The quiet end of Sequim Bay

Blyn is a census-designated place in the easternmost corner of Clallam County, at the southern end of Sequim Bay. Its population was 108 at the 2020 census. US 101 runs straight through it, six miles northwest to Sequim. The walking into it is easy for a reason: the Olympic Discovery Trail's East Central segment runs 26.1 miles from Blyn through Sequim to Port Angeles, and about seventy per cent of it sits on the abandoned Chicago, Milwaukee, St Paul and Pacific railroad grade. Railroads dislike hills, so the grade is gentle the whole way. Four of the segment's bridges are large restored railroad trestles dating from 1914 and 1915, still carrying traffic of a slower kind.

On the same water, three miles southeast of Sequim on US 101, Sequim Bay State Park holds 92 acres and 4,909 feet of saltwater shoreline — a year-round marine camping park and one of the few pieces of publicly held shore along this stretch. East of Blyn the highway leaves the Strait behind for good and begins working south toward Hood Canal.

A slow day is a good day for the least dramatic fact about donor registries: most people who join are never called. NMDP puts it plainly — because matching is complex, some members are needed quickly, while others wait years. Torsten Huber was on DKMS's register in Germany when a search turned him up for an infant in Washington State. Jada Bascom had been diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia at one month old and was transplanted at seven months.

That is what joining a registry actually is. Not a heroic act; a small administrative one, done once, and for most people never followed by anything at all — until, for a very small number, it turns out to be the only thing standing between a stranger and a treatment that works.