Gold Side Gothic

These Okanogan Forest Service roads were punctuated by the weathered husks of farmhouses, glass and paint long departed, their Norman Rockwell profiles inclining in iron sickness.

But not rot; that wants rain, and the only moisture that ever flowed freely in this country was the blood, sweat, piss, and tears of homesteaders.

When even that ran out, families surrendered.

Standing by those vacant windows, you can feel the handshake, smell the wash, taste the bacon, and in the keening of a wind-blown hinge, touch a sorrow full as deep as it was four generations ago.

(Adapted from Rough Around the Edges: A Journey Around Washington's Borderlands, copyright RK Henderson. Photo of Douglas County derelict courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and a generous photographer.)