I was wearing my boat workers hat this week, and working on a big yacht in the Everett marina, when I saw a wonderful sight.

Having had my head stuck facing an awkward angle of teak plywood paneling I'd been sanding for hours, I was just beginning to get bored when my little work spot was lit up by a flash of sunlight coming through the tinted cabin windows. Taking this as a sign to stand upright for a moment, I walked over to the sliding glass windows and looked out at the late afternoon light in the SW sky. That's when I saw it: The Great Vaporous Duck.

It was a gray November Tuesday, and is often the case, a bright sky 'sucker hole' developed between the clouds right near the end of the day. The lower edge of this clear sky hole was framed by a flat cloud, the upper edge of which was brilliantly lit by the settling sun. In front of this mid-distant cloud, smaller darker clouds were scudding by, when one of them morphed into the Great Vaporous Duck. Yes the thing was just a cloud, but for about 10 seconds it was a dead ringer for a dabbling duck swimming across a brilliant pond in the sky. It really was great.

I had a good laugh over that, and instantly thought of my mother. My mother is kind of a duck freak: not in any kind of kinky transpecies way, its just that for 40+ years she's collected all sorts duck knicknacks and the windowsills in her Port Townsend are covered with all sorts of wood, stone, clay ect. ducks.

About 40+ years ago I got my first camera - a funky little kodak instamatic. I thought it was great. I aspired to create photos worthy of someone like my childhood nature photography hero- Eliot Porter. In my first passionate explorations of photography I thought I had some pretty good material. One of my favorite transparencies was of a pond near the Mora campground on the Olympic coast. The photo was of the pond at sunset, with dramatic clouds in the background, a bird in the sky, and in the shadowed foreground, the water ripples formed by raindrops on the pond. As a sensitive young artist, I felt it really got to the heart of the place. Proudly displaying the picture in a family slide show, I was awaiting commentary lauding my great sensitivity to the scene, when my mother blurted out excitedly "that cloud looks like a duck!" And you know, she was right - one of the background clouds did look like a duck. It was a good lesson on peoples varying perspectives.

Too bad mom missed out on the Vaporous Duck sighting. As I watched the scene unfold, two solid ducks, a pair of Mallards, swam around the swim step of the boat, and spotted me standing there behind the tinted glass door and gave me a look somewhat like that of certain people that come into the Anchor Pub looking for someone to buy them a free drink. "Moochers" I thought, and as I didn't respond to their needs, they swam off down the marina looking for someone else.

Walking down the dock early yesterday morning, I found a young Harbor Seal tucked into a protected bit of water between the bow of a large boat and the dock. It was right at the surface belly up, yet totally submerged, and apparently asleep. As I quietly walked by a few feet away it must have felt some vibration and it performed a slow graceful backflip and disappeared down into the estuarine murk. It looked like it was still asleep as it did this, so I guess seals 'sleepwalk' too.

Jeff Gibson
Everett Wa