WW: Sky on the Hanford Reach

(Here's a photo from my outbacking excursion to Spokane last summer, taken on the northwest limit of the Pasco Basin, just a few hundred yards short of the Priest Rapids of the Columbia River. This view is west to Umtanum Ridge. [Open the link in a new tab to see it bigger.]

I never get used to those electric Gold Side skies. People who live there walk around under them like nothing's going on, oblivious to the Greensider ratcheting off shots of nothing in particular above them.

But I recommend you avoid driving these backroads – lowest elevation in the state – in July if you have the shadow of a choice. Especially if your truck has no air conditioning. A thermos of heavily-iced tea was all that stood between me and posterity.)

WW: Rollin' on

(The mighty Columbia looks for the sea, courtesy of my man
Dannon and his Thundering Cell Phone of Justice.)

Thanksgiving Prayer

                                   From too much hope of living,
                                        From hope and fear set free,
                                   We thank with brief thanksgiving
                                        Whatever gods may be
                                   That no life lives forever;
                                   That dead men rise up never;
                                   That even the weariest river
                                        Winds somewhere safe to sea.

                                                              Algernon Charles Swinburne



(Photo of a work-weary Columbia shuffling past the Astoria bridge to the Pacific, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons, Gene Daniels, and the US Environmental Protection Agency.)

WW: Paradise in the desert

(Lush green islands in the midst of hundreds of miles of baking sagelands. As the irrigated ground in the distance attests, water is the difference between everything and nothing in this country.)