On the Road Again

Bucephalus does best at maximum RPM's. Shifting too soon into second, windows rattle and the engine groans. We barely crest the Hawthorne St. bridge. But slipping down the other side, shaking ceases and smooth going lay ahead. We crowd the center line of the old Columbia River Highway and leave the rain behind as we cross the river at Cascade Locks and continue east on the Washington side. Past Wallula Gap, the river is much wider and makes its big swing. We stop to imagine the extent of temporary Lake Lewis that came and went 30 times or so, backing up the glacial floods 15,000 years past. To avoid Hanford, Bucephalus turns to run up the Snake River, as far as Starbucks, before crossing over. We pull off to watch the spring freshet pour over Palouse Falls. Above the falls begins central Washington's scablands, an area scoured by the ice age floods that emptied Glacial Lake Missoula, as large as today’s Lake Ontario. This terrain is worthy of study. When water enough floated the ice dam above Pend Oreille, all hell broke loose. A wall of water and debris 500 feet high carried away the blockage from the Clark Fork. The lake emptied within a week. Torrents of the flood denuded the landscape, carved great coolies and scarred the courses of the Columbia, Snake and Salmon Rivers. Bucephalus insisted we explore as far as Whitefish, the upper end of the glacial lake. Our course is set.

Washington State has not a single dinosaur fossil to show the passing tourist. The Olympic Peninsula had floated up from Baja California. The ocean crust subducted beneath the North American continental plate. That collision wrinkled the landscape, creating the Cascade Range and stratovolcanoes. The Columbia River plateau of central Washington filled two miles deep with basalt from volcanic eruptions near the ancient Blue Mountains. No matter how long its neck, never was there a dinosaur that could push up through all that rock for a look around. What Central and Eastern Washington has is a strangely wonderful landscape that can be read by the curious eye. Loess, that finely ground glacial flour formed from debris pulverized under slowly moving glaciers was blown by easterly trending winds to form great hills of the finest soil for agriculture. The wheat fields of the Palouse, the most productive on the globe, create an undulating blanket of pale green in the spring sun. For a good view, Bucephalus strained his two cylinders to the top of Steptoe Butte, never shifting out of first. On the butte’s shoulder, a small park is graced by gnarly apple trees in bloom, remnant of a long gone pioneer farm. Half an hour sipping from a thermos of coffee and munching a pastry picked up at a small town bakery was enough to drive away road weariness. This simulation of a garden gave a protected moment to wonder whether some forgotten pioneer had a moment to drink in such beauty. I cannot help but believe it has been enjoyed by many.

Over the next couple of days, Bucephalus wandered the byways, sought out quiet places to give thought to the landscape of the West. As we pushed eastwards. through the Bitterroot Range, we agreed that Montana is Big Sky Country. In a bison preserve belonging to the Flathead Reservation, elk, antelope and plenty of shaggy bison shedding their winter coats were easy to spot. I looked down from a ridge to see the old shoreline winding along the mountainside defining the water level of Glacial Lake Missoula. Below, an old moraine defined the glacier’s southern limit. On a rather steep ridge across from my vantage

point, a lean grizzly ascended in great leaps and with agility. The grace and swiftness of this animal could never be imagined from the lumbering likeness one might observe in the prison of an urban zoo.

At Whitefish, I settled into a small cottage cradled in a forest of lodge pole pine. A veranda offered a place for breakfast amongst curious squirrels and birds. Doe and fawn were frequent visitors. They never seemed to mind my intrusion. Several months were spent here amongst the erratics, those car sized boulders rubbed smooth and deposited by a retreating glacier. A nearby hospital in Kalispell was short staffed. With patients in need and medical oncologists scarce, help was offered. My days would be given to oncologic care, evenings and weekends to exploration of the geology and spare moments to the study and pursuit of the role of gardens to a contemplative life.

Spring comes late to northern Montana. Snow keeps mountain roads closed until June. Green arrives lazily and once the color of flowers awakens life, you crane your neck, seeking out those first hints of revival. I hung a small vase on an empty wall in my office and daily walked the hospital grounds seeking out something to display. The first weeks were absorbed learning the ropes. Those long gray hallways connecting radiology reading rooms to the laboratory and pathology department were a maze ensuring frequent wrong turns. Seeking the true path, I hummed Hank William’s Lost Highway and asked for help. Shortcuts were found to the ICU and oncology ward. A jaunt across a well planted green gained the

outpatient chemotherapy suite in but 4 minutes, just time enough to pan the mission range guarding entrance to Glacier National Park. But weeks would pass until exploration could begin. Clinical duties absorbed all. Too many were too ill and extra time was given to neglected needs of Native Americans from the Black Feet Reservation, plus Salish and Kootenai from the Flathead Reservation. Thoughts of gardens and the beauty of one’s own retreat were crowded out by patient care. But little by little my horizon broadened, mostly from patients anxious to relate their experiences and advice. “Doc, I came over Marias Pass this morning and the Middle Fork is sure running full. You better take your camera over to the east side. The ice on Two Medicine is starting to break up and they opened the road over the pass to Kiowa.” Yes, patients came alive. Their comments about beloved landscapes and vistas diverted attention, at least for the moment, from the stark realities of illness and uncertain futures. Faces brightened and symptoms receded as they told of growing up on a ranch, collecting huckleberries or of fishing on the Kootenai. These moments cemented our bonds and helped dissipate the anxieties of the white coat syndrome. What treasures they gave me. Flagging energies were always revived.

Months passed quickly, too quickly. By July, the higher mountains in Glacier National Park were accessible. Evening study of plate tectonics and the unique landscape of the park prepared me for seeing as well as looking. Great blocks of billion year old Proterozoic strata had been pushed over Cretaceous layers with an age of a mere 100 million years, creating a great unconformity. The Grinnell Formation was a bright red mud flat of an ancient shallow sea. With a bit of hunting, 1.4 billion year old petrified raindrops, pock marks on the smooth surface of the preserved strata, were uncovered. I held in my hand the ephemeral calling card of a passing shower, so old that not a blade of grass, animal footprint, nor bone had graced the Earth's surface during that storm. Sitting in the shadow of Logan Pass, I rubbed the smooth surface of a petrified indentation, perfect casting of a raindrop. Gazing over a smoothly carved, deep glacial valley, a dark band could be perceived, the Siyeh formation, containing stromatolites, fossilized mats of cyanobacteria, earliest imprints of life on Earth. Viewing was from a protected

black and white photo of mountains trees and cloudy sky

pocket with a tiny streamlet edged by mountain heather and a smooth stone, my perfect perch in paradise.This unimaginable story of Earth's early molding met my definition of garden in all but one aspect. It had not known the hand of man. So much the better. Memories were packed away, a fitting souvenir of northern Montana. A stack of bandanas and a new Stetson hat completed a loadstone of treasures I had been gifted. One asks, what is “souvenir?” French for come again, that’s it. But would I? Unanswered, goodbyes were said. Bucephalus knew our direction and we headed past Valier on the way to Fort Benton and the Missouri Breaks.

Dustan Osborn

Dustan Osborn, member of the Board of Trustees of the Hammond Museum and Japanese Stroll Garden, is a practicing medical oncologist in Washington state. After earning a PhD in Biophysics, he attended medical school, then completed an oncology fellowship at Harvard’s Dana Farber Cancer Center. His avocational interests include photography, old books, and the history of scholarship. He is on the prowl for hole-in-the-wall eateries and interesting places where the crowds don’t go.