You Can't Go Back - Pullman

Day 43

October 23, 2010

Morning tea, toast and oatmeal.  Off to yoga with John and Tina.  Being part of a full yoga class and working through the poses that stretch and strengthen remind me that my traveling routine hasn’t really been challenging me very much.  After yoga we say our good byes and head to Pullman along the back road.

Rural Washington only varies slightly from all the other rural towns we’ve seen.  A few lone barns succumbing to gravity, big barns, small barns, horse barns, farm houses and equipment in fields all look familiar.  Small towns come and go.  The line between farm and natural landscape is easily drawn.  Where farm lines stop desert scrub begins.  The fields here are not flat like those left behind, but roll across the curve of the earth in swelling mounds and steep slopes.  Some of the fields are freshly plowed dark open hills, others are freshly cut stubble and still others show the fresh hint of velvety green sprouting winter crops. This is land that grows crops without the benefit of irrigation.

We’re in the Palouse, home the WSU Cougars and the place where we first met.  We envisioned a sunny eastern Washington afternoon stroll across the campus with dry leaves crunching beneath our feet.  It’s raining.

We pull into town past the old Rosauer’s grocery.  It’s now a Barnes & Nobles that also serves as a Bookie.  We’re headed to the original Bookie located across from my old dorm, McCroskey Hall.  This is the place where we bought our textbooks, Cougar wear and other minor necessities of campus living.  We find a parking spot next to the Bookie at a building that is now an Interfaith Center.  Two young men, perhaps from India park in front of us and feed the meter.  The Bookie is just a few steps behind us.  Remarkably quiet for a Saturday, it’s closed.  All the business has been re-routed to the Barnes & Noble.  So we head to the CUB to sit in the old Cougar Union Building.  Another Barnes & Noble, Subway & Starbucks greet us.  We browse the sweatshirts, but something seems all wrong to be in a Barnes & Noble store for our Cougar wear.  Maybe we’ll go to the old creamery and get some Cougar Gold cheese and have some of creamery fresh ice cream.  We know the original location has been moved and we ask directions.  “The only weekends they’re open for is home games.” we’re told.  It just doesn’t fit.  I’ve picked out a new sweatshirt and a few gifts and we head to the register.  One station is just closing and the clerk asks one of the people stocking candy if they can wait on us.  A young, pony-tailed co-ed sighs and rolls her eyes and asks her male counterpart if he can help.  He hesistates to think a minute.  Another young man appears from around the aisle and pleasantly rings us up. 

We’re a bit disappointed.  It’s been a long time since we’ve walked the campus and there have been a lot of changes.  There is no activity on campus.  It’s drizzling rain and the air is cold.  The students are huddled up somewhere behind closed doors and pulled curtains recovering from Friday night or just enjoying a quiet Saturday morning.  We walk the long way back to the car and take pictures for old time’s sake. 

One thing that hasn’t changed is that the campus rolls a bit up hill and down on a smaller scale than the surrounding farm land.  There are steps everywhere.  I feel a little burn in the legs and a shortness of breath.  I tell Jack, “I use to scamper up and down these hills without a second thought 20, oops 30, years ago.”  It’s funny.  I graduated from WSU in1971.  It’s been almost 40 years ago. 

We pull out of town and Cougar country farms gradually recede along the long straight stretch of Highway 26.  Long lines of pivoting irrigation stations on wheels start to appear in the fields.  Orchards, some still bearing apples now crop up.  This is a land that grows crops using water from wells and the Columbian Basin Irrigation Project.  Breaks between farms are classic eastern Washington desert.  Sage brush and rabbit brush grow in clumps and sprouts between native bunch grass and the invasive cheat grass that is trying to take over.  We are on the edge of the Hanford Nuclear Area. 

We could make it home tonight, but it would be dark traveling for several hours and we’d arrive late.  It doesn’t seem right to end this way.  Conveniently located at the end of the day are Jack’s Aunt Virginia, Uncle Jim, and his cousin Bob. We call and invite ourselves to stay the night.  It’ll still be late and Jack wants to eat at a Mexican (again) restaurant in Othello, so we tell them we’ll have eaten.  We pass through Othello, not quite hungry and the Mexican restaurant is out of business.  We call Swopes and suggest we bring in some bacon and eggs and make ourselves dinner when we arrive.  There’s been a big misunderstanding and Virginia is cooking a roast and corn thinking we’re coming to dinner!  Halleluiah!  Another home cooked dinner with family awaits us.