Our day began in fire and ended in (near) water. We spent the morning with folks from Okanogan High School, Washington's Department of Fish and Wildlife, and the redoubtable fire ecologist Jim Agee from the University of Washington. Our friend Lee took us on a charred tour of the remains of his forest along the Loup Loup Creek to its confluence with the Little Loup, the creek that courses through our forest. The Oden Road fire this summer swept through 10,000 acres of these hidden canyons.
The purpose of our hike was to plan a workshop for students from the advanced biology class at Okanogan High School, and students in the Ecology class at the Wenatchee Valley Community College, that we will conduct soon after our return. The students will learn about the vagaries and force of wildfire, and will start a series of scientific monitoring projects that future students will use to document the way this fire-evolved landscape responds to predictable - but awesome - events.
After lunch, we packed the trusty Camry - no sudden accelerations here - and headed south-east, through the channeled scablands sculpted by the catalysmic floods from the last ice age. Our objective was Palouse Falls, a dramatic fall that spews over the basalt and empties into the Snake River, near Walla Walla, where we spent the night. A fitting start to a great adventure.
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