We spent the second week resting and recreating on the Lummi peninsula just minutes from Bellingham. As my sister's house is in the midst of renovation upheaval, we rented a luxurious little casita built up in the trees with views of the northern Cascades and the Strait of Georgia. We searched for stones and shells and ate blackberries from the brambles growing along the path down to the water. A pair of great blue herons graced us with their presence, nesting somewhere up behind the house in the enormous trees and croaking over us in the night. We slept looking out onto the bay, watching the lights of passing ships slide by while bats dipped and swung after the mosquitos and awoke to the calls of the gulls as they flew in to feast on clams and crabs at low tide. It felt like home, even if it wasn't our house, in the way the northwest has always felt like home to me, a refuge from the stark cornfields of the midwest. And for now, it will be what the girls call home, even if it isn't a fixed location but rather a feeling, the chill in the air of the desert night on the east side of the mountains or the dampness of the ocean on the west side, smokey sockeye on the grill, the sweet summer berries, the pungency of evergreens everywhere, the verdant produce at a farmer's market, and that strange cultural blend of hippies and loggers and dot.commers and happy transplants like myself doing their thing in the PNW.
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