Meanwhile, a brief interlude from a favorite-
I
Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the blackbird.
V
I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.
XIII
It was evening all afternoon.
It was snowing
And it was going to snow.
The blackbird sat
In the cedar-limbs.
– Wallace Stevens, from Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird*
Speaking of roads, Highway 112 west of here has been closed since the heavy snows of December. All the melt and runoff destabilized the road bed and the highway collapsed at milepost 37 between West Twin and Pysht. This is the coast highway along the Strait of Juan de Fuca, and a significant commercial corridor between the logging parcels around the Pysht River and Port Angeles. It’s also a recreational corridor, so the ATVs that frequent the abandoned BLM and forest service roads have quieted considerably as well, even without the fresh insulation of new snowfall.
The stumps are really piling up, so it’s time to bleed off a few.