Yea, we were there. My Rebecca and I made it in to Seattle on Saturday afternoon to be with Dan. Sorry I didn’t get a blog out yesterday, too busy, but will cover that in a moment. Back to Dan, very funny, present and creative guy. We almost kidnapped him to bring him back to Vashon, community building it’s called.

So we went to the kid show which included a lot of sing alongs. Dan also has adult shows for the evenings but being kid’s at heart is important so be need practice so we went to the kid show. And we had a few moments with Dan after the show and we took a few pics. Just in case you missed it he and Eric Kufs wrote the original song “Come Walk With Me” and Dan sang it for the film. Yea, I am so glad for all the creative and motivated people that added their part to the film. The music is such an important part and thanks Dan and Eric!

So in a moment I have to jet into town to get some ingredients for country sausage. Have to drag out “Old Sparky”, our trusty electric grinder and make up some venison sausage for the winter. That’s my main project for today.

And Annie has some film news that I will get out to you this morning. Also I will post our walking times for the next few weeks. Remember some time in early November daylight savings stops and we will move our afternoon walks to 1530 till Spring time. But that won’t be for a little while.

OK, have to shut her down for now. Off to make it all happen. Big loves to you, Felipe.

Dan Bern is a songwriter and performer and is in Seattle for a few days on tour. My Rebecca and I are going on a rare excursion into the city to catch him this afternoon. Dan sang the song “Come Walk With Me” at the beginning and end of what documentary film? Phil’s Camino, that’s right! And Dan cowrote the song with a fellow named Eric Kufs.

Until then the sun is shining and the outdoors calls me. Still have things to do for winter. So I am going to end early today and get out there. Maybe it will be wet and stormy in the morning and I will be more in the mood to sit with you and gab. Antsy right now, antsy love, Felipe.

The orca whales, used to be known as killer whales, are back in the vicinity of Vashon Island. Above is a great shot taken by a friend of ours and I just lifted off FB. That is a pretty cool pic of the critter breaching.

It is too bad that Annie and the rest of the LA gang that were up here last month missed this. It is hard to predict when exactly the orcas will show up each fall and sometime it is earlier. First time I saw them it was September.

Time for a little story. I was fresh here on the Island and to the Pacific Northwest and it was 1972. My first job as a carpenter was working on a beach house on the westside of the island. I was getting two dollars an hour and I could stay there at the site. We had all the windows out of the old house which we were moving and remodeling. The house is right on the water I remember being woken by the sound of the whales breathing as they came up the channel. The sound of the half a dozen animals was echoing back and forth in the calm of the early morn. What an exotic way to wake and what a welcome to my new neighborhood!

I don’t know what this going to mean this year as the salmon season is closed due to the poor return of fish from the ocean and the orcas eat a lot of salmon. So will they still hang around? I guess they still have seals. Wild Kingdom out here, up to our armpits in nature.

Planting my cover crop on the corn field today, after getting it tilled yesterday. It’s not going to rain this AM, better get out there. Well, go get’em today whatever you are up to. Big whale loves, Felipe.

The gauge on the kitchen wall says Rain, yup no lie! It is coming down outside and we are walking in a few minutes. A different face on Phil’s Camino. It sounds like the wind blowing but the wind is not blowing, that is the rain falling. Yup, the monsoon season has arrived.

The local newspaper the Vashon-Maury Island Beachcomber published a front page (below the fold) article with pic about Phil’s Camino the trail and the film. I remember the reporter Julie was out here mixing with the folks that were arriving for the big Port Townsend Film Festival weekend. We were generally smoking and joking (old saying) here walking the trail, drinking wine and having tapas, locals and folks from LA. Julie was in the swing of it all while reporting on it for the article. I’m not sure that is really fair subjecting a poor helpless reporter to that volume and intensity of Camino hospitality. I guess it’s fair for it was just us, right? That’s how we act, we can’t help ourselves! Maybe we need a warning label: “Caution, pilgrims at play, doing what they do, winning over your heart is highly likely.”

You know come to think of it, it really isn’t fair. In general, pilgrims have a complete unfair advantage in most of life. I have never thought of it in those terms before but it’s true. Thank you St James for one.

Well, time to gear up for my walk, let’s see, wetsuit, aqualung. But it will clear up last minute, right? Maybe Bill my cancer commando buddy will show, he is crazy enough. The best to you, don’t take unfair advantage of people, love, Felipe.

Back in ninth grade Earth Science we learned about barometers in the weather section of the course. An instrument to measure atmospheric pressure and helpful in predicting weather. When the pressure drops it means stormy weather is approaching and when it rises it means that fair weather will reign. So, finally my trusty barometer is back in the “Change” part of the dial where it usually resides. During the height of the recent storm it was way down and pointing to the “M” in “Stormy”. Just thought you needed to be let in on that.

We are on an earth topic today I guess. I start these posts most of the time not knowing where they will go or end up. But way back around 1961 when I was a student in that Earth Science class I remember the course had three distinct sections. The semester started with Geology, moved to Meteorology and finally wound up in Astronomy. In that way it moved from something we were used to to something more unknown. This was the beginning of the space race with Russia launching Sputnik in 1958 I think. When we were kids everyone knew that the moon was made of green cheese. Generally we had no idea of much beyond our atmosphere here on earth.

