We’re blessed with but a handful of spins on our solar roulette wheel, each bringing with it but one spring, one summer, fall, and winter respectively. Each has its special grace, its own beauty for which we’re grateful. For we know only too well, like the leaves on a summer’s day, first we wither, then decay.
The Skokomish Valley has the richest top soil in Mason County and among the most scenic territorial views. Families who settle here tend to stay. There’s hardly any point in moving elsewhere. Having lived here, they consider Heaven redundant. Some have been here for generations…mostly farmers. Their labors are timeless. They hand down a tradition of love for the land…a land wrested at great emotional cost from the indigenous tribes such as the Skokomish. It’s a land that has been exploited by voracious corporations like Simpson, trashed by thoughtless residents dumping their rubbish in the wood, cruelly releasing their unwanted pets to the wild, poaching elk, stealing timber, encroaching in a thousand ways upon the gift nature bestowed. Still the land retains its beauty despite the pollution, the haze, the aquifer contamination, the dumping. Its marvelous presence remains to inspire all with souls not yet deadened by a consumer society driven by a lust for all that’s disposable.