dosewallips.

D O S E W A L L I P S .

26 MAY 2013.




Found the campground at the end of the road. Abandoned. Just passed a young couple with backpacks and yellow lab leaving not five minutes back down the road-turned-trail. Before the washout eleven years ago this place would have been packed Sunday of Memorial weekend. No doubt all the other campgrounds easily accessed are today. Bustling. The smell of campfires. Kids playing. A good thing. But this one is six miles up the road from the washout (and eleven hundred feet of elevation). Reminds me of Buck Creek on the Suiattle past where the road was erased by the river. Deserted. I see blue sky. Filtered sunlight hits me cast through the breaking clouds and parting trees. Moss drips off everything. Smells fresh. And the Dosewallips runs pure and clean and cool next to me. Chilly. The air feels damp and slightly heavy. Darker clouds clump together. An hour to get here. Probably fifteen or twenty minutes back. Tops. I came here for a photograph but am staying to think now just sitting on this picnic table wet from the rain. It's quiet. Wish I had stuff to stay the night. Not ready yet again for the comforts of home. Haven't earned them. I wanted to photograph Dosewallips Falls (which I did) but honestly came here for an escape. For the quiet I knew I could find here at the end of the road. Alone. And so I cherish this moment now in between. The then and the yet to be. So many questions. There is music littered in my head of the struggle. But I know this: I will always need these sorts of moments. The in between can just be a long week with another right behind. Does not have to be heavy like now. But these times of stillness. And peace. I do not honestly think they need to always be alone. I have a picture in my mind of J here riding around. Of us skipping rocks in the river. Playing Uno in the tent or at the picnic table damp. Of someone else. Smiling. Laughing. Beautiful. Always worth the effort these moments. Thinking back how I looked forward to the uphill. I guess I relish the downhill too but not the same. Maybe I cherish the up so much more because it is still the journey … whereas going down means going back. Returning. And a part of me never wants to go back. So I hold onto a piece of every one of these moments to bring back to my mind during all the other times when I am not sitting next to a river awash in filtered sunlight slightly damp and a little chilly. Wipe my nose. It's cold.