We left Southern Oregon in the rear view mirror and are settled in on Lummi Island. Lummi is so quiet it makes Ashland seem like a metropolis. It’s a small island, small enough to walk a loop around the north end. On this six mile loop, by bike or foot, watery views reward you most of the way. In the distance: Mt Baker, Sandy Point, Point Roberts, Vancouver BC, Matia and Sutia Islands, the Canadian San Juans, Orcas and Mt. Constitution, Sinclair Island, Guemas, Legoe Bay, Lummi Mountain, the New Englandy white island church, the ferry dock and back home again. Haven’t got tired of it yet. The only disappointment so far is that during dry dock they repainted our small ferry, the Whatcom Chief, with battleship gray trim, replacing a bright blue, which makes her look rather dull. Gone also are the orcas that decorated the Chief. Did we miss a meeting? Who decided that?
There’s water everywhere we look. Today, after an all night windstorm— whitecaps. Yesterday it was flat and calm. It’s great to have Puget Sound in one’s viewscape all day long. In Southern Oregon, the main body of water is the Rogue River. You have to make a trip to see it. It is a tremendous river which leaps full blown out of the side of a hill at Boundary Springs just below Crater Lake and rushes downhill to the sea. The Rogue River kind of scares me. All water does. A few years back we almost drowned Linda in an innocuous Rogue rapid when we hung up on a rock and she slipped off the back of the raft and got stuck under water then held under by what hydrologists and river runners call a “reversal.” But the river didn’t really want her and turned her loose.
Lots of people are fascinated with the Rogue. Zane Grey for one. He wrote a novel set on the river called, “Rogue River Feud.” You can read more about it on Bookends.
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