De-Escalator Extraordinaire
Few places in Walla Walla acquire large numbers of people. I should clarify that. Few places in Walla Walla acquire large numbers of people on a frequent basis. There’s the annual rodeo each Labor Day Weekend, and fans drive in from all around for that, but that’s certainly not what I would call frequent. The weekly sale on Tuesdays at the Bi-Mart, on the other hand, are frequent, but not packed with crowds. I know, I’ve been there, okay? Of course some of the churches have the biggest parking lots in the city, so I presume that they draw in a lot of bodies, or perhaps they overestimate their appeal. Having not gone to Sunday services since moving here, I couldn’t say which is closer to reality. Read More…
I pride myself on cooking well, and across cuisines, ingredients, and meals of the day. If someone can’t eat a certain kind of food—close friends know I never eat raw tomatoes—I enjoy coming up with substitutes, different recipes, and so on. Cooking to me represents an ever-shifting journey that feels at times like archaeology. There is literally nothing I can come up with in the kitchen that hasn’t been done by someone else before me, so I at least attempt to hold that history sacred when I’m fixing up a dish.
Truth be told, Susanne and I were looking for more than writing sanctuary in our temporary move to Seattle last fall. We were also hoping to make progress on the baby front. And by “progress,” I mean that we’d crossed our fingers that with the help of some expert fertility staff, we would conceive.
I think we’ve established that in the big scheme of things, Walla Walla is a pretty small town. It’s bigger than Ember, Wyoming, yes, but I’m sure 99.9 percent of the United States has more than 50 people in its city limits. Overall, the few tens of thousands of folks who call Wallyworld home understand that it’s a bit isolated, a bit small, and a bit lacking in big city sophistication.
Riddle: what do you get when you combine an overtired klutz, an avid reader of 40 years, and a person’s observation that a particular bookshelf looks more than a mite unsteady on its feet?
In all of the traveling I’ve done since moving to the Pacific Northwest—a journey through Glacier National Park, driving through the Rockies and Bighorn National Forest more than once, exploring Yellowstone, walking through the unbelievably tall mountains in Alaska—I have not seen a single moose. I’ve even driven up next to a lumbering bison, which by the way, didn’t smell all that good, but which was still amazing. I’ve stood 50 yards away from a brown bear lolling around on the soft carpet of moss. Black bears make my list of eyewitnessed nature, too, as I’ve taken in a newly independent cub feasting on fresh salmon in a glacier-fed river as close to the Arctic Circle as I’ve ever come. Yes, I really want to explore the Yukon now. 
Long-time readers of this blog will recall that our last abode in Walla Walla did not reach the pinnacle of success as family shelters go. It did make my Top Two in House Disasters, displaced from the top spot only by the 1-bedroom apartment in Syracuse, New York, in which a 6-by-8-foot section of plaster ceiling came crashing down after a few weeks of increasingly bowing out from a rotten joist. That debacle will be tough to beat, and the “Liar House”—so named because it looked cute on the outside but was awful inside—just sucked too much to work hard enough to be king of the ignoble hill. 
As part of our ongoing welcome back from friends, a buddy of ours texted late last week with an invitation to go to the Jim German bar in Waitsburg, about 20 minutes east of Walla Walla. 
That it only took several hours of packing up and 45 minutes to load a moving truck with our belongings belied the difficulty we’d have with this move after achieving those two goals. Ahead of us was the Snoqualmie Pass, the 3,022 “low point” in the midst of the Cascade Mountains. This range is the dividing point between the volcanic rain forest on the west side, and the dry scrubland leeward. I like to point, snickering, at the evergreen trees emblazoned onto all of Washington State’s license plates, because while they account for 95 percent of the state’s self marketing, they only refer to about a third of its land mass. From late October to mid-June the Pass is touch and go—perhaps it will be clear, or in the midst of a white-out blizzard, or anywhere in between. We were careful to check the weather conditions before heading out, but as I was dragging thousands of pounds in a 16-foot rental truck, I had some trepidation about me. 
Trans/plant/portation 