Touring Hanford, offering somewhat glowing praise.

I'll admit it once again - I'm a total museum geek. Knowledge fetishist. Brain-filler enthusiast. Call it what you will, but I own up to the fact that I'm often happiest consuming new info presented by professionals in location-specific forms. And, man, did I find a doosie over the weekend.

I toured the Hanford Nuclear Reservation's "B Reactor" outside the Tri Cities (Richland, Pasco, Kennewick) along the Columbia river in south central Washington. On purpose. For those unfamiliar with "Hanford" or what sort of history might be housed there, here's a thumbnail. It was there that our nation extracted the fuel needed for the Manhattan Project during WWII, and the following decades worth of Cold War nukes. As a result, Hanford became the biggest environmental clean-up site in American history. The whole Hanford site is 567 square miles, most of which has been secret and/or off limits for approaching seven decades. In 2008, the Department of Energy began offering tours of the site - they're free, but they book up fast. I signed up months ago for my slot over the weekend.

Both in terms of Hanford and the Tri Cities, I found the entire area to be fascinating. Around town(s), the locals and their hangouts were often unintentionally entertaining. That sounds like a dig, but I mean to be sincere - I really like the energy out there. I found a few new favorites - the Atomic Ale Brewpub & Eatery in what had been an old A&W Root Beer stand, Roaster's Coffee housed in what must have been an old gas station, and the updated outdoor Uptown Shopping Center which on a summertime Friday night was filled with Juggalos and various categories of locals straight out of a casting call for a sequel to "Dazed and Confused" - once more, all meant in a good way. The top headline in the "Tri-City Herald" on the morning of my tour addressed in very technical minutiae the "sludge" being cleaned from a part of the massive Hanford "Superfund" site. The people out there not only live with Hanford's legacy. They embrace the reclamation. I respect that immensely.

It's rather hard to summarize both the immensity of what exists even in the minimally accessible parts of Hanford. I had a real reason for heading out there aside from my museum lustiness. It was indeed satisfied, although I was stunned by the way my question of how what's there (and what came from it) connects to something grander and more specific to the current book I'm writing. But I also ended up finding things and feeling emotions that I just didn't expect. No, it was not the latent radiation. I'm talking about the stories of the people who not only worked there but were impacted because of what was done there. Just this morning, I listened to a "Radio Lab" podcast about the bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki (centered upon one of the impossibly rare individuals who survived BOTH blasts - an absolute must for fans of that show or just good storytelling on the radio). The knowledge I brought to it because of my tour of the place where the plutonium was made cannot be overstated in its added power.

I will pull no punches - the B Reactor tour is a work in progress and I'm not sure if the audience is all that broad for what's to be seen there. But if you're the sort of person who'd consider blowing 4-5 hours on a tour of a nuclear plant, you will be fully engaged. If you're in that general area (they do take drop-ins because of the number of cancellations - on my tour only 27 of 43 slots were filled) please do check them out. Let me know. I'd love to talk with others about their reactions to the place.

Rural Tastefulness vs. Forced Urbanity

I want to offer an afterword on my visit to the Maryhill Museum on the Washington State side of the Columbia River. For those not up on the connection, we ducked away from our urban life over a briefly extended 4th of July holiday. Among other awesome rural and wilderness exploration, I could finally justify a visit to this hard to reach - and to characterize - museum. The hodgepodge there rates a qualifier-filled thumbs up. If you're close by, you really should check it out. But don't make a special trip - its honestly not that grand. I'll mention a few things to justify what might seem unduly harsh.

The surrounding hillsides are dotted with white wind farm turbines. They add a modern, idealistic charm to the otherwise hot and dusty shades of brownness - or greenishness, where an irrigation system has been employed to grow something. The Maryhill Museum features right at the entrance a collection of jewels, furniture and general whatnots from the Queen of Romania - it's overplayed payback from the founding of the museum and a real deadening factor to kick things off. My brief interactions with the staff were also occasionally a bummer. Here's where I'll play the scold in saying that none of us have to visit, so please try to be pleasant. With that snark out the chute, the Native American art struck me as a particular strength. It's delivered with well-researched support for the artistic and cultural differences between the nine regions of North American peoples - I learned a bunch and wanted more. Their Rodin collection (not just the sculpture - the dood could draw) and accompanying education it provides is wonderful. At long last, someone explained the essence of Balzac to me. Not that I went in looking for that.

