Flying in on Horizon Airlines from Helena, we pass over the western Montana ranges and Lolo National Forest, past Coeur d’Alene, continuing over flat, wrinkly, brown eastern Washington, once a lake bottom, then encountering mountains again, this time the volcanic Cascades running north to south, seeing Mt. Hood, which I climbed once with my Uncle, and Mt. Rainier, and finally coming in over Seattle, with Tacoma to the south and the San Juan Islands and modern skyline of Seattle straight ahead.  Seattle is beautiful, vying for the most beautiful of our large cities, with its forested hills, Puget Sound setting, Pacific Northwest culture, and high tech overlay.  There are lakes, and hilly, pine covered islands and bays all over, surrounded by white houses and jetties, and sailboats everywhere.

Unlike most large cities on the coasts, in Seattle you can have real contact with sea, just by riding the Washington State Ferries from the San Juan Islands to Bellingham and Vancouver, or taking a forty-five minute run from the Seattle waterfront to Bremerton and Bainbridge Island, which I did.  You can stand on the deck and look out at the water, watch the gulls straining into the headwinds overhead, and enjoy the view.  There is a lot of the old Seattle left amid the new: the Victorian and bungalow neighborhoods, the pre-World War I red brick buildings, and the World War II concrete buildings, torpedo factories, and steel cantilever bridges, painted green.  All this is juxtaposed with the gleaming, tall, 55 story skyscrapers, mainly post-modern, meaning Seattle took off after the 1960s to 80s era of steel curtain boxes.  It is a nice combination of old and new, and provides a panorama of history, of the different decades and eras.  It fixes you in time.

Seattle has an interesting bus system, with 1950s era looking buses, running in subway tunnels under Third Street.  There is a wonderful waterfront with sea food markets. The car ferries running the Sound also look 1950ish.   Seattle does things right, like Paris, Salt Lake City, or Milwaukee, where everything is well planned and functional, and with an eye to the aesthetic as well.  Most of the street corners downtown have small park-like settings with shade trees hanging over benches at bus and tram stops.  Seattle is a diverse city, typified by the Anglo-Asian couple I observed on the Bremerton ferry, sitting at their window table, eating Chinese carry-out with chop sticks, out of white paper containers, sharing.  People downtown are open, friendly, and helpful, taking time to give you clear directions.  Seattle is also high tech and modern and affluent, with green painted buses advertising they are hybrid, and Frank Lloyd Wright influenced architects, and Microsoft employees living and working in the suburbs, and with Boeing in nearby Everett.  It is a city of the young.  I have never felt so old.  Twenty somethings wearing hip t-shirts were everywhere, absorbed in their Blackberries and I Pods, even before the technology spread.  They are oblivious to anyone over 50.  I was anonymous to them.  The young own Seattle, more than they own Washington, D.C., Atlanta, or Chicago, other youth culture cities.

As usual, I concentrated on doing the things I like to do, repeating earlier visits.  I made straight for Seattle’s Capitol Hill district, which reminds me of Georgetown in D.C., but quieter and less commercial, enjoying the gyro platter at “Byzantium,” before drifting over to the Museum of Asian Art, whose gardens offer a great view of the city below.   I capped off the day by walking down from First Hill to Pioneer Square, stopping along the way by the Arctic Club, the one time hang out for explorers like Admiral Byrd, a great place to rent a room for not much more than a hotel.  In Pioneer Square, I browse Globe Books and Elliott Bay Booksellers.  Globe is a small bookstore, with a good, select collection of the international writers. Being in my lyrical mode, I was looking for Harry Matthews, Cyril Connolly, Paul Bowles, and James Salter, which they had.  Elliott Bay was like Powell’s in Portland or City Lights in San Francisco, having everything.

