A wooden fencepost, its yellow paint faded with time, points from Wilridge Vineyard down the winery trail into Cowiche Canyon. On this snow-hushed morning, our boots make the only sound, crunching in the snow as we descend through the shrub steppe toward the creek that cut this canyon from the landscape long ago. Clumps of spiky grass protrude from the snow like spines on a porcupine, and in the distance, a lone magpie settles atop a sagebrush. Where the rimrock is too steep for vegetation, bare basalt descends in hexagonal columns to the canyon floor.
This is a land born of lava, and its nutrient-rich volcanic soil, along with the arid climate of the Cascades’ rain shadow and the life-giving power of the rivers and creeks that crisscross the state, provides Eastern Washington with an abundance of commercial crops and native vegetation in a land that might otherwise be barren desert. Flora brings fauna, and though much of it sleeps in winter—the bats hibernate, the rattlesnakes curl up in caves or around the furnaces of local basements—the lucky hiker might find elk, mule deer, or bighorn sheep; and the unlucky hiker might be found by a very lucky mountain lion. Ah, the beauty of nature.
Leave a Reply