Fourth of July, Liberty Lake

Karen's friends, Cam and Marcia (her college roommate) left in their Airstream trailer yesterday morning after a fun three-day visit. This was the first time I'd gotten to spend any significant time with them, and a long time since Karen had.

For much of the 4th, we spent time straightening up the house and clearing the DVR of episodes of The Colbert Report we weren't going to watch (Nikki Haley) and those we wanted to (Bonnie Raitt), watching new telecasts of Olympics trials and deleting "encore presentations," and cleaning up some pretty good leftovers.

Me, Cheryl, Pat, Theresa, Dave above Liberty Lake

Later in the afternoon, our neighbors Pat and Cheryl came by on their ATV and invited us to go with them and Dave and Theresa up to the state lands overlooking Liberty Lake to watch the city fireworks. We had a great time, riding up rutted logging roads, taking with food and libations, collapsible chairs and barbecue forks, paper plates and plastic forks. Dave also drove up some dry firewood, and before we got there he and Theresa built a small fire pit on a patch of level ground backed by rocks on a tall ridge.



After an hour-and-a-half of good conversation, fire-roasted hot dogs, mustard potato salad, quality beer, and S'mores (meh), the fireworks began, first at the Spokane Fairgrounds, then at Riverfront Park, and finally  over Liberty Lake.

Kerry and me

Karen, Cheryl, Pat, Theresa, Dave roasting hot dogs

 It was a grand vantage point, looking down on the lake and the exploding multicolored shells, as well as the lights of Liberty Lake, Spokane Valley, and Spokane itself. When the show was over, we doused the fire, cleaned up everything we'd packed in, and descended through the dark, retracing our tracks by the light of the full moon and the ATV headlights. Theresa, bless her heart, insisted I borrow an extra Carhartt jacket of Dave's that she'd brought along. Toasty. I've got to get one before I have to plow the half-mile driveway to our new house this winter.

Liberty Lake at night, with Spokane in background

Before we left for the hills, I put our Brittany, Pepper, in the back yard with a bowl of food and a bowl of water. When we got back, Pepper was loose, in front of the house, wet, dirty and smelly. It was too late to bathe him, so we dragged his dog bed into the living room and made him sleep there. He was so exhausted, he did. Shortly after we got home, Pat called to say his big old dog, Harley, was in his swimming pool when he got home. I think the two dogs were in serious cahoots last night.

Fireworks and city lights of Spokane Valley and Spokane

This morning, I let Pepper into the back yard, washed and dried his bed, and then gave him his first bath. Shower, actually, lathering him down with my shampoo (should get some dog shampoo, I guess), hosing him off and drying him off with a big thirsty towel. He loved it. I got wet. Now, smelling lightly of moist dog and shampoo, he's lying in his fresh dog bed as we watch President Obama speak at Maumee, Ohio. The sun is bright and the sky is clear. It's looking like a good day.

Pepper resting after his morning shower

Survivors

Snow, finally, on Saturday. About five inches, enough to coat the back meadow and the hills above. After feeding the two cats who live in the garage and brushing a hard crust of snow from the satellite dish, I strapped on my snowshoes for the first time this winter.

Crossing the meadow, I saw the confused tracks of the dozens of turkeys that live on our place and use it as a causeway from adjoining properties. Up at the gravel road we built to our future home site, I saw the paw prints of our neighbor's Australian shepherd, Duke, and then the boot prints of our neighbor Dave Pielaet and his girlfriend, Theresa. And then, as I neared a lone pine at the head of the road's switchback, I heard a sound I'd never heard before in the valley. It came from the hills to the west, starting low and rising higher as the howl pierced the cold, thick air. I've heard plenty of coyotes through the years, and this was no coyote. And it wasn't the blue tick hound that lives south of us. I believe it was a wolf, perhaps the first in our valley for years. A survivor of packs that no doubt roamed our area before civilization swept in. It howled twice, and then - nothing.

I waited a few beats, then moved on, down past the ruin of the old homesteader's barn, across a small bridge I'd built last summer over Anna Spring, and along the ATV trail I'd cut and cleared the same summer. Hopping across the spring further south, I doubled back to where that trail met a long hill that goes back up to the home site. There, at the junction, I saw another survivor - a small fir tree I'd transplanted three years ago from the middle of a walking trail to an open space in front of a row of hawthorn trees. The little fir was covered with snow, the weight bending its thin branches nearly to the ground. I swept off the snow with the basket of a snowshoeing pole, and the branches sprang up and quivered with life. The little fir was fine, a bit deer-nibbled, but still fine, better than the first year when the top was chewed off.

As I crested the hill and clumped to the home site, fresh snow started blowing in from the south, pushing me down the road and then coating the front of my sweatshirt as I turned the switchback toward home and a hot cup of tea.