Seabeck

We spent the day in Seabeck Saturday. I was sort of shocked by the beauty of Hood Canal. I had been there before, but that was more than twenty years ago and my memories all have the narrow focus of childhood; playing with flashlights in tents, spiders in an unfinished basement, the feeling of swinging in a canvas hammock dirty with decaying pine needles.

I noticed things I had been ignorant of before. The mountains rise uninterrupted from the water. The water is clear and warmer than other places in the Salish Sea. Oysters can be picked up off the beach as casually as a bit of driftwood. If I was transported there in my sleep I'd be tempted to think I had awoken in another country. If you don't look too closely at the shore you get the impression that you're looking at an alpine lake.

It's less than an hour and a half from Seattle. A west-facing beach house on Hood Canal might be the best location for a vacation home in Washington.