The Times - Serving Waitsburg, Dayton and the Touchet Valley

Last night, when I took Dizzy for a walk up the alley, past the el- ementary school and back down Main Street, I looked up at the night sky. The moon wasn't quite full since it had an oval side, but it was bright. Around it, stars hung quietly above Preston Hall.

One of them was on the move. Or, wait, it had a very small flashing light that hinted at its linear progress across the sky at least a mile high: a jet making its way west, probably to Portland International.

In Waitsburg, I had never seen an airplane en route before. Someone once told me there are no commercial carrier routes over this part of the state and he was right. This moving "star" was passing across the North- west somewhere over Pend- leton or perhaps even further south.

We turned the corner and continued our walk. The night was balmy but cooled down from the blazes earlier in the day and I decided to grab a glass of Waitsburg Cellars Pinot Gris to accompany me in the swing on the porch.

I sat there quietly rocking and came to appreciate the moment almost intensely. I was just there. I had no agenda, no one to call, no emails to check, no stories to write or bills to pay. I could just sit there and take in the quiet sight of the lit- up Bruce Mansion and the crickets ringing shyly in the gardens and the gentle hiss of Tom and Anita Baker's evening sprinklers across the street.

Then I thought about a comment a friend made re- cently. At first, I didn't quite understand him. He was talk- ing about how "America" was disappearing. No, not swallowed by a tsunami or flattened by an earthquake, but disappearing in time.

I must have looked puz- zled because he continued to explain. When I still didn't seem to get it, he reminded me of a car ride he once gave me. I had written about it for the Times several years ago.

It was the night of the Classic Auto Show and the vintage rigs were heading out of town on Main Street, coming by our house and as we watched them drift by, Gary Lowe stopped his '59 Cadillac, rolled down his window and invited us to come along.

It became one of the most memorable rides of my life. From the expansive back seat, we marveled at the landscape that floated by outside our windows as we climbed the Middle Waitsburg Road past the wheat field in the honey eve- ning sun and made our way through the hills to Prescott.

It wasn't just the freedom of the road beneath our wheels. It was the spontane- ity of it; the complete lack of agenda; the delight of being in the moment; the timelessness of enjoying an experi- ence together.

That's what he was talk- ing about.

As I was sitting there on my porch, I remembered what he meant. His comment was about the chal- lenge of living in a wired world, where even in a small town like Waitsburg, we aren't far from jet routes, we can get lost in 20 megs of download speeds or link to the world by cell phone. Sure, all these conve- niences are welcome. For small rural communities, they are hugely important because they allow for pro- fessional telecommuting and help stabilize our population, not to mention our tax base. It allows us to connect to the worldhellip;when we want to or when we need to.

That said, we might want to remember once in a while why we choose to live in the country, what we appreciate about it and unplug while we're here. The blessings of that kind of spontaneity are infinite.

To me, there is nothing finer that watching the swal- lows dart across the setting sun above the grain silo or listening to kids play on the beach at Lyons Ferry Park or taking a "useless" summer spin up Middle Waitsburg Road.

It reminds me of that Jack Johnson song "Wast- ing Time." It's about the romance of being together and letting time slip through your fingers. It's about the feeling of being. It's about hearing a symphony in the silence.