Most of the friends I hike with these days were colleagues during the years I worked as a photographer at the morning newspaper in Seattle. My hiking partners were reporters and editors who not only know a lot about the politics, economy, and culture of Washington and the Pacific Northwest, my friends care about these things as well.
My friends are aware, for example, that the agricultural lifeblood of farmers and ranchers in Central and Eastern Washington is WATER. You can’t grow apples or grapes or hops in the summer in that sunny and dry region without irrigation. And irrigation in summer is largely dependent on one thing: Snow in our mountains in winter.
As we hike, my friends and I are not seeing nearly the amount of snow we should be at this time of year, and this worries us. Even our most enjoyable days out hiking and peak-viewing are tempered by the concern we have that, at this point at least, there isn’t enough snow to melt during the spring to fill reservoirs that provide water for agricultural irrigation.
We had good snow in our mountains in late fall, but we've had very little since then. The ski areas opened, then closed. Ice and snow along creeks is already melting. The trees in the mountains are not wearing their coats of winter white. On one recent hike, I made a number of pictures that might look nice: Snowmelt, rushing in Eightmile Creek; a full moon rising in a cloudless sky. Unfortunately, melting snow and ice, bare trees, and clear, not-stormy skies are not what we need here.
While folks in the eastern half of the country are suffering this week with too much cold and snow, we here in the Pacific Northwest would love to have more of the white stuff.