My second day in town, I walked around Bell Town, where I was staying, and wandered around Lake Union and the Space Needle.   After an afternoon siesta, I read for a while in the room, then walked to the waterfront, eventually taking  an evening ferry to Bremerton, getting off,  having dinner at Anthony’s seafood restaurant near the dock, and later riding back on the return ferry to Seattle, facing the lit up amber and white Seattle skyline at night, sitting on the deck in the cold breeze.  That night, I strolled through the Pike Street Market area with its raw fish stacked for display, talking to my son in Las Cruces on the cell phone.  What a great feeling, walking the waterfront, and talking to one’s son.  He should consider Seattle as a place to settle, I told him.  Asia is the future and Seattle will be ever more important.  As I was talking, yellow street lights were reflecting off the wet brick streets and from glass fronted coffee shops in the dark Seattle night, the smells of good coffee, fish, and sea in the air.

The next day,  I rented a car and drove east, out of town, to the pine and spruce forested Issaquah suburb just to enjoy the moist pine and spruce forest and have a Fat Burger at the franchise there, with the thick French fries, crisp on the outside but soft within, very French.  I rank Fat Burger a bit ahead of The Habit burgers in Santa Barbara, Five Guys, and In and Out Burger, other favorite franchises.  Would I drive from Helena to Issaquah for a Fat Burger?  Probably not.  Would I drive ten miles from Seattle, through traffic?  Of course.  From Issaquah, I drove back into the city, passing through Mercer Island, into the downtown area, parking near the Seattle Art Museum, just across from Pike Street Market.

I was very impressed with SAM, as the museum is called, and amazed to discover the best exhibit of African art anywhere, with life-sized statues of African dancers in native garb, hundreds of African masks and sculptures on display, and explanations of the symbolism of the animals represented in the art: the snake that helps fertilize the fields, the antelope who sews the seeds, the hornbill that brings prized nuts, the parakeet that breaks them open, etc.   I loved the long headed Cameroonian crocodile with its smooth forehead, a symbol of feminine grace.  One mask, called “the Ancient One,” the deity, had lots of animal parts attached to it, symbolic of the animist thoughts of man, of the clear, unconscious mind.  My other favorites included the stylized Malian (Dogon) antelopes, called “Chauraros”; a Dogon “black monkey” with the lower jaw open on its large mouth, representing the chimpanzee who sits on the edge and makes mischief and obscene gestures, trying to gain attention; the Sierra Leone (Mende) masks with layered headdresses; the plain and simple, smooth Liberian (Dan) masks; and the red, green, and black blocks of beads on Masai headdresses.  Behind all this, was a wonderful black and white, old 16mm. film, projected on the wall, of African villagers dancing these same masks and costumes in real native ceremonies, the entire village enjoying the scene, and even some dancers on stilts. Even after living in Africa and collecting masks, I learned a lot.  The SAM display was the best presentation I have seen anywhere, in terms of understanding African tribal culture.

The museum goers were the typical Seattleites, a bit Yuppie and upper middle class looking, with well behaved kids. I observed one school tour, a classroom of third graders, being lectured by a docent on the correct way to weave baskets, and how to cook salmon, running reeds through the meat and roasting it over fire.  This was taking place in front of museum displays depicting native cultures they were emulating. The students were attentive, sitting in a circle on the museum floor, and no horse play from the boys.  There was great diversity: two girls in Arab scarves, several African Americans, Anglos, and Asians.  In another part of the museum, I watched a mother telling her five year old daughter not to touch the Greek mask, and the child asking good questions.  There was also a “grunge” looking couple, the mother perhaps part native American, leading their daughter, about six, through the gallery, the child operating the monitors and headphones, pushing the right buttons, moving along from numbered item to numbered item, through numerous halls, like an adult would.  Yes, Charles, you need to settle in Seattle: the kids in Arab scarves; fish and chips at Azar’s or Anthony’s; eating Chinese food from boxes on the Washington State ferry.

