I go to a writing conference every 20 years. So when I go, I had better make the most of it. The Port Townsend Writers’ Conference at Fort Worden, Wash., was the most.

It’s going to take me awhile to digest this experience. All I’ll say this evening is that my week at the conference was inspiring and surprising. I wrote something I never thought I’d write and made connections with people I never thought I’d meet. Fort Worden is a state park, and I walked six miles a day, over a hill, along a beach, out to a lighthouse, through a cemetery, and many laps around the former parade ground.

I spent so much time with the deer that they stopped running from me. In another week, they would’ve invited me to dinner. Fiber. They know.

Fort Worden was once part of a series of forts that guarded the United States against seaborne invasion. This was a good idea when Capt. Horatio Hornblower was trading broadsides with Napoleon. It wasn’t so good after the invention of the aeroplane. But the Coast Artillery Corps built Fort Worden anyway, along with its friends, Forts Casey and Flagler, a “Triangle of Fire” that would destroy any fleet that menaced Seattle.

The only thing that ever menaced Seattle was Tacoma. The Coast Artillery Corps disbanded all three forts by 1953 and then itself. All that’s left today of the mighty CAC are the empty gun emplacements overlooking Puget Sound and the Coast Artillery Museum at Fort Worden. The museum is closing in September. Budget cuts.

I bought this shirt for half price:

Below is one example of what they built in the 1900s to hold off unnamed enemies. The rooms beneath the fortifications are open to the public. How many teenagers have been deflowered in there?

It’s about a mile around the parade ground. In the next photo, the barracks I stayed in is on the right. The cloud in the gap between the trees, to the right of center, is actually Mount Baker, far to the north of Fort Worden and just east of my hometown of Bellingham.

My barracks at night:

The cemetery, established with the fort, is still in use, for veterans and civilians:

I wrote a lot, learned to refrain from snacking because the cafeteria was closed between meals, talked poetry with the professionals, bantered with best-selling novelists, rocked the room on open mic night, and won the hand of a proud, aloof beauty named Willow. OK, the paw. Willow is a King Charles spaniel, though she might be part Pomeranian. There appears to be some disagreement on this point. I accept her as she is.

I’m happy to be home and ready again to dispense more half-baked wisdom!