It’s taking a little time, but we’re settling in.
Pat, the 83-year-old who lives down the street, trundles slowly through the park every day, pushing his walker and pausing from time to time to catch his breath. A native of Spokane, he says he first came through here, horseback in 1952… my math says he would have been 12 or 13 years old at the time.
Mules Pat raised now carry tourists down narrow trails to the floor of the Grand Canyon. There’s a horse trailer beside his garage, but he gave up riding when he had a “horse” accident… the horse slipped on pavement, went down and rolled over on Pat.
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A towering grain storage facility was converted to a luxurious home with an elevator to the top… the owner/remodeler, now deceased, was (I’m told) the inventor of spray foam and established a really tall vacation home with money from his patent.
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We’re in a deep valley chock-a-block with apple and cherry orchards lining the hillsides. Atop the ridges, determined farmers plant and harvest wheat in fields cultivated between sprawling clusters of volcanic residue.
Our supervisor, Matt, is the grandson of the first of the cherry growers. “Over that ridge there’s acres and acres of cherries. My granddad was the first. He saw the way farming was going and sold to one of the giant corporations that own a lot of these orchards, got his money while he could.”
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If we survive the coming summer (state record for highest temperature — 115 degrees — is here) it’s going to be a good, enlightening season.
It got that hot in Kennewick while I was there. The heat broke the rear window in my car. Looked like crackle glass. Still I loved Washington and hated going back to the desert air of Tres Piedras. First time I saw the Columbia river I thought it was a great, huge lake.