So, what else did I like in the museum.  First was the Flemish tapestries, indigo, with rust and purple dyes, and red patterns on them.  My next favorites were several Egyptian basalt and granite busts of pharaohs, some partially broken; archaic Greek bronze masks, like those worn against the Trojans, with nose covers and slits for eyes; and three other greek items, a red figure wine cup depicting a discus thrower, pieced seamlessly together from broken fragments, circa 480 BCE,  a stamnoi jug with chariot race depiction, and an archaic ground white perfume bottle.  There was an impressive Persian bass relief of a servant carrying a cloth covered bowl and a geometric patterned pottery bowl, both from Persepolis.  The Chinese ivory collection included a carving of a seated duck, which opened to show small figures of humans inside. There were two marvelous rooms: a Japanese tearoom, illustrating the Wabi aesthetic of nature, simplicity, and asymmetry; and an Italian Renaissance room with wood paneling and display cases holding porcelain dishes.  From the Revolutionary War period, there was a powder horn carved from pine by an American minuteman, a beautiful maple high chest, dated 1770, and a collection of Turnbull paintings of Revolutionary War battles: Bunker Hill, 1775, Saratoga, 1777, and Yorktown, 1781. There was a great picture of General Gates, whom I heard one visitor say was the best general of the war, Washington’s strategist while Washington was in York or Philadelphia lobbying for funds.

With regard to paintings, I am always on the look out for Frederick Remington paintings, and admired his “Last Man Standing,” of a range war.  Thomas Eaton’s painting of Maude Cook in pink, 1895, showed the emotional vulnerability of the sitter.  I also loved Winslow Homer’s paintings of a red mill and Adirondack lake, and a 19th Century painting of native Americans playing lacrosse on the ice by an artist whose name I missed.  There was a wonderful collection of George deForest Brush paintings of native Americans and exotic birds, flamingos, swans, geese, and one in particular of a native with bow and arrow, hunting amid the green reeds of the Everglades, aiming at white cranes taking flight, their jagged edged wings spread out.  The combination of turquoise water, green reeds, blue sky, and white cranes, was beautiful and simplistic, and haunting.  There were some Alexander Gardner photos of the American Civil War, including a well known image of a trestle bridge.  For me, the piece d’resistance was an Italian Renaissance wood panel by Uccello, “Invasion of the Trojans,” of a battle scene showing the Italians evacuating as Rome was founded.  It was reminiscent of his San Romano battle panels, mainly in blacks and whites, with red touches.

I left the museum thinking of the Cameroonian crocodile mask, archaic Greek helmet, Greek “red figure” wine cup, and the deForest Brush paintings of native Americans and exotic birds.  Had salmon at Sound View Cafe in Pike Street Market amid friendly wait staff, looking out at the bay and down below at the wharf area with iron bridges, corrugated tin roofs, and professional, well dressed people out for dinner not far from the design and architectural supply stores I like.

From Seattle, I kept the rental car, driving south to Portland, having steak and Stella Artois at Jake’s Grill downtown, browsing Powell books, and enjoying the beautiful river town with bridges running everywhere over the Willamette, with new boldly colored streetcars adding a European touch, and old and new buildings together and lots of public squares and gardens.  After a few days in Portland, I went on to Bend, where I paid respects to my Uncle, enjoying his favorite Obsidian Dark ale at the Deschutes Brewery, before putting flowers on his grave at the memorial park.  I didn’t have time to call on his loyal friends, the judge, Bruce and Sharon,  Sue, and others who kept him going for years.  As I left the cemetery, leaving the Aspen Garden, I felt I got a message from him, “your uncle loves you,” which he used to always say, a phrase I had forgotten over time.  Maybe a message got through.  Bob was always my biggest fan.

I look forward to the road home: Redmond, Madras, the Dalles, along Columbia River, north to Spokane, and then the final stretch, Coeur d’Alene, Missoula, Helena.  I stop at the Black Bear Diner in Madras for their ample portion of meatloaf with its dark, rich gravy.  Life is an oyster.  (2009)