I navigate by intuition from Home Depot to Lowe’s Hardware — up to 4th Avenue, follow the first detour sign around the construction and into Chinatown, turn right on Jackson. Will Jackson put me on Rainier? I’m not sure. …past 11th and 12th. There it is. I take the soft right onto Rainier; and as I’m turning the wheel, I’m thinking the words, “Here’s Rainier.” I begin that short thought while the car is pointing east and finish with the car heading south. In the course of that turn – in the course of that thought – the meaning of the words shift and become vaguely more profound. The Mountain – Mt. Rainier – is painted across the sky in front of me and it seems like, if I were to forget the hardware store and stay on Rainier Avenue, it would lead me right up to the edge of a glacier.
Later, I was at the waterfront with Samantha, and a lone tourist pointed Mt. Rainier out to us and said something that I didn’t quite catch. Samantha heard it as, “It’s a nice snow-tipped peak.”