Welcome back to “I’m Curious!”

This week’s edition will be a little different, because I’m on vacation all week and not particularly curious about anything in sports, the news, or anything like that. 

Everything ties into my trip to Seattle and the Pacific Northwest instead. Currently in Seattle, I’ll be writing about what I’ve seen, felt and experienced.

The Most Curious Thing This Week

It’s how incredibly small our entire lives are in comparison with nature, the Earth, the Universe and anything else we might consider to be God’s creations.

I’m not a particularly religious guy. My views on religion usually match up with the description for “agnostic.” But years ago, in Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming, I had a transcendent experience looking from a mountainside across a valley. It was so overwhelming that I felt moved in a way I didn’t feel was naturally possible. The best way to explain it was that I “met” God.

Even if God is simply a creation of man, it’s why it’s hard for me to consider myself purely an atheist. How can I deny the existence of someone or something I met?

This trip has really made me think about all of this.

First, on Sunday morning I hiked about 15 minutes straight uphill to get some coffee at 6 am. With a cup in hand, I walked back to where the hilltop started, Kerry Park. It’s known for its gorgeous views of the Space Needle, the city skyline and Puget Sound. I don’t think I understood just how gorgeous until I watched the sunrise. 

A local or two, a handful of tourists and I shared a wide platform where we had panoramic views of the simple but extraordinary process of the Sun coming back over the horizon to start another day.

Clouds took on a whole new light (literally) as the sky exploded across the visible light spectrum from black to purple to red, orange and yellow as light scattered to eventually form the day’s blue sky.

A young blonde lady sat atop a little electrical box for a view. She told her partner, “it looks like a painting. It looks like someone specifically placed every cloud, every color.”

She was right. Here, a viewer could achieve a transcendent experience. Bundled up in a light sweatshirt, warm coffee in hand, I could see a sky exploding above a city skyline, a majestic sound, and a dormant snow-capped volcano doing its best impersonation of the Paramount Pictures logo before the stars come flying in.

I’m not sure if I met God again but I felt a sort of spiritual nirvana, connecting with the ground, the sky and the world around me in a way I had felt only a few times before.

I felt how powerful nature can be. I was just a passenger as stars, light, water, land and wind worked together to create a masterpiece.

Until a major ocean or water-related event happens, it’s easy for us, or me at least, to forget how powerful and vast the water can be.

We went whale watching and sailed for well over an hour across the expanses of Puget Sound and the Salish Sea. All that travel to get just over halfway between Seattle and the Pacific Ocean.

Ocean life is extraordinary and beautiful. We saw over a dozen killer whales congregating in the Salish Sea between Washington’s Olympic Peninsula and Vancouver Island, British Columbia. 

They ate, socialized, breached, and spied out at the open waters as a group of roughly a half-dozen whale watching boats circled them from a distance.

It’s hard to believe creatures like orcas exist, with complex bodily systems, family dynamics and even language.

Sailing a little closer to the Canadian mainland, we threaded between the Trial Islands to see sea lions. Just a hundred feet or so from Canada, we could see sea lions barking, play-fighting and sleeping away. And we could smell their brutal stench, a smell so powerful it must have been concocted by a higher power.

But nothing I had seen compared to the almighty creations of Olympic National Park. Nearly every spot we stopped at felt like a place to have a transcendent experience, behaving less like a national park and more like a temple to nature and its power.

The thin, threading flows of Madison Falls presented a cool and quiet place to reflect on the beauty that this world contains.

The shores of Lake Crescent looked more like a painting or a finely-edited generic background for a Windows computer than a real place. The water was so blue that our travel group kept joking that it was the origin for products including Windex and Cool Blue Gatorade.

Miles west at Rialto Beach on the Pacific Coast, thick fog and giant, washed-up logs maybe about 20 feet in diameter and hundreds of feet long transported us to seemingly another planet. If you told me I was somewhere in the Star Wars universe, I would have believed you.

Of all the moving, surreal backgrounds I saw, though, the Hoh Rainforest ran away with it. Here, over 100 miles of driving out from Seattle, followed by over a dozen miles of driving out of the small, isolated town of Forks (of Twilight fame,) and 18 miles down a long, snaking and sparse road deep into the heart of the Olympic Peninsula, the landscape ends up like hardly any other.

