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