Amber waves ...

Driving across Washington state on a summer Thursday is 300 miles of widely varying landscape. You start from the city and its suburbs and exurbs, drive through the forested coastal mountins, and come out on the other side at the beginning of the dry country. There are ranches and small settlements, with distant vistas of rocky peaks, and then, on the way down to the Columbia, the huge dry hills begin.

Across the Columbia is basalt country - bones of the earth, left after huge prehistoric floods scoured out this path to the ocean. Now the bones protrude from grass and sage-covered plateaus, their columnar structure speaking to ancient lava activity. High pasture land alternates with irrigated farms. Now and again a smell of mint fills the car (the reward for previous whiffs of skunk or feed lot!)

From the Columbia on, the road is 2-lane (there is a freeway, farther north, but those heading to the Palouse use Highway 26.) Yesterday most of the traffic seemed to be trucks and huge harvesting equipment moving from place to place. On an infamous 26-mile straight stretch from Othello eastward, the road sometimes disappeared into wide shiny mirages, the exact color of the sky.

In the Palouse, harvesting hasn't quite begun, and the hills are every color from pale green to -- honestly -- amber. If you grew up here, no one ever has to explain "amber waves of grain."

I brought two cameras. This morning I went outside a bit late to take good pictures of the hills, but there will be other opportunities.

A number of classmates arrived last night, and more are coming in today. Many of us are staying at the same motel/convention center, and we all walk around looking at likely groups of 60-somethings, wondering...

What I like best is remembering someone's name a split second after they have enthusiastically recognized me!