The loveliness of the Pacific Northwest enveloped us from the moment we passed through deep forests of evergreens, beneath rows and rows of firs, cedars and hemlock. Through their thick outgrowths of needles, sunlight filtered in to rest awhile upon branches coated with moss which bathed in the glorious sunshine, seemed to have a life of its own. The forests looked like they have been around for a long, long time. Scattered log cabins showed up, framed poetically by all those evergreens and the snow-covered peaks of the Cascades. The Nooksack River popped up in places and it flowed gently gathering creeks along the way. Who knows if the Nooksack tribes still live around it, hunting and fishing, and generally, living off the land.
There is irony in the beauty of the Pacific Northwest, for the tectonic forces that have given birth to it, can reduce it to rubble. The region is edged by the Ring of Fire, a belt of volcanically and seismically active sites. All those mountains that rear their heads majestically — Rainier, Adams, Baker, St. Helens and Glacier Peak — they are actually active volcanoes. It never ceases to amaze me that nature holds such great power over our miniscule lives. That a thing of beauty is not a joy for forever. One day it shall pass into nothingness.
Farms and ranches, horses and vast tracts of land rolled by, with hardly a human being in our field of vision for miles, till we stopped at a local brewery for lunch and pints of chilled beer. There the fortune cookie revealed that in my stars was a road trip. What are the chances?
When we got back on the road, the scene started changing slowly at first, patches of snow peppering the woods. Then we were passing through walls of snow, out of which road signs stood out as if to declare proudly that they had held on despite the barrage of snow. Here there were only dark evergreens standing stark against the thick cover of snow on the mountains. Mount Shuksan stood dramatically in front of us, dots of skiers to be seen along its slopes. And there was this world of beautiful silence to be inhaled at that moment, the roads ribboning below us into swathes of evergreens.
The plan was to drive high up into the meadows, right up to Mount Baker, but the road was closed with this fresh onslaught of snow. Instead, surrounded by mountains with tickling names of the likes of Triumph, Despair, Fury, and Terror (evocative of the emotions of climbers who would have scaled them, I would imagine, but then I am wrong because the surveyor who had named them had not climbed these bad boys), we trudged up snowy hills clad in pristine snow, so thick that it was powdery on top, and in places where I sank into waist-deep snow, the indents revealed an icy-blue base.
I can report that there were snowball fights thrown into the mix, dodging and hurriedly hurling clumps of snow, training our cameras on all that beauty. And there was the intense urge to lie flat on the snow, to just stare for hours at the blue skies above our heads and the white, white world around us, as skiers and snowboarders swished past us, leaving criss-crossing trails in their wake.
ARUNDHATI BASU 