Back of Bloom | East Wenatchee, WA | August 2019
Don’t forget the under, the rear, the flip side. It’s below and behind where much of life’s mechanics take place. Power lines, food deliveries, maintenance tasks often intersect behind the facade, at the rear door. When progress is hindered or entry blocked, when questions remain unanswered, solutions can be (more…)
Horse Neck | Twisp, WA | August 2019
Bright on one side, dim on the other. In astrophysics, the line where light ends and darkness begins is called the terminator. It’s evident as orbiting planets spin into day, then night, then repeat. But we also see this curiosity in earthbound situations. A kind of terminator line separates ocean wave from dry beach, a residential area from a commercial strip, a friendly demeanor from simmering rage. None of these is a sharp delineation, but rather a (more…)
Work Gloves | Twisp, WA | August 2019
I peeled off the gloves to discover the lines of my hands had imprinted on the rubberized fabric. Finger creases and palm prints showed that I’d gripped a rake handle for an hour. Unusual, yes, but maybe all clothes retain evidence of our activities? Jeans wrinkled at the knees after six hours of sitting at a computer. T-shirt pouchy across the stomach after too many Cheetos. Underwear bunched at the seams after … well, never mind. Truth is, we likely (more…)
Sunset | Twisp, WA | August 2019
Some people are avid appreciators of a setting sun. Almost every evening for two years, my Dad sat on an overturned bucket to watch the sun go down at the edge of his new property. He later kicked aside the bucket, built a house on that exact spot and named it Sundown. My spouse revels in evening’s gleam while relaxing on the porch of our Twisp cabin. She’s greatly moved by the glow on fences, fields and foothills, and sometimes phones me to say the sunset is too wondrous for words. A homeless man who wanders our city has a favorite stool at McDonald’s where he (more…)
Ninth Floor View | Airway Heights, WA | August 2019
Our hotel room window opened onto a curving roadway where a confusion of lines, shapes and shadows competed for my attention. A white car turned onto the road below and, almost instantly, lent weight to the scene’s center, added cohesiveness to the whole. Don’t we all sometimes yearn for (more…)
Buddha | Waterville, WA | July 2019
Buddha loiters on the fringes, I’ve noticed. He stands dusty on book shelves, next to shoe boxes in closets, peeking from windows in small towns. He seeks the low places — no spotlight, applause or worship — where his smile might lift a heavy heart. Perhaps we find Buddha (more…)
Roadside Pullout | Washington Highway 155 | July 2019
Landscape Week | I remind myself: Stop and step from the car when geology looms so large. Windshields diminish the wondrous. Stand at cliff edge and stretch — arms open to the sky, mind open to (more…)
Basalt | Electric City, WA | July 2019
Landscape Week | Life here is built atop basalt. A layer lies just beneath our grocery store’s parking lot. Our dog-walking trail runs between basalt escarpments. Chunks of it accent our home’s landscaping. Roughly 15 million years ago the earth cracked open and released lava flows that hardened into basalt a mile thick. Soil formed over some of it — thus wheat fields on high plateaus — and some of it was (more…)
Shadow | Harrington, WA | July 2019
Landscape Week | Lin Yutang, the Chinese writer and philosopher (d. 1976), often wrapped the profound in the practical. Such as, “When small men begin to cast big shadows, it means the sun is about to set.” This double-edged wisdom describes sundown, of course, but also (more…)
Outcrop | Palisades, WA | July 2019
Landscape Week | I recently watched this basalt outcrop shed pieces of itself. Outside forces shifted mass, loosened foundations, cracked pillars. Big and little chunks tumbled. The minor avalanche was a good reminder that what’s solid today might not be tomorrow. In our own lives, of course, the temptation is to patch the damage, make things right, restore what was. But, geez, that’s (more…)
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