Wednesday's postcard, and 8 minutes of scablands zen

February 8, 2023

Snowfall & lichens on Grande Ronde basalt, Riverside State Park west of Spokane

In the wake of the Ice age floods. A brief tour…

Since late summer the last piece of my Beautiful Wounds book event programs has been an eight-minute video compilation of what it looks and sounds like at some of my favorite destinations in Washington’s channeled scablands. It begins with a dawn scene at Wallula Gap, east of Pasco and progresses to a rhubarb sky sunset at a scabland marsh east of Sprague, WA.

Aside from the brief sound of a distant airliner—easily drowned out by the raucous call of a Yellow-headed blackbird—the only human sound is a few of my labored breaths that the camera’s sensitive microphone picked up. So turn the volume up, it’s worth it, although when the blackbird goes off, I’ll have to warn you it can startle pets and small children. It’s a beautiful bird that can sound like a growling chainsaw.

I have one other footnote that I think you’ll enjoy. In two of the scenes—at Coffee Pot Marsh (1:08 minutes in, and again at 1:18 minutes into the video) and the scene with the growling and whooping blackbird, (3:51 minutes in)—you’ll hear a rising “woo-woo-woo-woo” call. It’s the sound of an uncommon bird, the Wilson’s Snipe, which is heard more often than seen as it hides in the reeds. What’s splendidly weird about this haunting sound is that it’s not a voice call from the snipe but the “winnowing” sound it makes by rubbing tail feathers together. Seriously, I’m not making this up. tjc

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