On the sill behind my desk is the heaviest of them: a 20-pound lump of palagonite from the Deep Creek ravine west of Spokane. It is a dense, crystalized and discolored chunk of basalt—the result of the Grande Ronde lava flow interacting with water some 16 million years ago. The palagonite ranges in color from the glassy black of obsidian to a rough, yellowish-orange crust. Continue reading Songs from the Range
The first time I hiked into Northrup Canyon I was purposefully off course. It was the day after an old friend’s funeral on Vashon Island, and the lure of solitude was much stronger than the pull of whatever else was piling up alongside the unopened mail back home.
Under those circumstances, the detour onto the primitive road leading to a hanging gorge east of Banks Lake was a near-perfect choice. Within a few minutes I was walking into a majestic rip in the earth.
We’d probably all know more about this spectacular ravine if it weren’t so close (3 miles) to another epic eastern Washington landmark, Steamboat Rock. Steamboat is a massive anvil that rises 800 feet above the surface of the water in upper Grand Coulee. You can’t miss it. Continue reading Catastrophic Elegance
My father and I met when he was barely 24. It was 1957 and he’d just returned from active duty in Korea.
The last leg of his long trip was a flight that no longer exists, from Moses Lake to Pasco. The plane was already fully booked but, the way he tells the story, he pled with the gate agent and she found a way to squeeze him aboard. Within an hour or so, he arrived at the Hartman home in east Pasco, much to the surprise of my mother, my sister, and my mother’s sister. It is a staple of our family story that dad’s surprise worked better than he expected, and some merry bedlam ensued, with screams and laughter. Of course, I have no recollection of this. Continue reading A Eulogy for my Father
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