That smell of sage, oh how it pulls me to a sense of place. I am not sure why I didn't find it as vibrant as when I was in the Desert SW, but here in the Coulees just off of the Columbia River it is effervescent. I collect a few handfuls smelling them against my skin and then shove more into my pockets. I have turned to full on collection mode, and will have a 10 Liter Stuff Sack full by the end of the trip. It takes me back to a moment before I started this last decade of my life, when I regularly hiked in this landscape. Coming out to Frenchman's Coulee to climb the bolted routes then, paddling along the shorelines between Vantage and Wenatchee. I remember coming out to concerts at the Gorge Amphitheater. Making random road trips like the one after the 2016 Election, to escape and grieve in this open landscape. Now it pulls me back again, reminding me of the open desert landscape that I just left, and the woman that I lost to it. To look out after miles and miles of openness, ones heart is set bear before the sun, wind and rain. It is there that is begins to find wonder again. This is a landscape that can heal.
I headed out with two friends, and their sons. It was a small backpack, only 3 miles in to camp, but once there we all set to wonder about the lakes, coulees and open grasslands with curiosity in our hearts and keen eyes. To scramble up the columnar basalt towers and over look both Ancient and Dusty Lakes, feeling the wind almost pass through you as the PNW weather moved across the mountains and onto the Steppe of Central Washington. This reminds me almost as if this place is fresh to eyes, yet all around are tell tale signs of modern and past presence of hunters and travelers. I listen to the metallic tink of the rocks below my feet. The presence of iron in this basalt is a sharp contrast to years of walking on Sandstone and Limestone of the Colorado Plateau. Yet the openness to the sky is there, and as the clouds open up, a radiant warmth seems to abound and reach into the coldness that has enclosed me lately. And yet always the smell of sage in the air, carried as the winds lash the fields and pull it up to the heights which I sit perched. Inviting as any, a smell that pulls me home.
In the evening, collected in a camp surrounded by willows, we share what we found on our walks. To listen to the two boys talk about frogs they tried to catch, or old caves they explored brings that youthful first view into my mind. An openness to explore and learn, rather then cling on to past experience. We sit making food together, making me realize it has been along time since I shared a meal with others. The stars and the planets come out, and we begin to trace out the arc of the Milky Way and the Ecliptic orbit of the planets chasing the setting sun. Slowly that sense of the beginners minds starts to seep in, that openness to experiencing the moment. watching two fathers foster it in their sons makes me understand and regret that such moments have passed me by. Yet to be present, gives me the gift of the moment.
Dawn rises and I set upon the task of making a full backcountry breakfast of bacon, eggs and hash. It seems to rise the spirits and we all enjoy these moments. Soon we head off in our own direction to make one last exploration. Myself I head to a waterfall, scrambling along loose talus fields to get there. Once below the Falls, I sit there just to listen letting the sound and the vibration soak in. I do not need to get into the water to bath in its energy. For when any element transitions or moves through another, it gains and gives. Water through Air here, reverberates like a drum in me as I sit below its course. This is the cleansing that I seemed to have needed this day. It is an invitation to explore places that I once roamed through in a new light...
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