At midnight on New Year’s Eve we stood at our front window looking down over the city and beyond westward to the Lumi Indian Reservation occupying a dramatically forlorn peninsula of birch, fir, and tidelands. We had had sub-freezing temperatures for several days and snow which had fallen a week earlier still covered ground and trees.

Above the peninsula the night sky was pierced by skyrockets as the Indians celebrated the coming of 1985. A rerun of midnight throngs in New York City’s Times Square played on our TV screen. The sharp contrast between the stabs of light on the dark featureless reservation and the brilliant city scene sharpened my apprehension of the new year ahead and the uncertainty it held for Joan and me.

We were to spend two winters in Bellingham, long enough to find out that the city had no equipment or procedures for snow removal. Snowfalls were not often heavy, but until followed by a warm spell, they stayed where they fell. I became aware of the advantages of front-wheel drive.