Dear Uptight Seattleite,
Now even advice columnists are talking about getting into the mayor’s race—so why not you?
Red Apple Danny
Dear Red Apple Danny,
Have you finished blabber-mouthing all the blabber out of your mouth? I wasn’t directing that question at you, Danny. I was quoting my friends’ 5-year-old daughter. Whenever I’m compelled to spend time with my friends’ children, I like to note pathologies in their behavior and dysfunctions in their parental relations. Just as a fun little time-killer. I’ve noticed that when you’re a kid, you can get away with almost anything—rude comments, whining, even the occasional crap in your pants.
We adults wish we too could act like children. We wish we could blurt out “I’m running for mayor!” when we want attention, for example. Sometimes we actually act out these childish feelings. Hey, I plead guilty to pulling the occasional attention-getting stunt myself. Like the other night when I was debating this guy about home brewing. True, it’s hard for me to hold my superior command of beer terminology in check on these occasions, but that doesn’t mean I had to press my advantage with such a flourish. Like when I called out, “Sparging, Kräusening, and Ester! Neither law firm, mon amigo, nor jazz trio do they be!” Or when I kept prefacing my comments with the phrase “Not to be a tap through your bung or anything, but…” As long as I’m making a clean breast of it, I seem to also remember punctuating my words with a fencing move or two. Again, probably not conducive to the spirit of fellowship that should prevail in a yoga class.
The point is even I occasionally need to slow down and remind myself what my gifts for the universe really are. And that’s something I’m working out day by day. Which is a pretty neat gift in itself. To answer your question, though, one thing I know for sure is that my gifts don’t include politics. I’m more of an ideas man.
Dear Uptight Seattleite,
When does a walk become a hike? It seems like all hikes are walks, but not all walks are hikes. I’m new here and trying to understand hiking culture.
A Biped of Some Kind
Dear Biped,
Have you been following me around or something? How’d you know I’ve been thinking about this very topic? If that is you in the battered Oldsmobile cruising slowly a block behind me, you know I’ve been doing a lot of walking lately. Of course I still love biking, but there’s nothing like falling into that timelessly human one-two rhythm and becoming aware of your sinews and the pull of gravity and the pumping of your blood. In fact, I’ve officially made Sunday my “wander lonely as a cloud” day. I always carry my Moleskine and Swan Neck pen to record observations and any unlikely bits of wisdom that may come to me in the course of the walking process.
One of the things I’ve observed is how much of Seattle’s scenery is privatized. Head down the east side of Phinney Ridge on 71st Street, for example, and you can almost, but not quite, see the entire length of Green Lake before it’s swallowed up by the neighborhood’s rooflines. Same thing going down Queen Anne Avenue—the panoramic expanse of the Sound is glimpsed for the briefest of moments before being blotted out by a wall of high-rise condos.
Not that I begrudge people their private views. I myself have a view of Mt. Baker from my breakfast nook. Or at least the little chunk of it I can just make out—under the eaves of those new townhomes—when I scooch down in my seat. This chunk of Mt. Baker is one of the chief charms of the breakfast nook, along with the Sibley Birds calendar and the dangly thing from Morocco. But a city’s views should be available to everyone, and that’s why one of my suggestions to all (genuine) mayoral candidates is that we build lookout towers throughout the city. We could construct them out of the metal frames from all those cubicle walls we’re not using anymore.
Getting back to your question, Biped, walking becomes hiking when you have a map and special shoes. But if you hike long enough in silent communion with the sky, hiking turns back into the simple human act of walking. It’s like that Zen story about mountains, then no mountains, then mountains again. Which we’ll be able to see a lot better when we get those towers built. They could have crenellations and medieval banners and stuff. Just as a little side note, though, a tower wouldn’t be a good fit with my own neighborhood.
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