Wild Spokane

   

    I had a bad case of cabin fever. For days Spokane had been cloaked in a dense and heavy winter fog and I’d been buried in the details of a frustrating project that at times seemed as though it would never be wrapped up. I’d been stuck in the house for too long, with only short walks to break the monotony and I needed some kind of distraction. 

    Finally, fed up, I closed my computer, put on my raincoat and boots and clipped the leash to my puppy’s soft harness. We walked out of the front door and by habit turned at the corner in the direction of the park. Mantito Park, this 100-year-old place of gardens and meadows and meandering paths, is where I go when I need respite.  
      
    The fog had deepened with the twilight, turning into a soft rain that fell on my umbrella and settled onto the puppy’s thick curly coat like a jeweled net of glittering raindrops.    

    The windows of the houses we passed on our way glowed and I could see people moving in rooms as they settled in for the evening. They looked like characters in a silent play.

    The dense shrubbery around the pathway of the entrance to the formal garden was blurred by the mist, giving the place a mysterious feel. At that moment I happened to glance up into the low branches of one of the tall trees that line the property and looked right into the wide unblinking eyes of a barred owl as he sat watching me. I stopped in my tracks and for a moment we stared at one another. Then, as if to dismiss me and my silly dog, he turned away and gazed off into the distance.

    He was there watching for a meal and I was just ambling with no particular purpose. His mind was on mouse or rabbit for dinner, prey I’d probably sent scurrying away as I approached. Mine was on work deadlines and family matters and a million other things. And yet, for a moment, our worlds had intersected. 

    Manito Park, for all its groomed and carefully tended elegance, is still— at heart—a wild place. I often see owls and hawks and eagles sweeping over and around the park, their raptor eyes trained on the grassy meadows, scanning for prey. Sometimes I stumble onto a pile of torn feathers and stained snow giving evidence of a meal. I see the tracks of raccoons and the lingering scent of foraging skunks and a large flock of wild turkeys roams the place, parading across neighborhood streets and drawing onlookers as they stroll. 

    In the past there have been wilder visitors, like bears or mountain lions, and as if to prove the point, as I followed the path I noticed what I assumed was an off-leash dog—a particular pet peeve—standing beside one of the shadowy trees at the edge of the meadow. The man and woman on the path ahead of me walked right past the large leggy creature without seeing it but I pulled up, not wanting to encounter a strange animal, especially with a young puppy just learning to navigate the world on a leash. 

    I turned to take another route home and was almost there before it dawned on me that what I’d seen wasn’t a dog at all. Something that big, with legs like that, had to have been a moose. They still wander the park from time to time and sightings are not all that unusual.

    Still thinking about the owl and the moose, noticing the gauzy moon just rising in the east, I walked back to my own house--its windows bright and warm in the chilly gloom--and the puppy and I stepped in out of the cold and damp. We’d had our walk, our exercise, and our brief taste of the wild, and it was enough. The puppy went back to his basket and I went back to my work. And the moon continued its slow climb behind the curtain of the thick wet sky.
       

Spokane in Soft Focus

The fog comes in
on little cat feet

It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.

    That short poem, Carl Sandburg’s classic American haiku, is the first poetry I remember learning. I must have been in the 2nd or 3rd grade, in the 1960s when rote learning was still part of the general curriculum. Our teacher wrote it across the flat black surface of the blackboard in her perfect looping script. From our desks, we read it out of the books we held in our hands and repeated it in unison, a chorus of high lilting, singsong, voices. 

    The imagery of Sandburg’s “Fog” is elemental and perfectly captures the silent, deliberate movement of fog as it takes over the landscape. That short poem has come to mind numerous times this winter, what has seemed to be an especially foggy winter in Spokane. 

    Each morning I get out of bed before light and make my way downstairs. I take my first cup of coffee and my laptop to my favorite chair next to the fireplace in the living room. The chair faces the big front window and as I write I am able to watch as the day comes to life. 

    Most mornings this winter the light has come on soft and white, shrouded in the heavy mist that sinks from the sky to meet the mist that rises from the river at the bottom of the “hill.” 

    The fog steals through the tall Ponderosa pine trees, wrapping my view in gauze, freezing as it falls onto bare branches, forming a slick sheen on the city’s and streets leaving Spokane in soft focus. Ordinary, familiar, streets and buildings become mysterious as they disappear into or loom out of the fog. Even the birds in the Hawthorn tree in front of my window are filtered, like performers on stage behind a scrim. 

    This time of year we expect snow. We expect to look out the window in January and see fat flakes drifting down and collecting. We expect to shovel the walks and driveway and curse the berms left behind by the city’s plows. But so far, with only a few exceptions, the real snow has stayed away leaving us only the tough grey crust of old snowfall. And winter has replaced it with heavy fog that doesn’t burn off until late in the day, if it burns off at all. Some days the day ends as it began, draped in moisture.

    Winter will come, I’m sure. It always does. The sky will clear and if we’re lucky it will freeze and deliver the snow that piles up on the mountains and then melts into rushing rivers and refills the aquifer that quenches the thirst of a a dry land.

    And then, like a cat that comes and goes as it pleases, the fog will lift on graceful silent haunches and move silently on.   

Cheryl-Anne Millsap’s audio essays can be heard on Spokane Public Radio and on public radio stations across the country. She is the author of ‘Home Planet: A Life in Four Seasons’ and can be reached at catmillsap@gmail.com
   

Sunset Beach: Fish Creek, Wisconsin

(Photo by Cheryl-Anne Millsap)


While touring Wisconsin's Door Peninsula, I spent some time exploring the little resort town of Fish Creek. I experienced my first traditional Door County Fish Boil at the White Gull Inn and the next day I walked around shopping and sightseeing.

