Stehekin by Grant McConnell

Author:Grant McConnell
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781594859373
Publisher: Mountaineers Books
Published: 2014-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

7.

There is a dream which I think anyone who has lived

where water is scarce must at some time have shared. It is the vision of a small stream of clear, clear water, bubbling and murmuring over a bed of clean, washed gravel. It is only a foot or two wide and not more than six inches deep. But its water is cold and sweet and it runs down through the front yard, say thirty feet or so from the door of the cabin. Its course isn’t straight; it twists and turns irregularly, giving life to the soft grass and bushes by its sides. Its water is easily diverted indoors by a pipe laid into the stream a short distance above the cabin. It never dries up, even in the hottest summers. On the most blistering days of July and August, it has enough force to run a high-spraying sprinkler which wets down the grass by the door and cools the air near the cabin.

It’s a common enough picture. Almost everyone who has wandered through the mountain foothills has seen such favored sights. Through the years that we lived in Stehekin, I had this dream with annoying frequency, and I used to scheme and make grandiose plans by which I could bring this sight to reality before our house.

The Cascades are, above all, well-watered mountains. During the winter months, the storms of the Pacific sweep in from their birthplace in the Gulf of Alaska. They drench the western slope of the range with rains that in places leave a hundred inches of water each year. On the crests and down to the four thousand foot level, and sometimes even lower, the snow piles deep and lasts for half the year. In the higher elevations, the snow never disappears. It is blown by winds and avalanched into the canyons where the glaciers lie, and these are renewed, now to advance, now to recede, but never to disappear. On the high wooded hills the trees and brush shade the ground, and the duff of centuries holds the moisture so that constantly, throughout each year, it seeps downward to bubble out in springs and trickling streams. In the valleys below the glaciers, there are always bright sparkling creeks, and often rivers.

On the eastern slopes of the range, however, the hills grow dry, the streams thin, and finally, where the land levels out, there are only sagebrush and dusty waterless gullies. The precipitation here is often as little as eight inches in a year. The Stehekin Valley is midway between these extremes, partaking from year to year of the characteristics now of the west, now of the east. The forests of the valley are a mixture of east and west. Where the sun shines hottest, there are pines; where there is frequent shadow, there are firs. Often the line that separates these western and eastern species is devious and discontinuous. But the two types are constant reminders that this is the boundary between the humid and the arid lands of the west.

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