marcielsims.com Blog

Snowy Winter Fun

1937 was an especially cold winter in Germany with wave after wave of snow coming with very cold temperatures from Russia. The snow piled up, pushed back from the streets so high that one could not see the cars on the street from the sidewalk.

There was a beautiful hill, not a mountain, in a great park called

1980: Our Hopes Were Granted

It was the end of October 1980. My husband Hal received the paperwork from his Employer AT&T for our transfer back to Seattle after 12 years. I was elated for my Hal, knowing how much he was waiting for this day. But I had mixed feelings. Happy for my Hal and sad to leave my two Doctors in Longview. They were not just employers they had become with their families

A Late Summer Weekend at Lake Starnberg

It was late summer 1953. Eleven years, 1942, that my father, Peppi and I had sailed his beautiful sailing vessel

Trying Foolish Things with Consequences

It was the summer of 1941 and my friend Hedy and my sister

My Favorite Delicate Little Anemone

It was a beautiful summer day and there was a big birthday party planned for me. It was a sunny day in June of 1935, I was eight years old and my dear sister Friedl was ten. For that we wanted to have our

Sockeye Sighting at Shinglemill Creek, Vashon Island

Marcie Sims

As we walked along the creek, our dog spotted you first, alerting us to your presence.

In barely two inches of water, in the clear but rapidly moving shallow creek, there you were.

Hooked-nosed and crimson in your old age, returning by instinct for this final run,

half of your body out of the shallow water, pushed forward by pure strength and will,

your body pulsing, tail beating in a fanned push, push, pushing, moving slowly up, up, up.

We stood and watched you from a respectful distance, amazed by your struggle and drive,

the beauty of your late-life red and silver, brightening the dull, beige pebbles and clear water.

The journey up looked long and impossible, and you still had so far to go, but you pushed on.

Your patience and determination outlasted our own, our attention span ruined by civilization and ease.

We left you as you were still on your way to that ancient, collective-memory spawning place.

We have faith, though, that you eventually made it to those mating grounds of generations of sockeye,

that the spot you chose, the gravel you smoothed, were perfect, and she laid her eggs there.

Then you, in your final act of instinct and survival, spawned life, before letting go, your struggle ended.

August 2022

THE SR-71 The Black Bird, a Stunning, Awesome Plane

It was May of 2012 and my husband Hal had received an invitation to join a friend for a luncheon at the Museum of Flight Air Museum at Boing field in Seattle, Washington. Hal was ecstatic about this luncheon, not so for the food, but the presentation and slide show by Brian Shul, the narrator and pilot of one of America

Encounter with Woodland