Things to Do Around Seattle by Gary Snyder

Things to Do Around Seattle
by Gary Snyder

Hear phone poles hum.
Catch garter snakes. Make lizard tails fall off.
Biking to Lake Washington, see muddy little fish.
Peeling old bark off Madrone to see the clean red new bark.
Cleaning fir pitch off your hands.
Reading books in the back of the University District goodwill.
Swimming in Puget Sound below the railroad tracks.
Dig clams.
Ride the Kalakala to Bremerton.
See Mt. Constance from the water tower up by the art museum.
Fudgsicles in Woodland park zoo, the Eagle and the Camel.
The mummy Eskimo baby in the University Anthropology museum.
Hung up deep sea canoes, red cedar log.
Eating old style oatmeal mush cookt in double boiler or cracked wheat cereal with dates.
Sway in the wind in the top of the cedar in the middle of the swamp—
Walking off through the swamp and over the ridge to the pine woods.
Picking wild blackberries all around stumps.
Peeling cascara
Feeding chickens
Feeling Penelope’s udder, one teat small
Oregon grape and salal.

PHOTO: Seattle, Washington, with Mt. Rainier in the background. Photo by Luca Micheli on Unsplash

NOTE: Mount Rainier, also known as Tahoma or Tacoma, is a large active stratovolcano in the Cascade Range of the Pacific Northwest United States, located about 59 miles south-southeast of Seattle, Washington. With a summit elevation of 14,411 feet, it is the highest mountain in the state of Washington. With a high probability of eruption in the near future, Mt. Rainier is considered one of the most dangerous volcanoes in the world, and it is on the Decade Volcano list.