There’s a lot of easy beauty to be found in Washington state. I can pack my hiking boots and my cameras and by driving 40 minutes I can walk in the spectacular and wild back-country of the Olympic Mountains. A drive of less than two hours will put me in the Cascades, and a few hours more than that could take me to the Blue Mountains near Walla Walla (a place so nice they named it twice, as the saying goes.)
This state’s mountain ranges, with summits reaching into the clouds, with wild rivers, waterfalls and alpine meadows that are veritable flower gardens...well, the beauty to be found here is obvious.
A more surprising landscape of the place where I live -- and, for some folks, I think an acquired taste when it comes to outdoor aesthetics -- is the desert country of Central- and Eastern-Washington. Say the words “America’s Pacific Northwest” to most outsiders and they’ll envision tall evergreens and a country of rain, rain and more rain; but few individuals will conjure up images of sagebrush and tumbleweed and country so dry it’s a happy hunting ground for rattlesnakes.
But there is desert to be found here -- in the rain shadow east of the Cascades -- and, in the 30-plus years I have lived here, that dry country has grown on me. Springtime, particularly, seems to put me in a desert frame of mind (spring also happens to be a time when the snakes are still in hibernation, which I view as a Reason To Go Hike The Desert Now.)
A friend and I hiked the Yakima River Canyon a couple of weeks ago. We enjoyed a day of wide open country, big vistas, and not one snake. As I crawled around on the ground to photograph a wildflower, the absence of snakes was absolutely fine by me.
