There is both a multitude and a lack of things to look at while driving Route 101 on Washington State’s Olympic Peninsula. For most of the drive you glimpse only the lumpy foothills of the Olympic range; when this view fails to satisfy, the map trumps the territory as a source of visual entertainment.

Meghan was scanning the road atlas for potential sights. “Sappho! There’s a town named Sappho!” We giggled, and the requisite jokes were made – “maybe it’s a hippie lesbian poets colony!,” and on it went. We agreed to stop there for a break, some fuel, and maybe a laugh.

We soon came upon a gas station. Near a side road a small, state-issued metal sign declared this was “SAPPHO”; as it were, the town and the gas station were one in the same. I surveyed the landscape as I filled the tank. There were no other structures to be seen, but a flash of white just beyond the back of the building caught my eye. I finished fueling up and grabbed my camera.

I can’t recall if there was any signage indicating this was a likeness of the famed poetess. But who else could it have been in a clingy white dress, striding atop a stump by the dumpster behind a gas station in Sappho, Washington?