The Times - Serving Waitsburg, Dayton and the Touchet Valley

Spring in the scablands is purely magical, and that's no exaggeration. I can testify because the striking landscape, the rich cultural and natural history of the area, the diversity of wildlife, basalt bluffs, and grasslands coax me into photography when I should be fishing the many lakes that support healthy rainbow trout populations. This year, I ventured further north to Swanson Lakes, eager to experience early wildflowers.

One golden April afternoon, I searched for anything colorful, feathered, or historic. Few landscapes are more captivating than those sun-scorched, cracked, jagged, and roughened by stone and senesced vegetation most of the year. The scablands are home to elegant, intricate, and vibrant blooms that come to life with the sun's warmth and nourishment of spring rains.

Stark-white shooting stars, brilliant sagebrush buttercups, sapphire trumpet bluebells, and fuchsia wallflower phoenicaulis appeared like confetti among the grasses. Getting down on their level revealed another world of drooping yellow bells and blankets of delicate sand spring beauties and prairie stars.

Orange globemallow and arrowleaf balsamroot were awakening among the rocks. Seafoam fruticose lichens appeared wooly among emerald ferns and black cyanobacteria.

Brad Trumbo

Stark-white shooting stars were the first flowers to catch Trumbo's eye in the northern scablands.

Cloud cover and distant storms spawned dramatic skies, painting a fitting backdrop for a land with a tortured origin. Landscape features like the quintessential scablands buttes and scoured troughs, and the charred remains of once lush wetland cottonwood stands appeared prominent against the pewter clouds and cobalt skies above.

Brad Trumbo

Scorched trees and wetland pockets against a backdrop of rolling snow squalls add to the drama of this tortured landscape.

Horned larks, savannah sparrows, red-winged blackbirds, and meadowlarks perched and sang while northern harriers soared over the hilltops. More waterfowl than I have ever seen cackled, quacked, and honked on the waters of every divot within earshot. A scattering of rusty 100-year-old horse-drawn farm implements poked through bunchgrasses and weeds. Windmills weakened and toppled by fire lay crumpled on their foundations.

The blackened bark of a stately cottonwood hung from the limbs, wafting in the breeze like teenagers had adorned it with toilet paper. It commanded attention, so much that I failed to notice the Canada goose preparing her nest just feet above my head where a limb had broken off, creating a cupped platform. She noticed me, however. At once, she arose and flew to a nearby pond, where she gathered up her mate. The two noisily vacated for parts unknown, leaving me chuckling as I imagined her saying, "I thought you said this neighborhood was safe!"

Brad Trumbo

The charred bark of this once impressive tree fluttered beautifully in the breeze.

Sagebrush stumps resembling discarded cigar butts poked through the cryptobiotic crust - another reminder of the Whitney Fire that scorched 127,000 acres in September 2020. This landscape is home to one of the few remaining Columbian sharp-tailed grouse populations in Washington State. Sage grouse once called this area home but have been displaced from this now-healing landscape due to the lack of sagebrush.

A junk pile held heaps of coiled barbed wire, old machinery, and the remains of corrugated tin sheeting. All rusted beautifully orange and surrounded by biscuitroot flowers beginning to yellow. A cottontail rabbit offered comical glimpses of bouncing tail fluff as it scurried among implements.

Brad Trumbo

The scattered remains of century-old farm equipment add to the scablands' complicated history.

Hours passed without notice until the golden hour sunset cloaked the landscape in a rich peach hue, making the glacial erratic granite boulders deposited by the Missoula Floods glow pink like cotton candy. It was late evening when I crawled into the camper, fortified by the intimacy I had shared with Mother Nature and the varied history of the channeled scablands. Sleep came at once, fueled by visions of sharp-tailed grouse dancing in the alpenglow of the morrow.