On September 11th, my friend Tim drove me out to Palouse Falls, a place that after all my years wandering Eastern Washington I had yet to visit. Along the way we stopped at Lyons Ferry, where the Palouse and Snake rivers meet. We stopped at a small old park in Washtucna and ate truck stop sandwiches and melon with the last of the season’s yellow jackets in the sprinkler mist.
Every time I venture out into the dusty familiarity of these forgotten towns, I think that it’s time to move and become a romantic rural hermit in a town like this–alarm the few residents a bit with my ways, but find a resigned acceptance after a spell. Tim, too, talked on our drive about a fleeting urge to move to Benge, which we’d pass through on the way back to Spokane, and write.
These are places that are neither flashy nor symbolic. By conventional wisdom, they are unimportant and dominated by scrubby weeds and boarded up buildings. I’m drawn to them anyway, and so are mule deer, rattlesnakes, and rabbits. This time of year, the wild sunflowers and the more humble rabbitbrush show off in this space between wheat country and the scablands (one of the roads we drove is actually one on one side of the road and one on the other).
It’s a spectacle out here, especially as you consider the story of this land’s unique geology. This place remembers hundreds of feet of water rushing across the land at high speeds and bears the scars and scabs to prove it. Nature’s original shock and awe in action. Here’s a few photos from the day. If you’d like to read better, more in depth writing about this region, check out Tim’s blog as well.