9am.

On the ferry, in the middle of the crossing between Elliot Bay and the southern tip of Bainbridge Island, I looked north to the horizon where in summer a thin layer of white vapor demarcated water from sky, and saw today in the fall of the year a monochromatic grey, water and sky inseparable. It looked like the lighthouse there on the right offered safe passage to vessels arriving not from an ocean but from some other-worldly place.

A little later, we passed a bright red buoy shared by two seals who worked awkwardly to groom themselves. We were very close to them and I was excited to see a pair in such a high traffic area; it's a rare sight to see them in this part of Puget Sound. I am alone so I turned to the old couple sitting behind me and asked if they saw the seals there. They hadn't. They seemed more interested in reading the morning paper.

2:30pm.

Time constraints forced a short trip: I chose to trace the crooked finger of water over on my natal side of "the drink." I had some errands to run after picking up G-ma's car this time; they got out of hand and I didn't get started until much later than I'd originally planned. It was mid-day before I was rubbing my cheek against the shins of those seated mountains on the peninsula.

Rain and rain and rain, I'm glad for windshield wipers.

At Brinnon I turned off onto the Dosewallips river road which is more narrow and turns more tightly than the two-lane highway following the coast. Ancient maples had dressed it in the gold of their discarded leaves. Yellow, brilliant and sunshiny against the roving fog and dark hillsides. Leaves are the finery of such old trees, their status marked in their numbers I believe. Trunks thicker round than my embrace, wrapped in furry moss. Their limbs weeped of age and the soft green hung from them too like tattered and baggy sleeves. I think they are determined to re-take the hole left by this road, but they haven't yet succeeded and there is still room for me to slip through. The closer they hover, the more of their warm sunshine imparted onto me.

People live out here. They look at me as I speed by and they are walking by the side of the road. I wonder where they go.

Eventually the pavement ends and the road approaches the river. I chose this road because I know about the rugged journey this river makes on its way to sea, giving it more character, more color than some others. When I finally caught glimpse of it, it was clear and blue and green - more green, just as I remembered, only in the fall now it was more subdued. But, still deep. Against the darkened forest, the millions of yellow hands, its color was more pure. The translucence is stunning; I think it is eyes I haven't ever met before.

Narrower and climbing up. I can only go about 15 miles an hour over the formidable chunks of rock and protruding roots that now interrupt the path. On the left the river rests at the bottom of a sharp canyon. I cannot see it, cannot even see the slope, just the middle sections of douglas fir reaching toward the sky. Up ahead, in the gap made by the road, a mountain rises steeply, a choir of trees upon it. I cannot see the top for the clouds reaching so low this day; it appears as though the mountain extends clear to the ceiling.

The road was blocked by an ugly metal bar not far from the trailhead. I turned around and went back to the stretch that dropped away so severely to the corseted river below. I walked over to the edge and dared to peek down at the river, which rumbled and tumbled within the confines of a shiny slick black chute. Then I bumped and swerved my way down to where the road meets the river. I am parked here, writing and listening to music mere feet from it. Boulders, longtime residents, pass the time growing hair the color of emeralds. I can look up toward the blank grey sky but what I see is a grand maple displaying all the majesty that comes with tenure, crouching and crooked from living so well.

10pm.

I left there for south, driving along new pavement that was mostly straight but that would sometimes curve tightly into a U following the contour cut by the mouth of a river. Rain off and on again until I came away from there toward Seattle. Then sky was blue.