Category: Landscape
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River Signs | Vantage, WA | June 2019 Water bends light in weird ways. Fifty years ago, my friend Tom burst to the surface of a farm pond to shout that he’d found a body. (We cooled off in the pond on sweltering afternoons.) “Come see,” said Tom, and he dove back under. I followed…
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Climber | Frenchman Coulee, WA | June 2019 I lead a low-risk life. Sure, I drive a car and fly in jets. But I’m not a thrill seeker — no sky diving, no zip lines, definitely no rock climbing. Gravity has earned my respect, as has its inevitable interrupter: the ground. From a tall ladder…
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Highway | Reardan, WA | June 2019 Sunset enriches even the most mundane landscape. It’s evidence that the celestial — in this case starlight — transforms
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Trash Cans | Coulee City, WA | June 2019 Catholic confession is like tossing sins into a trash can, said the priest. “The sins still exist, but you’ve peeled them off your soul and plopped them in the garbage.” Well, maybe. It’s unclear what happens to those tossed transgressions, but the image of a Divine…
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Farm | Harrington, WA | June 2019 All I know about wheat farming is what I see. Sunlit sheds surrounded by fertile soil. Not as evident: Sweat and tears tilled deep to nourish crops; equipment burdened by weighty mortgages; profits in the hands of faceless foreign buyers. All I want to know is that
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Golf Course | Richland, WA | June 2019 Golf is laden now with high fees and heavy gear. But as a young man, I played cheap rounds in early mornings with a single hybrid club — a five-iron/putter combo — and balls scavenged from the pond. At sunrise, it was mostly just me and the…
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21 Poplars | Moses Lake, WA | June 2019 We seem earthbound nowadays, weighted daily by new scares and scandals. So I’ve come to appreciate anything that points the way skyward — bean plants curling to the sun, birders with binoculars angled up, poplars not as windbreaks but guideposts to
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Pelican | West Richland, WA | June 2019 Strangers often rouse suspicion. Where do they come from? What do they want? A fisherman near Horn Rapids on the Yakima River spit chew and jutted his chin at the flock of white pelicans perched midstream. “What the hell are they doing here?” he asked. “They eat…
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Memorial | West Richland, WA | June 2019 The artificial flowers shout amid the miles of sandy scrub. No epitaph on the pole, but bright blooms definitely deliver the message: “We remember.” I slow at such roadside tributes to figure out how
IrwinFoto 