You know, I didn't process how close we passed to the mouth of the Snake River when we drove through Washington a couple of years ago, or I might have talked Robin into a diversion.

The lack of trees in eastern Washington makes the industrialization stand out so much more than in other places I know.

The dryness, combined with the relative flatness, has a harshness that I find hard to take. As I'm writing this, I'm in the San Luis Valley of Colorado, which feels similarly harsh. In this environment, the abandoned stuff that's lying around has no mystery -- at least when there's trees and hills, it feels more like windows to stories.