It’s the first day of February and we are nearing mid-winter according to the calendar. We’ve had a bit of new snow and the temperatures dropped down to 2 degrees Monday morning. It was a sunny day. I’ll take the cold with sun any time over the cloudy gray days just above freezing. Winter Sun feeds my spirit.
Sarah and I have begun thinking about the garden. We keep a spreadsheet with a growing chart. During Covid we built a seed starting station using shelves and LED growing lights. Farmers and Gardners know that there is tremendous energy and work happening under the layers of snow. Winter is perhaps one of the most active seasons of the growing cycle. I know it is the most active season for my personal growth.
In the darkness of winter I slow down and think about the future and make decisions about how to spend the nine warmer months outdoors active in the world. Sarah and I plan food menus for cooking over fire out on the patio. We plan dates for my motorcycle trips and where she will come meet me and we plan our trailer camping trips. This year we are planing some joint photography and art journaling projects. Last night we started talking about the garden because we realized that it was already February and the season is going fast.
Winter Wheat will soon be visible. It takes up to two years of moisture to accumulate for dry land wheat crops to grow. The rolling Palouse hills take on the appearance of sand dunes in the winter. I made this image 10 years ago while out exploring the countryside with my friend Jay.
Jay and I ended up getting stuck on a dirt road that we should not have attempted. It was getting dark and we didn’t have cell phone reception to call for help. Lucky for us a young man in a letter jacket came along in a pickup truck. He was heading home from basketball practice at the local high school. Within minutes he pulled us out with a tow strap. We were extremely impressed by how nice and self reliant this young man was. He could have been a character from the movie Hoosiers.
I think the benefits of living in the country is that it promotes a level of self reliance and awareness that can be forgotten in the city.
When I moved to Spokane with my parents at age nine we lived on a dirt road lined with maple trees. Everything east of Regal and South of 29th was dirt roads that led to farms along the Glenrose and Moran Prairies. We heated our home with wood that my father cut with a chainsaw and I split and stacked.
For a few years we went camping every weekend. My father had built a wooden box that fit the shape of the trunk of our station wagon with wooden lids. We kept all of our camping gear in the box and still had the surface on top of the lids to place groceries or whatever else was needed day to day. We were always prepared for any emergency should we get stuck somewhere. We didn’t have 4 wheel drive or cell phones. It was a simple time that I recall with great affection.
I remember all the weekends we would visit my Uncle Sim and Aunt Georgie who lived in a remote area outside of Fernwood Idaho. They had a small creek that ran through their property. My brother and I would zip on our rubber galoshes and walk/slide down to the stream and see if we could walk across the ice without falling into the water. It would be bitterly cold and we would make a bet to see who would give in first and run back inside to the warm fire. My sister would just stay inside the whole time and draw in her journal.
When I was a teenager after my brother and sister had moved back to Los Angeles, I would run a three and a half mile loop alone each morning as I trained to be a boxer. I would pass by horses and wetlands filled with ducks and Killdeer always trying to get me to follow them away from their nests. I always stopped along the fence where a horse we called Popcorn lived. He was a gentle white horse who had suffered an injury and was missing one eye. I would call to him and he would come over to the fence for a pet. If I brought carrots he would stay for a while, otherwise he would wander back to where he had been feeding last.
Our next door neighbors Herb and Edith owned a vacant lot that separated our house from theirs. They were subsistence gardeners who only ate what they grew and canned for winter. They would hire me to pick raspberries and cherries and give me some to take home to my mother who would make jam. I love raspberry jam on a slice of bread with butter.
After I moved away I would still see Edith once a year at the voting precinct. She would volunteer at the local church that hosted the voting booths. Going to the polls was like a reunion of sorts as I would often run into childhood classmates who hadn’t moved away. It was always a joyful time to stand in line and visit. The presidential elections would draw the biggest crowds and the most reunions.
Up the road was an old man named Tweedy who also had an entire vacant lot for his garden. I remember him telling me that the secret to his garden success was the worms he bought from President Jimmy Carter’s family business in Georgia. He was a nice man and I thought of him like a grandfather since I both set’s of mine lived in California and I rarely saw them.
We would take walks through the neighborhood and he would show me where train tracks and street car lines used to connect the smaller communities like Rockford and Fairfield to the city. We could see the start of houses being built on Browne’s mountain and he would talk about the last bear hunt he went on up there.
Today most of the wetlands have been drained, vacant lot gardens are filled in with houses, and the trees replaced by cement sidewalks and paved roads. The farm land has been developed except for the small patch that has become a conservation area. Browne’s mountain is full of houses that have a beautiful view of the south hill.
Sarah and I go up to the Glenrose prairie periodically to have a picnic at Winescape Winery. They bought an old farmstead and keep the original house as a VRBO rental. Their tasting room has indoor and outdoor seating with a great view of the prairie below. The deer crossing signs are important reminders as we watch the deer graze. They make beautiful wines and I enjoy looking out over the remaining prairie and remembering the people and places as they were when I grew up. They’re all gone now.
My Grandson turns two in a couple of weeks and it will be time for him to develop his own memories of Spokane. Sarah and I got him a remote controlled motorcycle he can sit on. I hope I am still able to ride when he is old enough to have a real one.
I look forward to being a part of his winter memories some day.