the long way home

Yesterday after my longtime friend Ron and I along with his roommate Aaron had been held captive by the hugga-wugga monster for several hours (not an unwelcome imprisonment, but real nonetheless), I realized I had to drive home from Capitol Hill before darkness fell. I can't drive after nightfall any longer because the fading eyesight of advancing age causes me to become too easily confused.

Fortunately we've reached the season when twilight doesn't begin until after eight p.m. It was Friday evening, when the insanity of our car-dependent culture is at its most intense, and the congestion of the week's-end commute is compounded by everyone's wanting to get home as quickly as possible. What I found, though, is that if you just wait it out, even on a Friday night the thundering herd disappears as quickly as it materializes between three and four in the afternoon, and yesterday by 6:45 it was gone completely.

So in very light traffic, moving at a relaxed and moderate 30 miles an hour most of the way, I took the long way home as daylight began to wane. Descending Capitol Hill, I was impressed by the number and size of the trees there in the heart of this lovely city, only a mile or so from downtown, then motored slowly past the University of Washington and through its densely populated student ghetto. Rather than getting on the freeway, dreaded I-5 from there, I turned left at 70th Street and drove along the margin of Green Lake.

The lake is a jewel, the inescapable geographical feature of the urb's northern half, sitting between and adjacent to the two busiest roads in the state. Yesterday evening its water was smooth and still as a sheet of silver reflecting the setting sun, its calmness mirrored in turn by my own mental tranquility. I directed the gently purring engine of my decade-old VW Beetle onto the Green Lake cutoff, pulled into traffic on Highway 99 for one block, then turned left again to ascend Phinney Ridge, aiming toward the gentle declivity on the other side and Greenwood Ave.

And there I was back in my own neighborhood. Piece of cake, even on a Friday evening.

Photo by Ionna Dodu of Bucharest, Romania

D.B.
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