Spring Isn’t Far Away

Dizzy and I rolled into the burg on a sunny Sunday afternoon earlier this month. You re- member Dizzy. He is the black labradoodle I adopted from the Walla Walla Hu- mane Society as a puppy a few years ago and almost lost on a dark winter's night off Smith Hollow Road last time I wrote a column about us.

Of course he was alive and well that night, sitting patiently by the back door after I searched for him for hours up and down the fields and almost gave up. He was there, back home, just like a local farmer, whose door I knocked on during my search, predicted.

Dizzy has gotten a bit older, but he has as much juice as he's ever had, particularly after sitting in the car for more than four hours during the long drive from Seattle.

When we finally hit Main Street around 4 p.m., I decided to keep driving towards the hills south of town to find a spot where he could get his ya yas out before the sun went down. We never lose each other in the daylight and didn't this time either - for readers concerned about this column's ending.

This time, our adventure was much more about tak- ing a deep breath of country quiet and feeling happy and enveloped by the beauty of our Touchet Valley, steeped in the gold of a warm winter sun and basking in a day that was longer than the one be- fore and the one before that.

That warmth was already there before we reached the hills. We weaved leisurely through Waitsburg's streets like we sometimes do just to relish the small-town com- fort that resides up and down the sidewalks.

We turned up Fourth where we saw Pastor Brett Moser and his wife Bethany sitting comfortably in the yard in front of their home watching their kids enjoy the street that separates their yard from that of the historic Bruce Mansion on the other side.

Further up on Arnold, I waved to Larry and Deanne Johnson who were taking their dog for a walk, and when we turned the corner and drove up Sixth, we caught a glimpse of Nick and Chad Pearson hooping it up in front of their garage. Elsewhere, kids pedaled their bicycles past us on the sidewalk.

For Dizzy and me it was the first time seeing Waits- burgers enjoy being outside since the onset of winter and it reminded me of one of the many reasons why it always feels like coming home when we arrive on a day like this. Even if I didn't know the Mosers, the Johnsons or the Pearsons, I would have been enchanted. We continued slowly through town with the light angling in from the west, then drove out on Coppei Avenue into the hills towards Walla Walla. After a mile or two, we turned east on Mc- Cown and south on Coppei Road, crossed the bridge across the creek south of the Carpenters' farm and wound our way into the hills.

After a while the road turned to gravel. I had re- membered a forested path in a gulch higher up, but we didn't go that far. Instead, we took an earlier turn up into a hollow and I parked near an abandoned field road. I got out under the sun's rays fil- tered through the alders and ponderosa pines, blue jays fleeting overhead.

Dizzy launched from the back of the car when I opened the hatch. He was beside himself. He always covers many times the dis- tance, running back and forth, up and down as he did on this old field road. Even a steep swath didn't slow him down. If only he could ap- preciate what I saw when we reached the crest of a ridge overlooking the foothills of the Blues, hearing the call of a thrush in the setting sun, feeling a mildness in the air.

Looking out over the distant lowlands in layered lavender rolling forth be- neath our feet, the dark and gray of winter receded and made way for the promise of spring.

As my father would have said: "This was one day they can't ever take away from us."