A cool rainforest has developed, with primeval forests full of centuries-old trees largely undisturbed by civilization. Walking through it, I felt an unlikely combo of the air being a bit cold but very, very humid.

Awesome feats of nature sit under a canopy that turned a cloudy evening even darker. And they sit in silence. Absolute, world-swallowing silence.

Here, the entire world shrunk to nothing. Literally every emotion of my life—the joys of travel I had been sharing with loved ones, my anxieties about work projects, my worries about everything from my student loan bill to climate change—felt like pure trifles in the face of trees that have grown in silence since before automobiles, electricity, Napoleon, the United States, Shakespeare, Christopher Columbus, the Incas, Chaucer, or Genghis Khan.

They have been working to grow hundreds of feet tall, spawning all sorts of moss and greenery, allowing a whole ecosystem with everyone from elk to wasps all living, dying and restarting in a rainforest thousands of miles from any other.

I felt tiny. And I felt that there was hardly any need for me to worry about anything at all when all of us are just brief interlopers in a world and universe full of these sorts of cycles.

Whether it’s one or more Gods or just a combination of the various laws of the universe, it was an extraordinary thing to think about and behold.

My Reporting

I’m not sure it counts as reporting if I wasn’t doing any work and bought a ticket as a fan but I did incorporate some sports. I was able to see the Seattle Kraken as they hosted their first preseason game against the Calgary Flames.

The game itself quickly became a one-sided affair. Seattle struggled to contain Calgary’s offense and gave up goal after goal. A goalie change swapping Philipp Grubauer for Ales Stezka before the third period did little to help as the Flames potted six goals against the Kraken for a 6-1 win.

Neither team played most of their stars, as both likely wanted to use the early phase of their six-game preseason to give some playing time to players who may be borderline candidates to make the team for the start of the regular season. I’m not entirely sure what to take away from it beyond the fact that Seattle may not have exactly picked many diamonds out of the rough.

Off the ice, I was very impressed by the newly renovated Climate Pledge Arena, which consistently offered top-notch services from top to bottom. The playing surface being a few floors below street level allows for a street-level concourse that is a level above the lower bowl. You can head to seats in the upper deck after walking alongside glass windows that run parallel to the outside entrance.

One side of the arena even has glass windows with retractable blackout shades. It’s kind of amazing to see people walking by way up above the ice outside the arena as the game unfolded below.

Arena staff were friendly and welcoming, the in-game production was elaborate, unique and well-thought-out, and there were a bunch of interesting food and drink options. Because the arena is linked to Amazon’s Climate Pledge, there are very visible commitments to using things like recyclable metal drink cups or locally-sourced food.

The “Uncle Jerome” hot chicken sandwich from the Shaquille O’Neal-owned Big Chicken was fine but not unforgettable and my Kraken Rum Punch from the Space Needle Lounge high above the south side of the ice had a nice, sweet and fruity flavor, with the rum flavor carefully hidden.

Other Takes and Things of Note

Twilight Has Staying Power: The ladies in our travel cohort were quite excited when we made a pit stop in Forks on our way to the far side of Olympic National Park. The town itself looks like many other rural, fading small towns with little to hope for or dream about.

But thanks to author Stephenie Meyer finding a link between the town’s name and her protagonist Bella Swan’s dilemma, the city has a steady second life as a tourist attraction for those who are still hooked on the nearly 20-year-old teen-oriented vampire love story and all the nostalgic memories it might produce.

That isn’t exactly me, as I infamously put “people who love Twilight” as one of my pet peeves in my section of the middle school yearbook for our 8^th grade graduating class.

I have definitely grown to appreciate it over time, especially with my fiancée’s encouragement and unabashed love for both the book and movie versions of the series.

At this point the love so many have for it may come from people’s love of camp and nostalgia but it keeps thousands of people coming to Forks every year, even though many of the settings they may be chasing from the late 2000s/early 2010s film series were filmed in the Portland area or British Columbia.

They can still snap pictures at the welcome sign, a duplicate of Bella’s decrepit old red Chevrolet pickup truck, or a themed Airbnb with a sign out front suggesting it is being renovated by members of the Cullen family.

