Views of Sequim, the Olympic Peninsula. . .and beyond
This unnamed sculpture by Alex Anderson is installed at Valley Creek Estuary Park in Port Angeles. If you’re not familiar with whale physiology it’s styled after a whale vertebrae. The scale of the piece is substantial. It weighs seven tons and is 12 feet tall and four feet thick. It was a $65,000 gift to Port Angeles by an anonymous donor.
We have a lot of mourning doves hanging around lately, puffed up and frankly looking cold and miserable. Even in the sun it’s not much warmer than freezing. For me the soft light and shadow of this shot catches the chill.
These three wind turbines were installed last September at Waterfront Park in Port Angeles, Sequim’s westerly neighboring town. The first time I saw them I thought they were pretty dramatic sculptures. Which, actually, they may well be. Or not. They may also generate power.
There’s some controversy around these units. City officials thought they could generate power for lighting in the park. But they also wanted art…and nobody’s actually sure how much wind power they may harvest. They’re not rotating for now. Port Angeles is involved in “an inspection-related dispute with the manufacturer.”
I wanted to find a healthy barn after the decay of yesterday’s. This one volunteered. It may not be functioning as a farm building but it’s got life and purpose. Though we’ve got a fine shop building I rarely fail to have barn envy when I see a massive working space like this. Oh, the things we could do!
When I moved to Sequim in 2010 you could see this barn from Highway 101, west of River Road. It had a swaybacked roof but the cupola was still upright. The image above is from September 2012 as the roof caved deeper and the cupola sank into its recesses.
I visited it a month later here and here as it was clear that time was not kind to this old barn. By December 2012 here it was not looking good. By July 2014 I declared it dead here.
I revisited it recently to see how it was doing. There’s not much standing and there’s little enough that it’s hard to see through tall weeds from my original vantage point.
It’s sad to see it gone.
Here’s another effort to find winter color.
Pat and Connie have a beautiful fountain made from a tree stump and its roots. At any time of year it’s striking and unique.
For most of last week we barely got above freezing temperatures and the fountain was magical with ice cascading in glacial stillness.
Landscape ice is a novelty for this former Californian. But when it forms as it did on this fountain it seems simply glorious to me.
I’ve seen ice sculptures that are beautiful art forms. But Mother Nature does a mighty nice job on her own, don’t you think?