Just across the Cascades from Mt. St. Helens, in the middle of all that Washington fruit…is apparently a California desert resort town. Or something.
Tag Archives: Pacific Northwest
Blown away
At precisely 8:32 am local time, 35 years ago today, Mount Saint Helens erupted. I wasn’t around for it—I wasn’t even quite born yet. But I’ve had a thing for volcanoes ever since I moved to the Northwest, so St. Helens has never been far off my radar.
The funny thing is, it’s taken me years to get a decent sketch of it.
I visited the St. Helens for the first time just weeks after I moved to Washington, when I got to tag along on a geology trip. I was all excited to sketch at the top of Johnston Ridge, to peer down into the massive crater. This is what I saw:
Yep, welcome to the Pacific Northwest.
After that it became sort of a running gag. I kept trying to find a time to get back to Johnston Ridge—but it’s a trip that takes commitment, since it’s a very long drive, it’s not on the way to anything, and the mountain roads are closed for much of the year. On every day that might have worked out for my schedule, the weather was bad or the way impassable.
I did see St. Helens from a distance plenty of times, but even then it didn’t usually cooperate. More often than not, even on a bright sunny day, the volcano would be shrouded in its own private weather system.
So this year, I decided enough was enough. I cleared my calendar as best I could, and then just waited for a sunny day (at this time of year, one can wait a very long wait). Just a few days ago, the forecast offered up a perfect day—so I got up extra early and jumped in the car.
This time, St. Helens rewarded my effort. And as a bonus, I got there a full week before the tourist season starts, so I had the mountain entirely to myself, for a whole morning.
It’s entirely possible the mountain will erupt again in my lifetime. I dearly hope it won’t…but at least I have some good “before” documentation, just in case.
Pea-cocktail
I’m not generally into bars, but the Northwest is full of vintage cocktail lounges that are often a hoot in the theme-decor department. The Peacock room at the Davenport Hotel might just take the kitsch cake. The stuffed albino bird and sensory-assaulting wallpaper greet you at the door, but that’s just the beginning. Not pictured: the peacock-feather Tiffany chandeliers and the giant stained-glass backlit peacock ceiling over the bar (hello, future return visit). Built in the nineteen-teens, it was the sort of jazz-era place where our lack of flapper dresses and cloche hats made us feel underdressed. So the only thing to do was order a Sidecar and raise a toast to the previous century.
Milking it
Remember my post about Mary Lou’s Milk Bottle? Well, it might be the best giant milk bottle in Spokane, but it’s not the only one. Built in the 1930s, the bottles served as neighborhood satellite stores (read: ducks!) for the Benewah Dairy Company. After Benewah folded in 1972, the bottles came to serve different purposes. This one might not be as fun or picturesque as Mary Lou’s—in fact, it’s downright head-scratching that it now holds a chimney masonry business. But it the end, that doesn’t matter: I’m just glad there are still two giant milk bottles in Spokane, and that they’re both being lovingly cared for.
Rose bowl
In my travels over the years, I’ve stumbled upon (and sketched) a lot of games and sporting events in public places. Pick-up hockey games in Minnesota. Bocce tournaments in Italy. Hula hoop contests in New York. Surfing in California. Boat races in Seattle. Ice skaters in Boston. Golf in Nova Scotia. Even a game of street chess in Montreal. So I guess there really isn’t anything so unusual about lawn bowling (other than the fact that it’s not a popular sport where I come from), but these ladies just stopped me in my tracks that day. I can’t make heads or tails of the sport itself, so I think it must have been the setting that caught my eye. There was just something so appealing about a bunch of gals dressed in white, a perfectly manicured green lawn, and hot pink roses bordering the pitch. It was like the scene composed itself for me—or a snippet of some story from a bygone area, already written down for me to find.
Mountain mornings
I love coming back to a place I’ve already sketched, and giving it another go—I always end up with completely different results. These two drawings, for example, were done from precisely the same spot, almost exactly two years apart.
Even though I’d been there before, and already spent a good amount of time studying the scene last time, I never seem to get bored on the return visit. Between changing weather, a different sketchbook, and whatever frame of mind I might be in that day, it always feels like I’m seeing the place with new eyes.
Dinner with Shiro
Note: I think this might be a first on this blog—showing you a drawing I did only in (gasp!) pencil. But the night I did this sketch, I only had a regular notebook with me, and I needed to work fast—there wasn’t time to dig around in my bag for a pen, so I reached for the stubby sushi-menu pencil. Hey, whatever works, right?
I did this sketch more than a year before I moved to the Northwest. I was in town for a vacation, and a friend took me for omakase (a chef’s choice meal) at Seattle’s famous sushi restaurant, Shiro’s. Shiro Kashiba emigrated from Japan in the middle of the 20th century, and spent decades honing his craft in Seattle as a chef. When he opened Shiro’s in 1994, he was a pioneer: long before the sustainable food movement swept the country, he built his business around specializing in local, responsibly-harvested fish. The notion made him famous, and made his restaurant a Seattle icon.
I had been told Shiro rarely came in anymore, but I was just excited to be there, and to have local Northwest fish prepared in a hyper-traditional Japanese method. But I got lucky on that first visit: the man himself prepared and served our meal. That night was so special: my first visit to Seattle, a lovely evening with a friend, and an unforgettable meal made by a master chef—who was in point-blank sketching range. It was my version of a scrapbook moment.
Now that I live here, I still pop into Shiro’s on occasion—usually when a guest is visiting from out of town. I’ve been lucky a few more times since that first night, and have caught a glimpse of Shiro on several occasions (though never in the same way as I did eight years ago). One time I even took a moment to do a follow-up sketch while he was working behind the counter. It was as fun to observe the folks at the sushi bar as it was to watch the chef—I imagined they felt like I did on my first visit.
After 20 years, Shiro “retired” from his namesake in 2014, but rumor has it he’ll be back this summer with a new eatery in the Pike Place Market. I think it’s a safe bet I’ll be there—chopsticks in one hand, sketchbook in another.
Under the archway
Unlike Monday’s mystery door, this is a door through which I pass so often, it’s become routine. I know this place so well that I took it for granted, barely noticing the beautiful detailing around the entryway.
Well, a sketchbook is a good cure for that—there’s no better way to appreciate something than to spend an hour peering closely at it.
Edible elements
When I’m on the hunt for tasty sketch compositions, I tend to be attracted to repeating elements. Usually this happens with architectural details like identical rowhouses or gothic archways. Sometimes, though, it comes in the form of breakfast—with humble slices of bacon arranged in a pretty patterned row.
Hope your weekend is full of quiet, sketch-worthy moments!
Four-legged harbormaster
When I sat on the pier to do this sketch, I only meant to draw the boats—I’m a sucker for bunches of masts and linear elements like tielines. To make sure I could fit the whole mast in the picture plane, I started at the top and worked my way down. It wasn’t until I got to the mass of windows and decks that I noticed the corgi sitting quietly and staring back at me!
This is the perfect example of why I prefer to sketch my surroundings, rather than photograph them. If all I had done was snap a photo of the scene, I never would have noticed that pup in a million years. Instead, I got to have a private little thrill of discovery, like I had just found out a small secret.