nowhere and winds up in the local equivalent of Brigadoon” story is ready for formatting!

Another week or two and I will be announcing publication, I hope.

Mirrored from Repeating History.

I am finally getting over my pneumonia, and I am now ready to award the $25 Amazon gift card to the winner of my “name that genre” contest.

Lynne W., could you please contact me so that I can award your prize to you?

Mirrored from Repeating History.

I have a question for those of you who’ve read any or all of my Time in Yellowstone series, and there’s something in it for you if you win.

It seems like a simple, stupid question.

What genre are these books in?

Yes, time travel is obvious.  Go beyond that, if you can.  Go bigger, go broader.   Are they science fiction, even without a time machine?  Are they fantasy, even though they’re not epic or urban?  What else might they be?  And what do you think they are?

Name that genre!  And please, only a genre you’d find on Amazon, the genre you’d type in to find stories like mine, not a made-up genre or a description.

Whoever comes up with the best answer, including why, will win a $25 Amazon gift certificate.

Oh, and if you haven’t read any of my books, go here for a free Kindle copy, or here for a free anything else digital copy of my Time in Yellowstone short story Homesick.

Mirrored from Repeating History.

The theme for this week’s snippets is autumn, given that the equinox is tomorrow.  My short story Homesick takes place at this time of year, so I thought it might be appropriate.

I just hope it’s not too confusing out of context!

Karin had fallen in love that day, for the second time in mere months.  The first, Will thought with satisfaction even after all these years, had been with him.  And that, he’d discovered soon after, was that.  Will found himself taken in by the darkhaired young scoundrel Jem, and party to Karin’s adoption of him as their own almost before he knew what happened.

And now here was Jem’s son, another five-year-old miscreant who had them wrapped around his little fingers.  At least Will’s father had never claimed the namesake he’d predicted Jem’s wife would bear was a time traveler.

Mirrored from Repeating History.

I entered Repeating History‘s new cover in The Book Designer website August cover design contest (he does this every month), and this is what he had to say:

“Simple and effective. The designer directs our attention with this atmospheric cover.”

And this is the cover he said it about:

I have to say I’m pretty darned chuffed.

Mirrored from Repeating History.

Back for a few decades on either side of the turn of the last century, a flotilla of little ships used to travel Puget Sound, carrying passengers and freight, stopping at every settlement along the hundreds of miles of waterfront along Puget Sound. This was, of course, back when water was the easiest and fastest mode of transport in the region, before roads were built and the cars to run on them became ubiquitous. These little ships were so ubiquitous themselves that some wag dubbed them the Mosquito Fleet. And the name stuck.

Almost all of them are gone now, but Kitsap County Transit still operates one of the little ships as part of the foot ferry service between Port Orchard and Bremerton, Washington, along with two larger and slightly newer foot (as opposed to automobile) ferries. Unfortunately, the Mosquito Fleet boat, which purportedly has an onboard exhibit about the fleet, was down for service the day I took my trip, but I did get to ride one of the other boats, which mostly carries people who live in Port Orchard, but work in the Puget Sound Navy Shipyard, among other places, in Bremerton, back and forth on what has to be one of the more unusual commutes around.

Once I arrived in Bremerton, I headed for the Kitsap County Historical Museum, which I’d heard had an exhibit on the Mosquito Fleet. Which it did, including an interesting historical map, and profiles of some of the boats.

The museum also had very good exhibits on the history of the Kitsap Peninsula (the west side of the Sound), and some fun stuff about life in the early days on “stump farms” (the kind of farm you have when you try to grow crops on logged-over land).

The Bremerton pier attracted my interest next. It’s designed for strolling, and the views were lovely. This statue was nifty, too.

Once I was back on the other side of the ferry terminal, I took a gander at the Puget Sound Navy Museum, full of the history of the Puget Sound Navy Shipyard next door. It also housed several mockups of various parts of the USS John C. Stennis, an aircraft carrier. I think the part that impressed me the most was how cramped the bunks were, barely 18 inches vertically between mattress top and the bottom of the bunk above. If I didn’t already have claustrophobia, I’m afraid trying to sleep in a bunk on the Stennis would have given it to me.

My last stop of the day was at Fountain Park, located between the shipyard and the ferry terminal, which doesn’t sound like much of a location until you realize just how far out over the water you can see. All the way to the southern end of the Olympics.

And the fountain? Is just the coolest thing I’ve seen in a very long time. It’s actually half a dozen fountains, each designed to look like a submarine coming up out of the water. The fountains shoot water out of the tops randomly. The only warning you get is water starting to pour down the sides, more and more, and then all of a sudden water just shoots out of the top, about, oh, I don’t know, twenty feet high or more. And they go off one after another after another, in a completely random order. It was all I could do to drag myself back to the ferry terminal, even though I was looking forward to the ride back.

Anyway, if you ever get to go to the Kitsap Peninsula on Puget Sound, I highly recommend the foot ferry from Port Orchard to Bremerton. And go watch the fountains for me!

Mirrored from Repeating History.