The Valley

A tribute to childhood.

Deep in the reaches of Eastern Washington rests the Spokane valley. If you approach from the West you come from infinite plains extending out unto the horizon. As you creep closer you can watch as the plains begin to slowly meld into the forests. One by one the pines move farther out into the sage and sun scorched farmland. You look down to check the speedometer and when you glance back up you’re surrounded by marsh lands with shafts of light trickling down through ponderosa boughs. As you crest a small hill the Spokane cityscape rolls out before you. Old granite bell steeples mingle with dazzling structures full of windows beneath you. Just south of here rested a place sheltered from the modern world where time seemingly stood still. As one would drive along the winding gravel road they delved into a forest populated with dense

shadows. If they should chance deeper they could catch glimpses of golden fields that pooled at the feet of hills robed in evergreens. There was a small river at the entrance to this valley, one that snaked its way through the infinite folds of golden barley and green grass rushing together beneath sky that looked like a royal blue paddock with a flock of fairy tale sheep being led across her by the shepherd sun. As dusk and dawn came kissed the sleeping brows of the horizon a mist would rise up from the river and envelop the valley. I can remember so clearly plunging into that ethereal barrier and emerging on the other side into a world that seemed

so magical, a world where dreams and realities wore the same badges and used the same tone. I remember The Valley. There on top of a hill surveying this mystical pocket in the folds of the universe’s robes stood a house. And next to this house, beneath pennants of soft gold and bold forest green, crowned with apple wood smoke, looming up into the tree tops, there was a castle.