Seattle

It was raining by the time the race car was set up shortly after 1 p.m. The girls helped a lot, Sabrina got the winch jammed once but I showed her how the cable had to be wound from side to side to fit on the drum.

K.C. crawled under and undid the tie-down chains at the back of the car, and without direction placed them neatly to the side, and when asked she laid the fire suit out on the back of the car for technical inspection.

We passed “tech” and there was an afternoon ahead of us to explore Seattle. Off we went.

Caught James St. or Madison off of Interstate 5 and burrowed down through the business district to Alaskan Way, where we paid $20 to park for three hours or all night. Could have driven another 100 yards and found a better spot on the street, but I was in a hurry.

We wandered up from the abandoned rail road tracks under the freeway to the top of Pike Street Market, where we bought hot almonds and walked from the famous fish monger down the long row of produce and bright silver jewelry and flower stands that exuded fragrance from cut tulips and lilies and flowers I don’t have enough life left to learn all the names or even describe the colors, across from stands of Queen Anne and Bings cherries selling for $2.75 a pound. Taste the current jam.

We caught a cab to the Space Needle, Sabrina did not like the elevator ride up or down but we walked the compass points and stood at the telescope where she could see people walking the decks of ships and on islands far out in Elliott Bay. Then we took the monorail back toward the market, had a bite to eat at the food court and wandered down to the ferries.

Another hour and a half to Bainbridge Island and back. The girls stood at the front each way, on the way back there was another rain squall but they did not back down, they faced forward the entire way and toughed out the cold drops that drove me inside until nearly back to the dock.

We have done Seattle. K.C. knew which way Lake Washington lay by pointing without a map. Sabrina pointed from the ferry terminal toward Auburn without hesitation. The girls know the surface texture of another great city, they now have a center in San Francisco and Seattle and Portland. Vancouver B.C. is next, I don’t care about L.A.

The day will come when one or both will need to have a city that is their home town, for college or adventure, and then of course they won’t just hit the tourist spots. But they know how to “see” within the urban canyons.

Cities have color, and the great cities on the ocean and bays of the Pacific and the Northwest have a color all their own, different expressions of green and gray iridescence like oil on water in the late afternoon, fading to an evolution of neon sparks on wet pavement after the sun goes down.

I want the girls to be comfortable in these cities as well as the lovely lonely isolation of our 80-acre ridge top, facing mountain sunset silhouettes and sleeping in a tipi. I panic at times that there is too much to share, and so little time left I have access to their wonderment.