A Month Later... Memories of Washington State

I know it's been a while since I blogged. Firstly, my computer died in Olympia, WA on March 27. Just as I was watching a Hulu.com video of Prince on the Tonight Show! The irony of it all. So, I was without computer support until early April. Then I was home for a bit and really had no time. Then the tour started again, and I always seemed to be sleepy. But now, as I sit in a passable Days Inn in Studio City (Ventura Boulevard, even), I find the time to write. Of course, I may be interrupted at any moment by an LA friend calling to play, so bear with me.

Moses Lake was a desert, hot in the day, cold at night. The audience was the best we've had yet. They were there to see Gilligan's Island, dammit, and they were determined to laugh loudly and often. It was a real pick-me-up. My dresser, Andrea, was a first time wardrobe worker who came to the theater through Job Corps. I was really impressed! She did the best job I'd had in weeks. I gave myself a mud mask, spa bath and pedicure after the show and relaxed while the gang partied it up in one of the rooms. Sometimes I really relish being the old lady. The Ameristay in Moses Lake was quite welcoming and I was able to run AND swim the next morning. I haven't been in a pool this much since I was a teenager!

Olympia was a brief drive...

Olympia is like the town 1995 forgot. Radical bookstores, thermal/flannel/ski cap combos, and grungy music littered the streets of this little town outside of Seattle. The first evening was just cloudy, but in the morning, a true Pacific Northwest misty shower covered the town, and I really felt I was in Tom Robbins country.

I hadn't brought my rain-running gear, so I settled for the treadmill, but bundled up and went out for a walk shortly thereafter. Right behind our hotel (The Governor Inn, and old converted Ramada) was Marathon Park, surrounding Capitol Lake. For those of you that flunked high school geography, Olympia is the capitol of Washington State. The park is named for the first US Women's Olympic Marathon trials, which didn't take place until 1972! Apparently Olympic officials thought women were too fragile to run 26.2 miles. Walking around the lake, I saw the back of the Capitol building. A garden path had been cut through the hill leading up to it, twisting and turning like a floral Lombard Street. The rain was cold, but it was soft. Most locals didn't even carry umbrellas. They just wore suitable coats and hats. I envied them. The sky and the lake were the same hue of shiny pewter. Unlike in Hawaii, where the green stands out against a blue sky, the green in Olympia springs out in contrast with the gunmetal atmosphere. The word "verdant" truly describes this place. All the moisture leads to a particularly fecund environment for growth on every living thing.

White lichen spread out over many of the trees, at some point sprouting into a sea foam green moss with long fingers like a coral reef. Other trees wore a coat of split-pea green fur. They say moss grows on the the north side of a tree. That is either a myth or every side in Olympia is the north side.

Swimming around the lake were ducks of several varieties. I spied two mallards, one of each sex, swimming in unison along the shore. They looked like something out of Audobon's book. The male's teal head shone metallic, while the females subdued brown tones proved she had the goods underneath. If they hadn't flown away, I would have supposed them to be decoys. Other water birds dominated the lake, many with inky black heads and chalky bills. Gliding through the crowd were a pair of geese, king and queen of Capitol Lake. They seemed to big to be real, or possibly they were boats for children. In fact, I think I just don't see birds that big in Brooklyn. Now cockroaches, that's another story. But I digress.

I scanned the trees, looking for the fabled plant life Mr. Robbins writes about in Still Life with Woodpecker. I saw hundreds of dried cones, very small, which had grown too heavy for their branches and had come down with the wing to nestle in neighboring trees. I picked a few out to add to our tour bus bathroom potpourri. As I rounded the halfway point, I saw it. Blackberry brambles, just like the ones that ensconce the exile home of Princess Leigh Cherie in that best of all possible novels. But now that I'd seen it, there wasn't much to do about it but give a shout out to the Universe: Thanks!

Heading around the last quarter of the lake walk, I saw a totem pole by the side of the road. Why? Who knows? I'm sure all totem poles have a reason. This one had a man at the bottom, topped with a beaver holding a fish (at first I thought it was a necktie!), then a nurse or doctor with a shark on her hat, then some kind of animal god with raptor beak and bear ears, or possibly owl tufts. It was hard to discern. My notes say "owl? eagle? hawk?" with a star by hawk. So there's that.

It was a positively lovely experience. I normally don't like rain, but it seemed so fitting there. Definitely preferable to the unrelenting sunshine I've had to endure in Southern California these past few days. But more on that later.

Our show in Olympia was at a large theater, short on character, but big on acoustics. It's the kind of theater that presents major musical acts to small towns.I don't remember much about the show itself. I think we were all just excited that our revised trip plan was taking us to Las Vegas in two days...