Late in the afternoon, I followed the main street down to Sunset Beach Park. Facing directly west, the beach is the perfect place to watch the sun go down. Even on a cold February day people gathered to watch the show. And it was some show.

Watching the sunset and the way it affected the people around me, it occurred to me that for all our busyness, our dependence on technology and the carelessness with which so many of us treat the world around us, we are still almost powerless to resist stopping to gaze up at a big full moon or an exquisite sunset.

I found this reassuring. A sign that we are still connected to nature whether or not we recognize the fact.

That beautiful sunset over Green Bay was the subject of my Spokesman-Review Home Planet column. Read The Pull of the Moon and the Call of the Sun

You can listen to the audio essay as it aired on Spokane Public Radio here.

Snow and Solitude

(Photo by Cheryl-Anne Millsap)

After teasing us for weeks, winter finally swept in and across Washington State, carpeting Seattle before crossing the Cascades to settle on Spokane.

As I shoveled the driveway and sidewalks, clearing away the day's accumulation, I was reminded of the gifts of silence and solitude that sometimes fall with snow.

You can read my Spokesman-Review column here: The Solitude of Snow

Dark December

(Photo by Cheryl-Anne Millsap)

Whether we're away, navigating unfamiliar streets in an unfamiliar city, or just on our way home from the grocery store, the darkness of an early winter evening can disorient us. Especially in Dark December.

Read my essay here.

Frohes Fest at Koblenz: Today's Travel Photo #TTP@CAMera

(Photo by Cheryl-Anne Millsap)

Sitting at the German Corner, the point where the Mosel and Rhine rivers meet, the ciy of Koblenz hold court. Like most German towns, Koblenz is now holding a Christmas Market each year during Advent.

Glacier National Park: Going to the Sun Road in Winter

Special to Spokesman-Review "Pinch"
By Cheryl-Anne Millsap
Feb. 21, 2010


We drove into the west entrance of Glacier National Park late in the clear February morning and our tires crunched into the frozen crust of last week’s snowfall. The cold, sweet, air bit at our faces as we opened the back of the car and unloaded our gear.

Strapping snowshoes on our feet, we put on gloves and hats and slipping our hands into the straps of our poles, we set out. Our lunch of hearty sandwiches on homemade bread, each as thick as a doorstop, was stowed and ready for a picnic along the way.

The wide flat trail we followed was much more than a path meant for meandering. In the summer, which comes late to the northwest, the 60-mile Going to the Sun road in Glacier National Park is a busy throughway, carrying hundreds of thousands of tourists from one side of the 1.2 million acre park to the other. But in winter, which comes early, the road closes and becomes a place to play. The only human sounds are the scraping of snowshoes or the gliding sound of cross-country skis. Occasionally a laugh slices into the solitude.


Glacier is magnificent in summer, grand in the fall, but the 100-year-old park comes into its own in the deepest part of winter. Heavy snow settles onto the bowed branches of evergreen trees and creates soft white sculptures, like cotton candy towers and castles, and drifts over fallen logs in the forest. Animal tracks; moose, mink, wolf and rabbit criss-cross the trails. The razored edges of the mountains jut above the horizon, piercing the wreath of clouds that hang over the valley and touch their own reflection in the mirrored surface of Lake MCDonald. It is impossible to be here - to be in such a wild and majestic place - and not be moved by the power of nature.

We walked on, following the curve, arms swinging, poles stabbing into the snow. The wintery sun was by now hidden somewhere high overhead. A solitary peak, framed by the trees on either side of the road, loomed in the distance.

When it was time to eat, we moved off the trail and planted our poles in the snow to hold our caps and gloves. Out of the daypack came the sandwiches, the cold salads and fruit. We ate quietly, speaking now and then, turning to watch others moving along the snowy road, or to stare deeper into the forest. Our appetites were sharpened by the cold air and exercise. And the water tasted so good.

To be in such a wild and wonderful place, to feel the sting of the frozen air with each breath, savoring every bite of a simple meal, was a splendid feast. And, as we put back on our hats and gloves, picked up the poles and started back the way we had come, we were truly well fed.
Body and soul.


You can hear the audio essay of this piece at Public Radio Exchange.

Cheryl-Anne Millsap is a freelance columnist for The Spokesman-Review. She is the author of “Home Planet: A Life in Four Seasons,” and can be reached at catmillsap@gmail.com.

Winter in Glacier National Park

I've seen Glacier National Park in the summertime. When the sky is so blue you could swim in it and the forest is lush and green.

I've been there in the fall. When the natural world is at its busiest, preparing for the long winter to come. One September night in East Glacier a mountain lion and her two cubs crossed the road in front of us. The lioness stopped to give us a long look, her babies peeking around her, before disappearing into the trees beside the road.


In the winter, the air is sweet and clean and the blanket of snow softens the rugged landscape. There is a quiet that settles on the park and once you step into it it feeds you, like a vitamin you didn't know you needed.

I drove through West Glacier recently, skirting the shores of Lake McDonald. The mirrored surface of the lake reflected the snowy peaks of the mountains and threw back images of the blue sky breaking through the clouds. Even the bare trees, a stark reminder of the fire that swept through the park in 2003, were somehow beautiful.

I was so moved by my time in the park that I drove back to Glacier National Park the following weekend, bringing my husband and two of my daughters along.

Social scientists say one critical element of true happiness is the bond of a shared experience. Perhaps this is why I had to return. And to bring my loved ones with me. I needed to share what I'd seen and felt. To know they had a chance to experience the same wonder. And, they did.

We drove home under the spell of the ancient landscape. Permanently changed.

Whitefish backcountry

Riding the snowmobile trails, each new curve led to one breathtaking view after another. I took photo after photo and still don't feel as though I captured it all.