Well, we finally did it.
My friends and I have been talking about it for weeks, often the conversation taking place under circumstances like this: We'd be driving home from an adventure in the snowy high country after spending a day in an amazingly beautiful alpine landscape. Our brains were bathed in the happy-juice endorphins created by a hike well-done, and we were high on camaraderie.
“We should go over toward Yakima and do a hike in the desert,” one of us would say. “We can find trails over there that should be snow-free, and the wild flowers will be out.
“It’d be nice to be able to hike without having to wear snowshoes.
“And it’s too early for snakes.”
If my friends and I -- macho and fearless all -- needed to be convinced that it was a good time of year for our group to head to the desert, well, the snakes-are-still-sleeping argument was all that needed to be made. In a month or two it’ll be getting toasty warm over in Central Washington. Rattlesnakes will come out of hibernation and they’ll rear their ugly, venomous heads and rattle their nasty, threatening tails.
“We should head over there soon,” we said. And this week we went.
We chose the Skyline Trail that ascends the rim of the canyon cut into the earth by the Yakima River. We hiked on a mild, Spring day, breathing in the sweet smell of desert sage. We were serenaded by meadow larks, and -- I am happy to report -- we encountered not one rattlesnake.
“This is country that, for some, could take some getting-used-to,” I thought to myself as we walked, because the desert is a much different world than the picture-postcard places where my friends and I usually ramble in the Cascade Mountains. The Spring weather and seasonal colors we enjoyed will be short-lived in the desert. It will be hot and dry in short order. I'll visit and enjoy the desert then too, but it will surely be different.
The day we were there, the desert was the perfect hiking environment for a group of friends who wanted a break from the snows of the high country... a day made all the better because we could wander absent-mindedly, without the bring-us-back-to-earth, rattling intrusions of Brother Snake.
