The big city of Spokane disappears rapidly once you get off
division street. The four lane divided highway turns to two and the remains of
the great north woods begin to line the sides of the road.
The towns of Dear Park and Loon Lake in our rear view mirrors
as we head north to Chewelah, a mill town along the road.
At Colville we start to imagine the roar of the falls and, the clear water of
the mighty Columbia swirling around in the massive rock Kettles
Memorial To A Fallen Dancer
At the Kettle Falls visitor center we find one of the volunteers,
a salty senior woman outside the center sitting on a bench. She greets us and I
notice that she is wearing one shoe, and one pink slipper. She is smoking a
Camel, and as she scratches her forehead, her blond wig shifts to one side. (If
this sounds like you it is)
We inquire aboot the falls, and she takes a long drag on her
camel, she holds that smoke in her, and as she exhales the toxins toward
us she calls us puppies. I have lived here 72 years she says, and I have only
seen the falls twice, when the water of Lake Roosevelt dropped enough so we
could see them…
The nice part aboot having no expectations is you are never disappointed,
and the other volunteer in the visitors center tells up to drive to the
bridge and turn down the dirt road that will take us to a spot where if the
water was low enough we could see the falls…
The groves in this rock were made by the indigenous people
using it to sharpen the spears they used to harvest the Salmon that used to
travel all the way up the Columbia before the Bonneville, and Coulee dams were
constructed and major cities grew along the banks of the Columbia.
Special note to Alaskans regressive republicans with plans
to build pebble mine and the Susitna dam project, once salmon streams are
destroyed all that is left is rocks…
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