Not long ago I was looking at the materials of a recent Earth Science course taught by a friend and noticed that the order of the sections had been reversed indicating some shift I think. Now they start with Astronomy, go to Meteorology and end with the apparently lesser known Geology. Interesting I think. Have we in the last fifty years gotten away from our roots so. Now are we more at home with digitized photos from outer space telescopes then we are with the rocks and soil in our yards. Just an observation.

There was something that I wanted to copy and paste for you from today’s blog post of Richard Rohr’s:

“The word “human” comes from the Latin humus, which means earth. Being human means acknowledging that we’re made from the earth and will return to the earth. For a few years we dance around on the stage of life and have the chance to reflect a little bit of God’s glory. We are earth that has come to consciousness. If we discover this power in ourselves and know that we are God’s creatures, that we come from God and return to God, that’s enough. As a human, I’m just a tiny moment of consciousness, a small part of creation, a particle that reflects only a fragment of God’s glory. And yet that’s enough.”

Very earthy, right? That’s what we are up to today. We generally got it under our fingernails around here. Off we go, love, Felipe.

What is the most powerful thing I can do at the moment? Well for me that would be writing to you, of course. And that is what is going to happen. Have no idea what I am going to write about but that never stopped me before.

Which reminds me that we are coming up on a thousand posts here at the old blog. How are we going to celebrate that? I need to think on that and fortunately we are a few weeks away so there is time. 985 posts, just looked it up.

OK, how about a story right now. This may fit in nicely. I wrote this up earlier today on a comment on FaceBook. It is memory of just an hour spent at the local Dairy Queen when we had a DQ on our little island. It was probably a fall day, the season we are most prone to wind storms and the resulting power outages. I was there having lunch and the place was crowded at usual. It was then owned by a great couple and was in some ways the center of the community. Joan, the wife was there on duty when the lights went off and she had some funky temporary lighting rigged up and proceeded to star in a fashion show with all the odds and ends in the lost and found box. Hilarious, right? I don’t know, maybe you had to be there but what a great way to respond to what the day throws at you.

And this was also on FaceBook, a quote from one of our presidents, from an era before heroes became out of vogue:

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

― Theodore Roosevelt

Well, there it is, maybe we can all could respond to a moment today to be a hero is some way, shape or form. Jump into the arena and do the do the fashion show, big loves, Felipe.

For the last three years I haven’t gotten a deer in the freezer. Today regaining my credibility by scoring a nice buck. Thank you to Dana for helping me with the field dressing.

The salmon season is closed in our area till Janurary. This will make up for that. There is something about being involved with the process of food production whether it is hunting, fishing, gardening or raising critters.

Yea, got the firewood in, got the corn in, got the deer in. OK winter show me what you got. Keeping it going at Phil’s Camino, love, Felipe.

The wind storm has come and gone with just rain as an aftermath. Not much of a storm here at the ranch anyway. Western Washington folks bought every flashlight and generator available west of the Mississippi. OK, so we are ready for the next ten year storm, good.

Me, I spent a few days getting ready for something that didn’t occur, OK fine. Then this morning I had a dull moment and I thought that I would replace the under the sink water filter. Piece of cake according to the directions, quarter turn on the old one, quarter turn on the new one, no tools required, don’t have to turn off the water. It didn’t really say that it is possible to flood a quarter of the kitchen. OK, got that cleaned up. But irony right?

Anyway, sort of a lesson there somewhere. Catherine here at 1010 to pick me up for 1030 Mass and then there is a Seahawks game at 1330. Got oxtail soup for Wiley and Hanna coming over. Maybe need some more beer and pretzels.

Gotta go, not to much on the deep spiritual stuff today but reality breaks into life, right? Miss you, even if I don’t know you, love, Felipe.

Yup, that’s what it looks like. There is scuttlebutt around the neighborhood that the storm may be less of a deal. Man, I can go along with that. Maybe the whole thing is a drill. Got everything ready for winter in general. So, it’s a good thing. Yea, and that soup is a masterpiece if I do say so myself.

Catherine and I are going to late Mass tomorrow. I am going to hunt at daybreak and see what I can find. I have to cash in on one of these deer that fattened up on my sweet corn the last two months.

Well, that’s what it looks like around here. Just a little wet around the edges, love, Felipe.

We are off here shortly traveling in the midist of this bad storm. It is still going on and will last through tomorrow with the worst yet to come. Have generator and chain saw running.

This is all very distracting to me trying to write this post. OK, back again and I am back at the ranch. No damage here, just a lot of debris blowing around.

But just hear from Annie that Phil’s Camino won the Audience Choice Award. Yea, love it, thank you Tacoma!

OK, I bushed. One more thing to do and that is start a pot of oxtail soup, our favorite wintertime meal. Need to have it ready for the Seahawks game against Atlanta on Sunday. Yup, that’s the way it is. Lovin you, Felipe.