It reminds me of home.
Tootsie Tonasket got me on the phone as I was driving to the Tandy Hills today. Tootsie lives in Eastern Washington.
Eastern Washington is a totally different landscape from the green of Western Washington. Much of Eastern Washington is desert with rolling hills covered with brown grass in summer.
As a kid I always thought the Eastern Washington hills looked like the upholstery on a sofa. If you removed the trees from the Tandy Hills and just left the current golden tall grass, it would look like the hills of Eastern Washington.
I think when I see the Tandy Hills it touches some deep, buried happy place in my memory. Nothing made me happier, as a kid, than our family camping trips over to Eastern Washington. With my favorite place being Sun Lakes. On the way to Sun Lakes you drive past a lot of rolling brown upholstered hills, but at Sun Lakes you see no rolling hills, due to it being on the canyon floor of the Lower Grand Coulee.
It was cold and windy hiking the Tandy Hills today. It was colder where Tootsie Tonasket was calling from. Yesterday I was on the Tandy Hills in shorts and a t-shirt. Today it was long pants, 2 shirt layers, a windbreaker, a wool cap over my ears. And gloves.
Tomorrow will be colder. I must do a search for my long underwear.
