Undiscovered Washington Trout Lake Valley
November 26, 2017 - TROUT LAKE VALLEY, WA -I want to better understand why it is so important for people to be close to nature. So I head north, into the very wilderness that is White Salmon’s backyard. I only have two more hours of daylight left, so I decide to head up Highway 141 toward Mt. Adams to see Barbara Hansen, who runs Meadowrock Alpaca Farm. Barbara is 70 years old and a retired accountant. She and her husband started Meadowrock 11 years ago. Around 1,000 tourists visit her farm each year, so I figure she has a pretty good sense of the kind of person that travels here and why they do it. As she shows me her alpacas, she tells me about her growing up in this area. She recalls looking out her bedroom window at Mt. Adams in the distance and dreaming about climbing it one day. That dream stayed with her throughout adolescence and into adulthood, until one day, in the summer of her 50th year, she found herself standing on the top of Mt. Adams with the world spread out below. “Up there you can breathe in the universe,” she tells me. Her climbing days behind her, she now revels in the changing of the seasons. Particularly the beauty of the fall, when the air is crisp and the cottonwoods, maples, and aspen turn shades of brilliant yellow, orange, and red. The fall, she says, is the time when “you’ve worked all year, enjoyed the summer, and things start to wind down and get quiet. It’s time to relax.” It’s this desire for solitude and peacefulness, along with the same independent spirit and sense of determination that propelled her up the mountain, that she notices most in the travelers that choose to spend time in this region. She says
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the people that come here to climb mountains, bike trails, kayak rivers, pilot snowmobiles, and hunt in dense forests are not looking to be catered to. Once you leave White Salmon, there are few lodges for shelter and few restaurants for food. “The solitude and peacefulness make you feel closer to yourself. This is a vacation spot for people who are self-reliant. You have to bring yourself,” she tells me as the sun dips below the horizon. *****