Vignette from the Palouse in Summer
We barreled along freeways across ancient landscapes, the two of us, strangers unknown to the other, me in my beat up, old, green minivan, she in a little red car. One could tell hers was a new car even tho dusty from long hours on the road. Both of us headed West across Palouse Country toward the Pacific. The Palouse is a mix of rolling hills, wooded groves, and raw, naked canyons carved by ice and water thru prehistoric fire and lava. Now the Palouse seems quiet aside from the sound of blowing wind and heavy farm machinery. Local farmers and ranchers worked off in the distance churning up clouds of dust and chaff as they brought in the last of the wheat harvests.
Howard, a migrant farmworker during my youth in Virginia once told me one of his most cherished life experiences was the magic of working the wheat harvest. He and his fellow laborers would start in the South and work their way towards the Far North across the Great Plains of the American and Canadian Heartlands. They called it, “following the harvest.” Howard considered it a pilgrimage, tho he didn’t use such words. It clearly affected him deeply in a religious sort of way. He did chuckled once as he reminisced following the harvest was about as close as going to church as he was ever gonna get.
Today the hills rolled forth under a hot August sun and all seemed earthbound shades of yellow and brown ringed by evergreen trees. I-90 stretched across the Northern states and out here ran from Spokane in Eastern Washington near the Idaho border all the way into Seattle on the Salish Sea. Along the way the interstate traversed multiple ranges of the Rockies to cross the Palouse. Then the blacktop zooms across the Channeled Scablands of Washington Desert, an arid, rocky morass of steppe, sagebrush, and astonishingly huge canyons carved by immense Ice Age floods, to push on thru the mountains and passes of the heavily forested and still icy Cascade Range. The road dropped down the mountains into the urbanized lowlands along Puget Sound where ships come down thru the Salish Sea from the Pacific Ocean.
She zoomed towards me from behind in her little red car, passed a line of trucks barreling west, and then passed me on my left. Curious, I glanced over as we sped along around 75 to 80 miles an hour. Young White woman. Blonde hair. Aquiline nose. No glasses. Not even sunglasses. Looked straight ahead. Unwavering. Hunched over and gripping the steering wheel. Sun visor down. She kept steady, tho, and, I, uninterested in racing, slowed down a tad to give her space. Her short, little red car shot on by.
Soon enough she crossed over and got ahead of me. Her Minnesota license plates gleamed back at me with the slogan, Land of Ten Thousand Lakes. Actually, I’m unable to remember if those words were stamped on her license plates. Seen so many older license plates my mind’s eye saw ten thousand lakes. Maybe the famous expression was there after all. I don’t know, but she clearly had been on the road awhile. Dust and bug splatter dulled the shine from the car’s red paint. Maybe this was her second or third day out from Minnesota. Wondered if she was born and raised there, or was originally from Washington and now returning, or, heck, for all I know she moved here from South Africa, the Netherlands, or Russia. Or maybe she’s bridging a hot summer of protests erupting in our cities as she books it from one rebellion to another.
Our automated horseless motor carriages zoomed across the Palouse following the freeway as the road dove down long, rolling hills to soar up the next and curve around the occasional steep hillsides. Ranches and farms sprawled out in all directions towards the horizon. Big Soil beneath Big Sky bookended by Big Canyons with Bigger Mountains beyond.
Sun’s hot. Blazingly so. Temperatures were up over 90, 90 degrees. Fahrenheit. Life slows down. Machines act up. Matter seems to fall apart, held together only by gravity. The little red car with Minnesota license plates rolled on down the highway, and my growly old minivan followed. At some point she began to slow down. I sped up and drew alongside for a second, just enough time to glance over one more time after making sure the road’s straight. My curiosity gonna kill me someday like it did all those other curious cats. I wonder, however, what in the world is churning in her mind. What does she think? Feel? About Trump? About Black Lives Matter? About climate change? About democratic socialism versus finance capitalism? About all of those wild, new Star Trek shows? Oh, my, is she afraid of me, an older White guy wearing big granny robocop sunglasses while droning down the highway in a beat-up, old, green minivan?
She wore sunglasses now. Sat straight up with both hands on the wheel, too. Wondered if she was infected with COVID-19. Darn, such a terrible thought. Ah, I sped up and shot on ahead and got in front of her. Kept going.
Forgot about her as those license plates reminded me of other friends from Minnesota. One of my best friends, a former housemate, and briefly, very briefly, too briefly, a former lover, moved out here from the Twin Cities amidst Ten Thousand Lakes. She’s an amazing woman in many regards, jokes about being a socialist anarchist Viking, and serves as godmother to my two oldest kids, my daughters with Gwen. In fact, I was returning to Seattle from Spokane. Had helped my middle child, a Junior in WSU’s medical/nursing program based in Eastern Washington, move back out there for school. Kate fretted all but one clinical practicum had moved online due to the COVID-19 pandemic. I loved helping my kids move, in part, ironically, it’s one of the few ways I get to spend any time with them nowadays. My mind zigzagged back to my friend, her godmother from the Upper Midwest. Many of my friend’s stories are global in reach yet rooted in Minnesota. The summers there are hot and humid, the winters icy and freezing, and spring and fall are both too short. For the longish time she drove an old Volvo four-door sedan. Short, stubby, and wide. Built like a tank from the homeland. The car was originally white, but was so weathered the color had turned to more of a beigey, mustardy, brownish yellow. Reminded me of the giant, old, ivory teeth jutting from the open maws of leviathan cyclops.
My mind churns. Memories rise and fall with the ebb and flow of old emotions. Life stuff: Kids growing up. Two in college and one in grad school. Growing ever further apart from dear ex-wives. Sad all of my close male friends keep moving further and further away. Sad and mad for my country and our planet. In awe of my children and fretting over them, too. Missing my new lover and contemplating being in a new sexualoving romantic monogamous relationship with an extraordinary woman but nearly 3,000 miles away in my native Virginia. Experiencing being torn raw between my desire to relocate to Virginia and wanting to stay in Washington, my home for nearly 30 years. Worrying over the finances of all these things when I know darn well worrying doesn’t solve anything. Plus listening to the Divine amid the rumble and wind of crossing Palouse Country on my way back to Seattle from Spokane. So, God, what do I do? What steps do I take next? And the roar of rubber rolling over asphalt inspires me to take out my hearing aids to feel the wind in my ears and the silence in my brain.
Next thing I knew the little red car had drawn up beside me in the passing lane. Again! …ZOOOOOMmmmmmn…the blonde at the wheel, still wearing shades, rocketed over the hills towards Seattle and vanished into the sun. I smiled with the joy of high-lonesome torment and said goodbye to the little red car from Minnesota as Tuesday the 4th of August 2020 continued to pass into our past. Forever.
Aye, red car from Minnesota. May you and your driver arrive safely whatever and wherever your destination. Stay safe!
William Dudley Bass
Tuesday 4 August 2020
Sunday 30 August 2020
Seattle, Washington
USA
Cascadia
Sol
Copyright © 2020 by William Dudley Bass. All Rights Reserved by the Author & his Descendants until we Humans establish Wise Stewardship over and for our Earth and Solarian Commons. Thank you.