The day before I left Seattle, Mom and I decided to take a leisurely post-lunch stroll through the beautiful Bloedel Reserve estate and gardens near our home. In search of the hidden reflection pool (where poet Theodore Roethke famously drowned in 1963), we wound through moss and Japanese rock gardens, ponds and willow trees and dark forests, feeling like we were Alices in some sort of Northwest Wonderland. Thankfully, after walking long enough, we found the reflection pool and made it out in time for dinner, with pictures of me in my mixed ethnic prints to boot.

…

“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?”
“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat.
“I don’t much care where–” said Alice.
“Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” said the Cat.
“–so long as I get SOMEWHERE,” Alice added as an explanation.
“Oh, you’re sure to do that,” said the Cat, “if you only walk long enough.”
– Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

top: BR Fact Stores, wrap skirt and necklace: souvenirs from my travels in Nepal, shoes: BC footwear, purse: Rebecca Minkoff