God’s Golf Links

Ian left yesterday for Seattle via Homer, AK (ironically enough via Seattle, or at least SeaTac, first), and three days fishing for dogfish off the Kenai Peninsula. Our last hours together were very sweet, perhaps bathed in the glow of our relief that Ian hadn’t, actually, broken his back and become another horseback riding statistic. Friday evening we threw together a dinner of spicy lentil-feta salad and fish balls (balls made from fish and potatoes and pressed flat before being fried so they were actually fish disks; not fish gonads), popped the dogs into the back of the resident pickup (being low on gas in our own vehicle after our previous explorations), and tried to drive up to the end of the Jerome Creek Road, and the top of some mountain, to see a sunset. We didn’t actually pick the correct road, although the road we did pick I recognized from coming down it at dusk on Toby a few years before . . . to this day, I’m not sure how I found the top of that mountain . . . but I feel very lucky that I got off it . . . anyway, we drove up the road we chose until it became clear that it wasn’t being maintained anymore, chose a small clearing, let the dogs out, and ate our weird food. Very quickly, because the mosquitoes found us very quickly.

Back at the ranch, we had a soak in the hot tub. Lest you think a hot tub is too posh and citified for such a rural place, let me describe it. It is, essentially, a big soup pot. The container itself is a large wooden half-barrel, maybe about 4.5 feet across. It is periodically filled with clean water, but it’s not ever chlorinated. And, since it doesn’t actually boil, it’s not ever totally critter-free. But you don’t think about that. It is heated by a little submersible wood-burning stove, which tends to make the top half of the water very hot while the bottom stays very cold, so you stir it—really, it looks like you’re stirring a potion in a big cauldron—with a bit of paddle. Ian had started the fire before our sunset adventure, and so by about 10 pm or so, the water was about 106. Or 107. It was really, really hot, making me feel all the more like dinner. I could see how it might be quite lovely in the winter, when snow blankets the ground and, better yet, can be added to the soup to cool it down just a bit. Still, Ian enjoyed it on his back. It was about 94 the next morning, so Ian had a brief sit then as well.

Around 11 Saturday morning, we gathered up the dogs and set out to tour more of the Palouse, on our way to Spokane and Ian’s 6:30 flight. Our first stops were Harvard, ID, for the mail (and a discussion of how wonderful are the horse owners), and Princeton, ID, for gas (and more discussions of wonderfulness). We felt a bit like city slickers—me in my skirt and fancy Hollywood dark glasses, neither of us in jeans (later, in Spokane, we were to feel like quite the country bumpkins when we let Kit out of the car for a walk around on a horse lead rope—which just looks like a rope—because we hadn’t been able to find a leash for him).

Generally when I come here to Jerome Creek, I don’t ever leave, because I can’t get enough of the horses. But three weeks is a good long time, and so I’ve enjoyed visiting some of the countryside. Such as . . . for years we’ve been hearing about the town of Elberton, population formerly over 1000 but now probably 1/10^th that. It’s near Garfield, WA (where our hosts lived for decades), and you get there by taking a dirt road over a field from another not main road. I had pictured a dusty ghost town with a few chickens and goats scratching about, a place far richer in lore than in scenery. It turns out that Elberton is fairly empty but for the chickens and goats, but it is one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen.

You drive along the gravel road, straight up one of the Palouse’s typical rolling hills (formed after the last ice age when winds blew rich glacial loess around—it’s basically a land of huge dunes), around a small bend of hill, and you’re suddenly suspended over a wide river valley. You curve slowly down to the bottoms opposite sandstone cliffs spotted with trees. Horse and cows are scattered about, a narrow river gurgles along, and a number of houses snuggle together along the few streets. A large brick church stands, windows boarded up, amongst stately oaks, testament to more prosperous times.

The Palouse is full of dying towns, once-snug little centers, empty of all but a tavern or a small market or a feed store. Most are built along rail lines, and the grain silos still seem to be used, but the communities are gone. It’s a shame—the buildings, one- and two-story brick or clapboard structures, still stand, full of dormant character, wishing for a renewal of life. Some have “for sale” signs posted, but on most people haven’t even bothered. At many, no one has even bothered to remove the remnants of the last business, so faded silk flowers and dusty pastry cases blink in bright sunlight from Clara’s defunct Café, or bits of plumbing equipment and wire gleam dully in Olsen’s now closed Grange Supply. These hamlets don’t seem to be dead—they seem to want another chance. But how does a society bring that about? How can we create an economy to support these small towns, a system of commerce to take advantage of the beauty and peace of the settings, the communities waiting patiently for their chance to be vibrant again?

We also drove up to the top of Steptoe Butte (from which comes the term “steptoe” to refer to a landscape characteristic like it—a sizeable mountain-thing, all by itself in the middle of much lower land), Ian cowering in the passenger seat all the way up the narrow, un-guard-railed road, the ground falling away under him so he thought it looked like we were flying, or, rather, about to plunge to our deaths. At the top, we munched on cheese and crackers and drank in the soaring views of the Palouse all around us. The fields, varying velvety greens with the occasional sandtrap of freshly plowed earth, looked like a giant golf course.

And now my cast of characters is reduced by one.