Home Again .... Jiggity Jig

"Pictures" from our trip.

An owl, perched in broad daylight atop a lone fir in the middle of a meadow. (Whidbey Island, Wed., 11/9/05)

Kumatriel, at a table overlooking the Sound in the Dog Town Cafe. The table slants radically with the tilt of the old wooden floor. (Whidbey, 11/9/05)

Carol, reading aloud to Kumatriel from C.S. Lewis' "Voyage of the Dawn Treader" in the car during the ferry crossing to San Juan. The islands in the background are tipped with clouds. The water is flat calm. (Anacortes Ferry to Friday Harbor, 11/10/05)

Greg, Christian, Lea, and Kumatriel sit in the glow of the candles at the kitchen table at Olympic Lights. That stuff they are eating is pizza. (Friday Harbor, 11/10/05)

Here is the night view from the back porch at Olympic Lights. That glow just ahead is Port Angeles, across the water. Further to the right, you see the big glow of the lights from Victoria, Canada. I'll snap a daylight view of this, too. (Friday Harbor, 11/10/05)

The three opened blossoms on Lea's hibiscus tree reach desperately for the sunlight at the kitchen window. (Olympic Lights, early morning, 11/11/05).

Poppy (Christian and Lea's next-to-youngest cat), hunting in the garden. Notice that he seems to think he's invisible, even with all that bushy black fur standing out against what's left of the wind-torn dahlias. (Olympic Lights, 11/11/05)

The day view from the deck at Olympic Lights. The mountains are shrouded across the Sound, and you can see the scattering of rain clouds that will blow in later today. Weather was like this all weekend. (Olympic Lights 11/11/05)

I like taking "pictures" like this. I have a perfectly serviceable camera, but I find that often, if I spend my time hiding behind the shutter, I miss the trip in some essential way. I think that this has to do with trying to capture "now" for "later", rather than experiencing the now.

The trip was good. We had more time than usual to play with our friends, as well as do some "work" (nine sessions and 27 people in circle on Friday night). A lovely meal at the Back Door Cafe, and Kumatriel got lots of sweet presents for her 49th birthday, which was Saturday. She and I will now be the same age for the next seven months. My time as the "elder" is over, lasting only from June 21 to November 12th. I guess I'll have to stop bossing her around now ;-).

We had many "owl synchronicities" on this trip, starting with the owl by daylight in the field, pulling up to the restaurant where we ate in Whidbey only to look up and see a window full of owl hand-puppets. Later, Kumatriel randomly opened a magazine, to find a owl staring her in the face (more than once), and the start of the next C.S. Lewis book in the Narnia Chronicles featured a "parliament of owls". Hmmm.

Like any good "woo-woo" gals, we turned to Ted Andrews' "Animal Speak", to determine what all these hooters might be trying to communicate to us. Andrews lists Owl's Keynote as: The Mystery of Magic, Omens, Silent Wisdom, and Vision in the Night.

It's interesting, because recently, I had commented about my night vision seeming less acute than it used to be. (Of course, spending the majority of many of my days staring at a blazingly clear computer screen and then expecting my eyes to handle the plunge into the unlit kitchen for midnight snack might be a bit much to ask of my visual cortex.)

Then of course, Carruch spent a lot of time this week in classes and circles talking about the year 2006 -- the year that he has said our species will experience a big initiation and opening of the third eye. So, I'm wondering if my seemingly decreased night vision (and the owls) are asking me to look with a different eye in the darkness. I'm going to be trying that out -- I'll let you know if I fall down the stairs at 1 am, or navigate my way to a bowl of cereal successfully.

One more picture from the trip -- my favorite:

See here, we are coming up the rise after getting off the ferry on the way home -- this is taken from the top of the hill where we get our first glimpse of Port Townsend. The sun is shining fiercely through a break in the otherwise continuous and dramatic clouds, falling in distinct shafts and streaks, and lighting up the water of the Sound around Port Townsend as if God is over there.

We look out of the car and say: "Ahhh, Home."