I see my coat after walking home in the rain

{written on spring break}

My jacket is crunchy. It sat up all night, sprawled on a kitchen chair, sobering up after an overindulgence in sky-water. It walked me home from the movie, saw me safely inside the door, and collapsed.

I'm a little surprised; it's such a fastidious little spring coat, all buttons and belts and collar. Nothing sexy about it, and nothing really wild -- unless you count a little gold embroidery on the cuffs as wild (in which case, dear, we need to have a talk about what wild is). But there it is, slumped next to the table, blinking in the sunlight and asking me to walk a little more quietly.

The Palouse

I was born in the desert, where nothing seems subtle (but it is, if you take the time to get acquainted). You can see the weather from miles away – I knew at lunchtime if the evening would be rainy or clear. The mountains are abrupt, like beginning salesmen; they appear in the middle of nowhere, without so much as a hello or a foothill. The sunsets came out of my Crayola box – Fire Orange and Hot Pink and Midnight Purple. Those colors aren't supposed to show up in real life.

But I didn't appreciate it at the time; I pined for Ireland. The idea of green hills, rolling upward and onward into a gently raining sky was entrancing. To a child of the dry sagebrush, lush grass and cool rain seemed like heaven.

I haven't ever been to Ireland, but I've found the land I dreamed of anyway. In a little corner of the northwest, where Idaho bumps into Washington and Oregon, there are rolling hills so green with wheat that it takes my breath away every day. You only have to drive five minutes in any direction to arrive at the edge of town, and another five minutes will take you to where you can only see fields.

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I wrote this this summer, and haven't had time to polish it or put an ending on; still, it's time for something other than sports or politics to make an appearance in this space, so here you are.

Be Careful or Be Roadkill

I have a car.* I say it with the half-reverent half-gleeful tones of Meg Ryan saying "I have mail!" I have a car. I hear not a sound on the city streets, just the beat of my own heart (well, that and the radio).

I went for a drive into the mountains after work tonight, and was astonished again by how amazing this little corner of the world is. I live in a city that, while not large, is too big to make it onto Garrison Keilor's talent show. It's surrounded by rolling wheat fields, and mountains -- real ones, with pine trees and air that feels colder the longer you drive -- are only minutes away. If you need something from a real city, it's only an hour's drive away.

Of course, it's still the kind of place where they name the 7-mile long bit of road "Four Mile Road." But I saw the most beautiful doe on the side of the road, right before she ran across the road and jumped the fence on the other side. And when I came back into town, driving along F street, I saw two racoons. Racoons, people! I only saw one at first, running across the road, and thought it was a cat. But as I slowed down for it, the tail looked odd. So I whipped a u-turn, pulled onto the wrong side of the road, and stared: it really was a 'coon, sitting in the middle of someone's yard! And as I turned around again, I saw it run off after another one towards the creek.


*Only for the summer, and it's not really mine. But I still get to drive it.