PORT TOWNSEND: PERSONALITIES, TRAVELS, AND FRENCH RAP

​This blog entry has been bouncing around in my head for several days.  The essay you are about to read was written in November, 2016, and published in the December, 2016, and the January, 2017 issues of Borealis: The Monthly Journal of Northern Michigan Mensa.

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Traveling from Port Townsend, Washington into the Olympic Peninsula's rain forest is more of a cultural experience than you might expect.  This historic, artsy town is known for a uniqueness that attracts tourists, escapees from Seattle's congestion, and those who love boats and boating.  Its proximity to rain forest environments is certainly one of the highlights of any tourist's visit but other surprises will prove to bring the traveler back for other visits.

On my most recent trip to Port Townsend I had tea with Bill Porter whose mother came from Calumet in Michigan's Copper Country.  Having a Yooper for a mother is not exactly a claim to fame.  However, my having lived in Marquette for thirteen years struck a chord with him.  Bill's "claim to fame" is the body of translations and writings that he has created.  He is a widely read Buddhist scholar.  Most people outside Port Townsend know him by his pseudonym "Red Pine".  He was leaving his Port Townsend home for his familiar China in two days.  I'm not sure if that is the primary reason he invited me to his home the day after I wrote or if it was because we shared the same last name.  He mentioned both as relevant facts. 

Only a few days later I attended a book presentation and signing which was the featured event of an annual library celebration.   Speaking before an audience of 500 was a local hero who resides part-time in Port Townsend, Daniel James Brown.  His fame is the result of writing a book about a local hero of the past, Joe Rantz, and his teammates, members of the most highly acclaimed University of Washington rowing team from back in the day when rowing was the premier sport of private college preparatory schools and of universities.  Not only Brown’s writing but his understanding and popularizing of the cultural underpinnings of Joe’s and his team's success are now, as a result of his book, the talk of northwest Washington.  When the movie appears, the entire country will be aware of the back woods boys who stunned the elites of California and the east coast with their victory over Hitler's favored rowers in the 1936 Olympics.  An hour-long PBS special about the team aired earlier this year but aficionados are waiting for a movie about the Olympics to match 1981’s “Chariots of Fire”.  Brown was asked to write the story by Joe's daughter, not too long before Joe's memories were lost to antiquity by his death, except those captured in Brown's notable book.

These personalities and others, famous and not so famous, found in this area provide human interest stories within the context of an unusual natural environment.  Those familiar with the north woods of the upper Midwest would find the features of the nearby rain forest as intriguing as are the stories of famous local personalities.

Every Boy Scout raised in the Midwest has been told that moss grows mostly on the northern-facing sides of trees.  And that it is important to remember this if one's compass is lying on the table at home.  More often than not, in a rain forest entire surfaces of tree limbs and trunks are covered with heavy, thick moss.  More moss than a Midwesterner could imagine.  Nature magazines can't do the proliferation of moss justice because they cannot convey the aroma of pungent, damp moss.  The forests are thick and the skies often overcast so you cannot always see the sun to fix your direction.  You definitely need to stay on the many trails in the Olympic National Park and not leave that compass at home.

If one travels far enough into the rain forest west of Port Townsend, one can find their vehicle gaining 500 feet in elevation from US-101 while heading to the Sol Duc Hot Springs deep in the rain forest of Olympic National Park.  It's said that your nose will sense the strong smell of sulphur which will alert you to the springs' proximity but I visited in late October with the truck windows closed.  

Visitors don't actually sit in the hot springs.  Rather, refrigeration is used to lower the temperature of spring water which is pumped into concrete lined pools.  When I visited, the pools' water temperatures were set at 108, 102, and 94 degrees.  The fourth pool was set at a rousing 54 degrees because its water didn't come from the springs.  It was piped from the nearby river and cleaned in the process.  Approaching the communal pools you will find relaxed, swimsuit-clad bathers on even the nastiest of days.  On my visit there were several guests speaking Japanese when ice cold late-fall raindrops fell through 38 degree air hitting the tops of our heads.  Was I the only one wondering if these drops hadn’t actually turned into tiny icicles?  This onslaught of icy water hitting our heads while our bodies steamed in 108 degree water resulted in many shared laughs along with many acknowledging smiles and intercultural murmuring.

However, the most striking cultural phenomenon to startle and please me was something beyond these experiences.  It was listening to the radio while driving west on Highway 101 toward and past Port Angeles.  As one leaves Port Townsend, it is comforting to listen to the lyric mantra "KNKX, the new 88.5; YOUR connection to jazz, blues, and NPR news".  But the signal fades as you pass Sequim (pronounced Skwim) which is between the two Ports. Searching for another NPR station takes one to a stronger KNKX signal from a different tower, two dial clicks away at 88.9 on the dashboard’s digital screen.

Surprisingly, and before you realize it, you're not listening to "All Things Considered" at all.  Rather, you notice joyful foot stomping music reminiscent of the Cajun music found in New Orleans. It reminded me of great concerts in an old high school auditorium in Marquette featuring the French Québécois/Canadian musical phenomenon “La Bottine Souriante”.  Then all of a sudden NPR has returned after the twisting 101 takes you along the inner curve of one of the Olympic Mountains so that you again receive KNKX's signal.  When you pass the concave curve and emerge into an open convex expanse, rhythmic voices from the CBC station reappear.  This time there are repeated chants with a minimum of musicality.   My musically uneducated ear prompts me to label these chants……French rap?  The same refrain, over and over again.  First loud, then soft, then louder again.  You hear no discernible words or progressive melody line.

You are hearing this music beamed from Canada's Vancouver Island, just across the Strait of Juan de Fuca.  Actually, it seems to be more rhythmic shouted mantras than it was the snappy, bright, harmonious music you were listening to six minutes previously.  Where did the La Bottine Souriante-like band go?  The 20 miles of slow speeds into and out of the sharp curves that follow the shoreline of Crescent Lake provide an unpredictable cacophony of French music alternating with NPR political commentary.  That is, until you get further from Port Angeles and closer to Forks, Washington and the cut off to the mineral springs, when the NPR station can't be heard at all.  You adjust to this and find that you actually prefer the French music.

The return trip to Port Townsend provides the same interposing of cultural disharmony.  Following the lengthy parboiling in the hot, mineral spring water, the French rap with its related melodic cousin fades into or away from KNKX’s jazz and blues which has replaced NPR news this late in the day.  This auditory pleasure occurs until you are almost to Sequim.  By that time, you find yourself being unable to draw any French at all out of the radio.  On to normal life with normal sounds, driving on sometimes straight roads back to civilization as you knew it before you began your adventure earlier in the day.

                                                                                           by John Porter,  November 9, 2016

Photo #1 above:  View of the Sol Duc Hot Springs Resort within the Olympic National Park.
        https://www.nps.gov/olym/hot-springs.htm
  https://www.olympicnationalparks.com/things-to-do/mineral-hot-springs-pool-at-sol-duc-hot-springs-resort/
Photo #2 above:  Somebody beat me to my ideal entrepreneurial undertaking...in Forks, WA, just outside the National Park near the beginning of the road leading to the Hot Springs.  Featured at this business are "messages in bottles" dropped in the Pacific Ocean in Japan and retrieved from the Pacific Ocean coast, on the shore of the Olympic Peninsula.
Photo #3:  Moss proliferating in the National Park a few miles south of the Hot Springs.