Story
by Christine Felton From the crossing of the Bering Strait, to Lewis and Clark, humans have traveled, great distances at times, for survival or exploration. In a time when space is our frontier, in a land where survival is within reach almost anywhere, we still have not ceased from exploration. Americans travel incessantly, changing addresses almost as frequently as they take vacations. While many prefer to visit a bustling metropolis, I have always been drawn to the solitude of the necropolis. I think of a graveyard as a great university into which we all will be matriculated eventually, regardless of our progress in the school of life. In a cemetery, I feel at once the urgency of life and the certitude of a final destination. In honor of all souls - fogotten or remembered - what follows is the record of a three-day October journey to the prairie cemeteries of Eastern Washington. |
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DAY ONE |
We have begun our journey much as the original pioneers must have, with bare necessities, limited (possibly flawed) information, and our own internal sense of direction. With the help of a 15-year-old book on the state's cemeteries, we have mapped our route to included sites dating back to the 1800s. For Nic, this quest is mainly about getting the cool pics. I'm after a more elusive grail. Or at least some dry weather. Life west of the Cascades has been altogether too moist lately, and I don't mean just meteorologically. I'm here to air out a mildewed mind. |
Swauk-Prairie Cemetery, Cle Elum Nic and I pull away from the Starbucks drive-through and leave behind the caffeinated urgency of Western Washington. We head east over Snoqualmie Pass. The flowering mullein stalks (or "miner's candles") that grow along the service road were once dipped in tallow and used as torches. |
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Donated in 1884 by the Northern Pacific
Railroad, the plot is nuzzled by fields of timothy hay and overlooks
the Swauk Prairie. The landscape's honeyed hues hint at the promise
of gold in nearby Swauk Creek. One white cloud passes overhead like a laying on of hands. An insistent clacking turns out to be grasshoppers, leaping to transform themselves into momentary red-winged fliers. From a few feet away,the polite click of a camera's shutter and the lacy whisper of weeds.
3:17 p.m. Old Pioneer Cemetery, Coulee City After driving through the Kittitas Valley, along the Beezley Hills, north past Soap Lake to Dry Falls, we arrive at Coulee City. At a tiny gas station, we are told there is no cemetery in Coulee City. Five minutes later, we're parked beside an iron gate, half unhinged against a vast sea of blond. An exuberant German shepherd bounds over from the house across the road and escorts me through the waist-high overgrowth to the ornate metal headstone of Joseph L. Hembrock.
The shapes of the stones seem improbable, like props from an Ed Wood flick. There are about 15 markers, if you count only those we actually find. When Nic crouches down for a shot, it's as if he's drowned. Plains stretch far to the north, east and south. A labyrinth of rodent tunnels have me stepping lightly, and I'm hip-high in cheatgrass and all manor of prickly weeds. This small parcel of land grows only what can live on dry heat with no hope of shade. One stone memorializes a woman my own age, 30-year-old Lidah Chapell, 1877-1916. The length of unchiselled stone below her name implies she has been waiting for others to join her. "Gone but not forgotten," is a common inscription, although it seems the reverse is closer to the truth. All we survey was once ranch land, but when the railroad arrived in 1890 (and a harvest could be transported easily), farmers drove the ranchers out. Occasionally a pick-up goes by, and the driver nods, a gesture that is at once a greeting and a gentle assertion of territory.
4:44 p.m. We are standing in the middle of a primitive road called 42 that runs through a farmer's field, looking for a road called T, which is supposed to run through the same field at right angles to the road we're on. We're staring at a herd of grazing cows where a graveyard should be. This site was going to be one of our favorites: a Welsh cemetery with a church at the site that was converted in 1940 to be used as a chicken house. If we're in the right spot, we are a few years too late. Things change, as the original settlers of Hartline discovered. They started out four miles from the town's present location, but moved to be near the railroad.
6:03 p.m. After a drive during which Nic asks me to check the road atlas at least six times, we have found the isolated town of Marlin, on the border of Grant and Lincoln counties, in the very center of Eastern Washington. Nic is shooting the rising moon through the Marlin Cemetery gate with his back to 75 head of cattle chewing their grassy dinner. Their ear tags are the only bright spots of color in this arid landscape. This place has an uncomfortable vibe. It's not just that it's getting close to sundown and we're sharing the evening with large, sloe-eyed beasts kept at a distance only by a thin line of electric current. The yard is a utilitarian grid of austere right angles wedged against two foothills. A chain-link fence reaches 10 or 12 feet high, and a sharp twist of metal secures the gate. Nature is harsh here, but it's as if the planners felt inclined to subdue nature with a discipline even more severe. Most plots are decorated with rocks or gravel. The ground is flat, as if it were pounded into submission. A large litter receptacle occupies center stage. As the sky blackens, we head solemnly along Route 28 toward Nic's home town of Spokane. |
