Contradictory Landscapes

So, what about a landscape that isn't supposed to be there? What do you do then?

Let me explain.

I'll wrap up a little of my recent experiences through examination of landscapes:

So there are landscapes that exist which are meant to exist. I've visited a couple of those in the last couple of weeks:

The drive from Aberdeen along the Pacific Coast.

The pacific coast.

A panorama from a lookout at Gray's Harbor

Alder's Flat in Mt. Hood National Forest. (Auto-Awesome Photo, just giving full disclaimer)

More of Alder's Flat

Entrance to Willamete National Forest

Sunset in Salem

And of course, the catalyst, in the Steigerwald National Wildlife Refuge

So what makes these "correct" landscapes? is it because of their pretty scenery? Their forested hills around them? How about their inclusion of nature?

Well all of those help a landscape, but none of them really make or break a landscape in the grand scheme of things. It is really the fact that the areas of the landscapes in the pictures "fit". They run together with what is around them, with most things flowing well into and out of the scene.

This weekend, I discovered Yakima. A lonely valley in the middle of the high desert, turned Garden of Eden by the modern power of irrigation.

Its strange. You are driving through the high desert in central Washington. You've seen it all before, the endless plains of scrub brush and tender dry grass, resisting the massive wind the best in can. Just waiting under a Red Flag warning to eradicate all before its hellish fire.

So far, so good.

The plains turn into mountains, the mountains into barren hills. Then, as soon as you round a corner:

BAM!

Fields of green, yellow, and brown stretch out throughout the valley below. It is a valley, full of the richest vegetables, fruits, and buildings you can imagine. The valley stretches out beyond what the mind can imagine. Off in the distance are faint, hazy hills, yellow and brown as the previous ones you were just driving through. But halfway up the sides, a dark green is visible. Those are fruit trees and they stretch up just as far as the water can go.

The valley is built on this source. Water. It needs it. It feeds off of it. It produces with it. Without it, it would be just another desert valley, with a river running through it.

But why? That is my ever present question. Why is it that this valley, and this river, gave rise to one of Washington's greatest food producing regions? Why is it that this place was settled on as that place? I don't really know. How much water does it use? This land, I don't think it was meant to be food production, I think it was meant to be a subtle little pocket of high desert river life. So what have we made/gained/lost with this development?

Its weird. I've never been in a place that isn't meant to belong there. All of my landscapes have flowed, fit together, and transitioned into different settings quite well. This place comes upon you as the perfectly created wonderland of local food. But was it supposed to be that way?

Homesickness

I really need to stop longing for a culture I am content with. I need to embrace the low points of the journey, and enjoy the luscious crops of the fertile valleys.

I thought that my life was built upon adventure, and seeking out the more to see. The irresistible drive to continue onward until I've circled around full. I guess that isn't the way it is supposed to be.

I do not want to fall into the conservative mindset of "conserve what you have, it always works", and if it hasn't been conserved, go back to it. That must be the stubborn Midwestern kicking back in.

I miss my home.

I do have a home. My base of operations is Thurston, Ohio. While my family may not live there anymore, it is the town I identify with the most. I grew up there. I learned there. I experienced the first threshes of life there. Identified my loves, explored my passions, and got the hell out, only to discover it again once I had left, and once they had left.

I do have a home. My lyrical muse lies in the fields adorning the mountains of the Swannanoa Valley. The sweltering humid heat of the morning fog makes me pine to live those experiences again. Marching through the forest every morning to greet the academic rigor of the day, only to end the week in a celebration of Mario Kart and Magic the Gathering.

My method of travel is the Catalyst. She travels with me between all points known and unknown. She is my temporary home, gracious enough to host me on the long journeys through the desert, over the tallest mountains on the continent, and between those two points where I am solidly anchored.

Out here though, there is no home. There is only a drift of the shells of a community. It's too big to have a cohesive whole, but too small to have specific individual parts. There is no definition here, it's just like an impressionist painting that has been rained on.

All the natural area cannot fix this place. No amount of rare summer storms, humid warm nights, nor fields of far off crops can bring me back enough to want to stay. The noise is too precise, the hum of the highway too close, and the entrapment of the houses too focused.

The only thing that comforts me tonight is the far off sound of the port, with its clattering rails slowly moving towards cargo ships, and the soft chirps of few lone crickets somewhere in the neighborhood. But even that is sometimes lost in the chatter of cars and wavering voices and settlements around me.