This
area where I live is extremely beautiful. The Palouse of northern Idaho and
eastern Washington is a hilly wonderland squeezed between the east slope of the
Bitterroot Mountains, and the rising edge of the Columbia Plateau. It is made
from the fertile volcanic ash that blasted forth from the Cascade Mountains
thousands of years ago and was blown eastward by the prevailing winds. It is
where the sage brush desert gradually rises into the mountains and scrapes the
moisture from the easterly moving Pacific storms. The climate here is temperate
with four complete seasons and now in the spring/early summer the Palouse is
resplendent with green. Here the soil is not rocky so it retains the moisture
it receives sending it back to the abundant wheat, canola, pea, lentil and
other grains that make this area a veritable bread basket.
Another
great thing about living here, besides the abundant beauty of verdant rolling
fields against a backdrop of evergreen forested mountains is the relative
isolation. If you go north in Idaho you come up against beautiful mountain lakes
that attract tourists. If you go north in Washington you come up against the
metro area of Spokane. Here it’s quiet with few people except the occasional
roadside photographer that often gets her snapshot published in some national
calendar or magazine. In spite of that frequency of photographed splendor we
still aren’t overwhelmed with tourists.
The
proximity of the lakes and Spokane along with the twin universities—Washington State
University and the University of Idaho—give plenty of human activity for the
residents of the Palouse but more often than not you will find us escaping the
bustle and working the fields or
mountains where we live. This is a place of great beauty, just the right amount
of human interaction and an abundance of natural resources. I can think of few
other places that I would more want to call home than the Palouse.
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