Up at Artillery Hill, Fort Worden

Up on Artillery Hill, Fort Wordon

When my brother comes here, he climbs the hill and takes photographs with his phone, mountaingoating around the abandoned barracks on the hunt for abstract shots of graffiti, discolored walls, peeling paint, ancient looking stone circle imprints; then he takes the ferry back to the city and the next day goes to his studio and paints the images onto canvas. He crops the shots first, making sure he’s got the right balance and feel. If my son were here, he’d be climbing all over these great bone fortresses, jumping off walls, disappearing into the eerie cells. Or, at least, he’d have done that a few years ago; he’s nineteen now, and, who knows, he’d probably slip off and smoke a joint then bushwhack down to the beach and meet me back at the room later in the evening smelling of misguided adventure. If my wife were here with me, we’d have found a spot inside one of the lovely shade groves and lay down on a blanket and, after a while, for sure, fall asleep. But it’s just me today, here now, and, come to think of it, I too have taken snapshots of the ruins, and climbed over them—not jumping but walking carefully down the cement stairs—and found a spot under some great uncle tree—the little swallowtail birds swooping by, passing over and through the meadow grass tops. I startled a pair of dear near the beginning of my walk as I passed down into the woods, and when I turned back from the second doe, the first deer had vanished. It had been only a few feet away. Poof. Back in my room, I type these words, jazz percolating out from the laptop, reading them aloud to test out the sentences and clauses and words—as one checks tensile strength in a rope.