The Palouse

The Palouse refers to the region where my little town of Dayton, WA is located. This area is incredibly beautiful, and bountiful as well. It is a region rich in agriculture. Wheat, barley, lentils, and grapes cover the vast rolling hillsides. The region was formed by the Ice Age floods from Glacial Lake Missoula. The flood carved out the scab lands of Eastern Washington as well as the Columbia River Gorge. And it left huge deposits of soil that have now become the richest farming land in the world. Standing on high vantage points you can see the ripples the massive flood created as it moved through over 15,000 years ago. It shaped this land, this place called The Palouse.

In Spring, the lushness and hopefulness of new crops is displayed in colors of vivid greens that splash across the cultivated fields. And where the cultivation by man ends and nature’s cultivation begins, the colors of blooming wildflowers pop up like paint can explosions across the landscape. There are rivers all throughout The Palouse:  The Snake, The Touchet, The Tucannon,  the Palouse River, are just a few. The Snake River is a river disciplined by man. Water levels and boat traffic are controlled with a series of 15 dams and locks that create reservoirs for both agricultural and recreational use. The smaller rivers are controlled by nature and rise and roar based on the  snow fall from the mountains then fall to a quiet murmur as the days grow hotter.

As summer comes along the colors shift. The wheat is still green but now is tall and the wind blows across it creating waves not yet amber. The spikelets at the tip of each blade of wheat are beginning to change to the gold they will become and there is quietness in the fields as the farmers wait and watch and wait. Summer is hot and the wind blows.. And it is during the windy days that one would notice a second crop growing from the hilltops of the wheat fields: Windmills. They stand like three-winged sentries on the wall just waiting for the gusts to come. When the wind rises the whoosh, whoosh, whoosh of their massive wings slice through the otherwise stillness of The Palouse.

We love summer here. It is when the rivers sing Jerry from our home and he follows their song day in and day out. He has fished these rivers his whole life. Jerry was born and raised in Walla Walla, which is about 30 miles west of Dayton. He grew up camping, hiking, and fishing along these rivers and his DNA is as much a part of that water as any fish. Watching Jerry fly fish is something beautiful to behold. When we fish together I often just set my pole and my butt on the ground and watch him. He can dead eye every cast of his fly rod. If it were a gun he would be a sniper. He can pick a sweet spot in any swirl of the river and land his fly there and 9 times out of 10 get a hit. He is a catch and release man. We rarely keep what we catch, instead sending them back to their home wondering what they just ate and why it didn’t eat them.
We moved to Dayton for many reasons but being close to the rivers that Jerry loves, being near his familiar stomping grounds, is important in this season of his life. He isn’t a young man anymore and more then anything I want him him to spend his last years standing in the waters of his youth with a pole in his hand, a cigar hanging clamped between his teeth, and his eyes looking for that next rise of a trout. He is my old salmon swimming back up stream after many years in a big ocean. And I swim beside him.