As it approaches two years since I finished my two-year stay in central Washington, some of the nuances of my love for the area are becoming clear. Here are some of them, in draft format...
The driving force in my life is emotion. I do things in search of positive emotion, and I avoid negative emotion when I can help it. People are driven by all kinds of things: money, family responsibilities, career goals, love, duty, retirement, and on and on. It could be said I'm driven by love, but more specifically, I'm driven by emotions...of which love inspires many. When I think of the best times in life, I think first of what I was feeling at the time. Only then do I recall who I was with, where I was, what I was doing, etc. Now that I've shared that about myself, let me share one more thing: I've been going through dark days in my life since before I moved to central Washington, and continuing to this day.
The reason I love the central washington desert and many of the specific spots that I cherish....is because they embody in geography what I was (and still do sometimes) feeling at the time in my heart. The emotions of desolation, lonliness, unrealized potential, neglect, all are present in some of these special places. The coulees and exposed rock structures & stratification lends to the feeling of being in a place of ancient history. Half-buried sections of basalt and the synclines of the coulee walls appear almost like ruins of ancient temples. Also everything is baked by the sun...