It may not be worth the twisty 4-hour drive from Seattle on its own but it’s definitely a worthy stop on the long trek through Olympic National Park.

Competent Public Transit Makes a Difference: Washington, DC has a serviceable Metro system. Bus service can be lackluster outside of a few of the biggest routes. Seattle has a public transit system that may not match the likes of New York but does some things impressively well.

Its bus system works better than nearly any other city I’ve seen. The bus is the primary system for getting non-drivers around. Buses are well-timed and go just about anywhere you’d want to go.

That makes a huge difference in traveling, as it feels a lot easier to justify walking a few blocks to and from stops. In practice, I feel like I have been walking and using public transit a lot more than in the DC area, if only because the system reaches more places more easily.

They have also mastered the art of the ferry. If you wanted to go to some of the gorgeous San Juan Islands, it’s as easy as boarding a ferry in your car, sailing for a little bit, and driving right off. Car ferries are exceedingly rare on the East Coast and usually don’t offer much of a view.

The Bainbridge Island Ferry, meanwhile, let us drive right on, sit in the car and drive off, but also had full passenger service upstairs, acting as an intersection between a subway, a school cafeteria and an Amtrak, with a ton of seating space, bathrooms, and a café or two to grab snacks before heading back down to the car and driving straight off. 

You even get a commanding view of the city as you travel across Puget Sound. I would describe it as being like the Staten Island Ferry, except if the ferry was bigger, better, allowed cars and traveled to a place a lot less awful than Staten Island.

Honestly, maybe it’s not like the Staten Island Ferry. Maybe New York just needs to do better.

Something Good I Ate

Seattle food can often be “mid.” We’ve tried some of the city’s local favorites and been a bit disappointed. “Six out of ten” is our go-to refrain, as we find our ratings of the places we try don’t stray too far from that score.

Last time I was here, last year, I found a place that was very good. It shows up on Google Maps in an unlikely area. It’s quite residential, with no other food establishments nearby. It’s listed as being open once a week for two hours. And it has a name that might remind you of a similar concept with a different product.

The Little Free Bakery is tucked away on a side street just off the steep uphill drive of Dravus Avenue in Seattle’s Magnolia neighborhood.

Its creator, baker, and operator Lanne Stauffer lives in the house about 20 feet behind the establishment, which is a box that resembles a Little Free Library and progressively filled and refilled with a different treat each week.

When I went last time, I loved the taste of my raspberry rhubarb coffee cake, not just because it was a surprisingly delicious cake piece but because of how much love was baked in. Each piece comes in a little white paper bag with a heart drawn on it in pink marker.

I found the concept so adorable that I passed along the news of this place to our Scripps News correspondent Vanessa Misciagna, who is based in Washington state. 

Last summer she was able to get a story about Lanne and her bakery, which started in 2021 as a project to bond with her neighbors and spread love as a pandemic surge was beginning.

As a side note, here is that piece.

Today, I was able to grab four pieces of cinnamon apple coffee cake, picked as a recipe since this was the first time the Little Free Bakery had been open since the official start of fall.

In the piece, Lanne mentioned that the idea was spreading. She said a few more people had been working to start Little Free Bakeries of their own. There are several in Seattle, including an exclusively gluten free one. Out of state, there’s a quite popular one in North Carolina. Someone in Idaho is working on developing one.

And when she mentioned she talked today with a lady in a suburb of Chicago, I was curious and asked which one. My aunt, uncle and cousins live in Glencoe and I thought maybe it would be close to them. Lo and behold, it will also be in Glencoe. Small world!

As for the cake itself, it was delicious. It had a sweet covering of cinnamon, a nice soft, fluffy inside and just a touch of subtle crunch from the occasional apple piece.

Its biggest strength, however, was the intangible ingredient of love. This week’s batch was made together by Lanne, her sister and her daughter. On a sunny, warm, beautiful day, they were handing out cake bags with hearts drawn on them to an eclectic cross-section of people.

The 10-year-old girl snagging on one the way back from school. An older guy walking his dog. A mother and two kids about five years old talking to each other in Japanese before switching to English to ask if they can take an extra one for their piano teacher when they finish the walk to their lesson.

They melted my heart the most. I was able to snap a picture. There may be such a thing as too much sugar or too much egg, but there’s no such thing as too much love in a recipe.