In overview terms, the man behind the museum was Sam Hill (named it for his daughter, Mary, with no explanation offered for why its not the "Mary Hill Museum" instead). I wish he made for a better story. He's not even the one memorialized in the old line "what in the Sam Hill?" Basically, Sam was a railroad company lawyer from Minneapolis who made a boatload of cash and then took on "good road" for cars as his personal quest. Yes, promoting highways partly inspired him to build his mansion/museum way out in the Sam Hill part of the State. The fact that the money now keeping his museum running comes from wind power seems like an irony that's been lost on almost everyone. The weird combination of the original museum's poured concrete - quite unique back in that day, but now about as inspiring as a poured basement - and the new modernist wing and the sculpture gardens with new works from around the Northwest and all sorts of far less noteworthy works give the Maryhill the feel of shifting sand. It's almost like they're trying to make up for the fact that they're out in the middle of nowhere by being a little bit of everything to everyone. They don't want to be rural. But they surely aren't urban. So what are they? I think, at best, an invitation to debate something ephemeral.

To take in the full scope of this area's strangeness, visit the (fake) Stonehenge a few miles east. Look for Sam Hill's tomb as a challenge and tell me if you don't agree that it represents a particularly inglorious end for a man whose ego must have been huge. Better yet, stop at the Gunkel Orchards down in the Town of Maryhill for some tree fruit. I also really enjoyed the winding drive just north of the Columbia between White Salmon (where a stop for a juice and joe at 10 Speed Coffee Roasters was a particular fave) and Trout Lake. That stretch allowed me to think about real (and metaphorical) bridges between rural and urban sensibilities. Not as much as our stay at the Farmgate Homestead (just outside the awesome town of Trout Lake and within constant sight of Mt. Adams). That's a place we'll definitely visit again. Not just to cross it off some list of curiosities. Because it's awesome and we now know it.

Back to touring, much closer to home

I spent last week scanning the scene throughout parts of Washington and Oregon. Just shy of 1800 miles tallied, which took me from Seattle to northeast WA, along the Columbia River all the way to the OR Coast, on down to the southwestern edge of OR and all the way back home again. I'm being a total tease (just for the time being...I promise) when it comes to the details. The trip helped me mix and strengthen the mental mortar I need for a expansive, not-just-decorative wall o' insights. But this week, I've changed hats and get to play a personal favorite role as tour guide (my parents are visiting from Wisconsin for the first time in a few years). I'm savoring the chance to hit the full Seattle slew of delights - too many of which most local folks don't normally have the time to enjoy. Issues continue to hit my radar. The work goes on. Deadlines are still deadlines. It's worth noting, however, the validation that comes from a straight-up touristy wander when the situation calls for it. You're welcome to join me. Just look for the guy with the big foam finger and Sasquatch costume, pointing up at the Space Needle. Any questions?

Sampling a tasty chunk of Washington

I've lived in Washington for long enough to be somewhat sheepish about admitting how many huge swaths of the state I've just never been through. Yesterday gave me the chance to get out there - from west to east with enough north to south to really stir the pot. I beat the snow accumulating at Stevens Pass just as my worries about leaving the chains for the car back in Seattle reached a fever pitch. I saw the fruit trees especially around the vicinity of Wenatchee exploding with blossoms. I took huge visual gulps from the Columbia River, as our paths crossed and crossed again a few times based on my itinerary. I was all alone on the road more often than a car was anywhere within sight. I stopped and asked directions from a dingy convenience store within downstream sight of the Grand Coulee Dam - not really worth the trip, but the locals are fabulous even when you let it slip that you're from Seattle. I actually fueled up and chatted up some of the friendliest people I've met in years all along the way. My northern trajectory peaked well into Stevens County - past the Spokane Indian Reservation, but not yet within spitting distance of British Columbia (not that I would ever do such a thing). Then I backtracked and hit the two-laned glide path through the green fields (alfalfa? jeez, I should know such things...) of eastern Washington all the way down to Pullman. The summary takeaway? A sincerely awestruck double-header - 1. Road trips still connect me with America and I expect to always be romantically yet inexorably tied to that heavy carbon footprinting, and 2. Washington, whether big, hairy and wild or in the smaller town bites, holds its own very ably with any state across the nation in terms of awesomeness. No pollyanna cheese is required to say that. I mean it - drop dead gorgeous and inspired, from the Coast through the mountains to the flattest of flatlands. If you can say that after clocking nearly 500 miles all within the borders of a place, it surely was a good way to kick off a week on the road. There's more of it ahead for me today, but I at least wanted to get that off my chest before I head out to chat up some folks. Rock on.

