Words In Ascending Order of Importance

 

At the park.

            It was one of those ineffable days that hit sometimes around here. It will be drippy wet and hover around 40° for weeks on drizzly weeks, until we kind of expect grayness. Then suddenly, the sun will come out. It lights things up in ways we have forgotten. There is translucence, there is reflection! At a certain point in its rise, its light reflects off of a window across the street on the west side, and we get the sun from east and west at once! Both equally brilliant. We are bathed in morning light.
            It’s a change. There are more changes. Color. Blossoms, white and pink both. Yellow dandelions dot all green areas. Bitter, tough, ebullient! A sky so blue that it almost hurts to look up. More kinds of green than are possible to describe crowd the grey ribbon of twisty two lane roads.
            So, today, April 16^th, I gathered up my niece, Maria, and we thought we might go for a little drive instead of sitting in the house and jawing about writing and such.
            We headed east out of Everett, looking for something to maybe photograph. Surely, there would be something. I did video some of the latter part of the trip. It was excessively mundane. Perhaps I should have tried to capture the earlier parts where we were actually wending down and up and back down tiny roads that I am not familiar with! I do love that. It’s impossible to get lost in western Washington because Rainier is in the south and we always know that, and Baker is up north, the Cascades are in the east, and the salt water is to the west. The orientation is firm.
            Spring was in full blast. Even quite far outside of town, traffic buzzed around busily. I have to believe that our fellow citizens must be energized by the light and the growing warmth and the vigor of it all.
            We rested for a few minutes at a small park on a Lake Roesiger. It happens to be the site of a family of local pioneer’s original home. If you like, here is some history of the person thelake is named for.
            I include a couple of photos from the lake.

Goodness sakes!

 
 
            But to get down to business, here is what Uncle Bob was so excited about that he had to go down the path and through the woods to get to Ralph’s place and tell him about it.
            On the way down to have fish with the rest of the family, Uncle Bob said, “Hey, Ralphie, you know what happened to me today? Bet you can’t guess!”
            And then Ralph said, “No, I can’t guess. You better tell me.”
            Uncle Bob was grinning and nearly out of breath. After all the business of finding the little thing on Ralph’s back and hiding it on the ice cream truck, he was finally getting to tell the amazing thing that had happened to him, Bob.
            “Ralphie, a reporter from a paper came to talk to me! Me! That’s a first Ralphie! She woke me up, and made me hit my head on my stump, and she said she wanted to interview me!” crowed Uncle Bob.
            “Was she an otter, Bob? Did she have a notebook under her arm, and a pen on a string around her neck? Was she named Stoge?” said Ralph.
            “Yes, yes, and yes,” said Uncle Bob excitedly.
            “Yeah, I know Stoge. She used to come around here looking for a story. Nice girl. What did she ask you?”
            “Well, she wanted to know how I knew you and what you were like when we were kids. She wanted to know how come you ended up the king out here and I ended up in a stump by myself. But she was really nice, Ralphie! She liked my Stump House. I think the red door did it for her,” said Uncle Bob, keeping up with Ralph’s pace, talking up to him.
            “Aw, Bob. Did you tell  her what we used to do for giggles?” said Ralph, giggling like kid.
            “I told her you were bigger and smarter than the rest of us, and that I wasted a lot of time between then and now. I told her at first that I didn’t remember much, but she kept at me and I talked about us,” said Uncle Bob.
            “Hey, buddy, you’re the best friend I ever had, besides Mona, and you didn’t  have to talk me up like that,” said Ralph.
            “Ralphie, the truth is the truth, and even a goof like me knows that,” said Uncle Bob.
            “Don’t ever wander away, Bob,” said Ralph. “We need you around here. You are truth on two big hairy feet.”
            About then, they arrived at the fire. Everything looked perfect. It usually did!
            “Mona, we are so hungry! And we have a story to tell too,” said Ralph.
 
            And that was what Uncle Bob was so thrilled about. Just a tiny bit of recognition!

💚👣💚