sheer potentiality

In case anyone cares, I didn’t find anyplace interesting to go this weekend so I’m just sitting around in my apartment.

Life is…usual and unusual all at once. Having been sick of winter for over a month, I’m now yearning for summer to return. Warm evenings on green grass, the dry Pullman heat during the day, happy solitude and carefree afternoons. I have this idealized image of summers here, and I know it has little to do with reality, but a few fleeting moments between Mays and Augusts in this town have lived up to it, and it’s these moments I remember. It’s these moments I want back more than anything.

But I can’t have them for very long this year, if at all. If my life goes well, I’ll have an internship. That means I’ll be stripped away from this place and put to work this summer, only to return, not to the happy summer Pullman of my memories but to a busy fall (or winter!) Pullman. As much as I reminisce about summers here, that’s simply one old memory I have to move on from, and hope that somewhere in my future there will be more like it.

There’s a three day weekend coming up. I was planning on taking a short trip somewhere, but I’m becoming increasingly convinced that “good place to visit during the winter” and “within a day’s driving distance of Pullman, Washington” are incompatible requirements. I’d rather not drive long distances over frozen roads, but getting to an unfrozen place would be worth it.

Most of Washington and Oregon are in range, as are Idaho, parts of Montana, and parts of British Columbia. Right now I’m going for “not frozen over”, although “more frozen over than Pullman so Pullman seems warm by comparison” is becoming an appealing Plan B. I’m looking for something far from civilization where there are likely to be few people around, something pretty and natural-like. In short, I’m looking for a couple days of beauty and solitude, preferably without freezing to death. I have a low budget and will most likely sleep in the back of a Ford Explorer (Not freezing to death is somewhat important, but not totally—I do have bedding and such I can cover myself with at night). I would like the opportunity to take pictures and such as well. I would leave, at earliest, Saturday morning, and return, at latest, on Monday.

I’m going to keep looking but it doesn’t look too promising. Any suggestions?