Changing the game

Don't look now, but we've reached the start of another baseball season. At this very moment, the Brewers are getting shelled by the Cards. So some things have carried over from last year, no matter how much has changed in the world otherwise. I've spent the last few weeks focusing on what's just down the road for my book, Pelting Out. Some really good doors have opened, amazing connections within the narrative I'm researching have proven worth the effort to seek them out, and I've scheduled some exciting travel during the next few months. Up next for me is a road trip through parts of the Northwest I've never taken the time to see - expect loads of pictures of those sights (among many other things) to come. Soon thereafter in May and June, I'll be hitting the road again for more than two weeks in both Canada and the northeastern U.S. That's by no means the end of my field research. It merely gets me to where I wanted to be so that I can fill in the bigger pieces of this story. I'm not yet frosting this cake. But I at least have a good idea of what shape it will be. We'll see how it tastes after everything gets mixed in.

I hope it's obvious that I'm extremely excited about lies ahead. It's taken a great deal of will power to hold back some of the compelling stuff that I've found and all the new angles I've learned to use in looking at this very particular slice of life. From here on out, the content on this blog paired with what I offer in other places such as through my Twitter feed might appear to change somewhat. I think you'll see what I mean as it unfolds. Shorter, snappier observations will show up more regularly to start with, followed by more of the grand reveal as we head into the summer and onto fall. Consider yourself forewarned. And thanked - for checking in thus far.

Finding more than a path to my inner map nerd

I'm totally nerding out on the maps and stories collected by Derek Hayes. His latest atlas is titled the Historical Atlas of Washington and Oregon. It feels like a friend, in book form. Which, once again, is a total nerd thing to say. So what. Hayes also wrote previous atlases about the Pacific Northwest and the United States. Even though he's verifiably and proudly Canadian. My initial motivation for diving into his oeuvre came from a desire to see some of the historical representations of the Hudson's Bay Company in their exploration and mapping of North America all the way to the Pacific due to the fur trade. That Company certainly wasn't alone, and thanks to Hayes I've now got a much better handle on who got here when and how. But what's got me coming back for much more of Hayes' shtick are the nuggets that come from this part of the world being, in effect, such a distant corner of the globe until well into the 18th Century and beyond. Hayes expounds upon the typical colonial rivalry motivations (Spanish vs. British...vs. Russian...as a way of getting to China - quite a twist in the case of the Pacific Northwest - FYI). He manages to also quite uniquely showcase the bursts of energy and influence that luck had in settling this part of the World. Just plain awesome nerdball (of history buff) stuff. In fact, his entire bibliography looks fascinating and he comes off as a real nerd's nerd. That's a compliment. Takes one to know one. If you lean in any sense in that direction, I highly recommend checking it all out.

Does a weasel by any other name smell as sweet?

I've recently become a consumer of results from various Google Alerts. Much of the time, there's very little worth noting from the obscure searches I've set up. Today, however, I hit the quirky jackpot. Or at least gained new respect for the sort of non-news that gets reported from the truly wide world of weird out there. If you want to know how "mink" and "Washington" showed up in the Google newsy algorithms today, click on through to this little nugget. The title "Acquittal in Dead Weasel Assault" only provides part of the story. I expect the remainder will be left to a team of screenwriters to fully flesh out once the rights are sold. Remember, you heard it here first. Or second, if you read what I read daily.