California, Here I Come

I leave Bend, Oregon, today and head south to Grant's Pass before pushing on to Highway 101, the Coast Highway, and a lovely drive down to Fort Bragg (not the North Carolina army post; about halfway between Eureka and San Francisco, on the coast) to visit the sister of an Asheville friend.

I'm trying to get going before noon for a change, so this will be a short message (forgive the funky formating; I can't fix it). I just want to share a couple of photos I forgot about, from Walmart in Olympia, WA. Yes, I know, sometimes you wonder if I have all my marbles, but this was a special Walmart and I have to share.

This is how you design a Walmart in the Pacific Northwest.

Note the timber-framing.

And where does this lovely shaded stairway lead?

Why, to the walking track, of course.

I'll leave you with a poem from my brother, who writes under the name Buxton Wells, and is actually a published poet.

March First
I’m snowblind in Tennessee,

wearing sunglasses indoors

like a half-dead celebrity,

and the noonday world

lies stunned in white light.

I have Whitney’s Star Finder for a visor,

a night of breaking glass for a cowl.

I wait for dusk when the snow will turn blue,

when the sun going down is a shriveled orange.

A bluish night on white ground

should be seen in God’s good time,

midnight and after.

Hildegard and her hundred cats may howl about eternity,

for there will be fire in the heavens,

like Christmas in Stalingrad

—heiliger nacht—time for all trekkers

in the snow to end their winter campaigns,

their woes just begun.