On being away from The Gorge

One thing the Travel the Gorge Team is known for is...travel.  What a concept.  And recently we honored our name with a short trip to Edmonds, Washington.  Edmonds is a waterfront town of about 40,000 people north of Seattle.  It IS a lovely city with a vibrant arts community, small churches, graceful older homes and the Mukilteo Ferry dock.  We had fun.  We rode the ferry, did their Thursday night art walk, ate in their restaurants, bought artisanal cheeses and perused used books. It is a town very much worth visiting.  But, this being a blog about The Gorge, Edmonds is actually NOT the subject here.

The Team has a lot of miles under its collective belt, and we've found that travel is as much about the place you left as the one you went to.  Travel for us is very often about comparisons.  We figured this out over a bottle (who are we kidding here) of wine on a rainy Edmonds night in a little French Cafe.  Our musings:

We missed the sound of the wind teasing at the windows and rustling the trees.
We missed great white mountains appearing suddenly at a turn in the road or out a random window.
We missed the keening of coyotes in the distance and the instinctive answering yips of family dogs.
We missed the crystal air, so clear that the whole Gorge is a High Def  'ViewMaster' slide. 
We missed bumping into so many people we know at the grocery store that we have to plan extra time into our errands for socializing.
We bristled at streets FULL of cars and missed the many courtesies of Gorge drivers.
We had to GO somewhere to take a hike.
We missed the roasted garlic at Stonehedge Gardens and the biscuits and gravy at Cousins and the pizzas at Solstice. 
We found there are churches that aren't attended by people in jeans.
We got truly angry at having to pay $7 to park at a Hospital - yes a Hospital.  Like you really wanted to go there in the first place.
There are a lot of places in the world that don't have waterfalls, or rivers, or vineyards, or orchards, or fields of wildflowers, or trailers with great Thai food.

Dang, it's nice to be home!!!

For more great dining options, see www.TravelTheGorge.com/dining

Murder and Wildflowers in the Columbia Gorge

You can find beauty anywhere, if you look for it, and you don't have to look hard to find it in the Columbia Gorge today.  This week the sun came out (it's that yellow presence in the sky that hurts to look at), the wildflowers are saying thank you by blooming they're colorful heads off, and the river is deep blue watered silk with lacy edges, instead of grumpy grey metal.  What's not to love about The Gorge?

This week something else came out, too - the identities of those charged with the murder of Jerry Cranmer at the Vagabond Lodge in Hood River last September.  Claudia D. Escoto, 19, Marlene Zarate, 20, and Jairo A. Vicente, 23, all from White Salmon, Washington, just across the river, have been arrested and indicted for the murder and burglary.  From the news release, it appears the threesome took a good man's life for a measly $300.  Now compared to a good man's life, we think any amount of money is measly, but to put a bullet in someone for the price of a cell phone shows a contempt that is hard to wrap one's head around. 

Maybe the worst part for The Team, especially as we stand here in The Gorge amidst the innocence of wildflowers and the grandeur of creation, is to think that the perpetrators of such an act have walked among us.  That they were here in our yard and we failed to see them for what they were.  It was somehow easier to believe that people so lacking in humanity came out of the anonymous stream of cars passing us in the night and oozed back into the current to be drawn to another light in the darkness.  But no.  They were of us and among us and they were us...  As much a part of The Gorge as the wildflowers. 

 

Photos by permission USDA Forest Service

On the Philosophical Side

The TTG Team just had a near-miss and nothing else seems quite important enough to blog about.  One of our team members, actually not "just" a member, but the revered "Team Guru", went into septic shock following the emergency removal of his gall bladder.  We didn't know what septic shock was - heck, we pretty much didn't know what the gall bladder was, until a visit to Wikipedia.  50% of the people who suffer toxic shock die from it, and that's 50% of EVERYONE who gets it.  That isn't counting people such as The Guru who have underlying health problems.

With septic shock, infection enters the blood stream, which carries it to every organ in the body, and they start shutting down.  The blood vessels, "trained" to enlarge in an infected area so more blood goes to the boo-boo, enlarge throughout the body and the blood pressure drops to nothing.  The whole body just kind of quits and lots of people die.

The Guru's surgeon didn't expect him to last the weekend - and he's still here.  Vitals are up, eyes vaguely open, ventilator gone and blood pressure holding its own.  The ICU staff calls him Cat Man, because he must have nine lives.  We just call him mean, nasty names for scaring us so badly.  He still has a long way to go and a lot of hospital food in his future, but he's still with us and we're grateful beyond bloggy words.

So, where are we going with this?  Hug your Gurus every day.  Hug your wordsmiths and your boardheads and your fishing guides and your epicures.  A team is the sum of its members and becomes a whole new total if it loses one.  It can still be a team, but not the same team, and we like ours just the way it is. 

Oh yes...and Prayer Works!!