Season's Greetings from the ECHS

As the earth continues its revolutions and the stars in the sky look down on our little valley, we might seem insulated, removed from the dramas and political upheavals. And yet, our ties to all of humanity and all of nature are undeniable and more evident than ever. What is the right way forward? How can we, as a community, be more engaged and more relevant to the world? What decisions do we make now that will later bring hope and goodness to the Entiat Valley and beyond?

Albert "Shorty" Long, Wayne, Peggy, Mavis, and Judy , a baby in arms.

Earlier this month, a dear member of the ECHS, and daughter of Albert Long has passed. Judy Long Tudor will be missed so very much. She touched many lives with her kindness, cheerful encouragement, and strong sense of family and community. We offer our deepest condolences to Chuck, her children and grandchildren and many loved ones.

I like to think of how life was in other eras, when Judy was a little girl growing up in the valley.

On November 1, we were able to host a small gathering to hear stories from the past told by Maxine Sage Phillips and Al Shannon. Due to the small size of the museum, we could only invite close family of the speakers and board members of the ECHS and Friends of the Entiat Library. Maxine told of her young life here in the valley and the mysterious occurrences foretelling of her later spending many years living in China.

In her account "All 400 or so of us, who composed the population of Entiat after World War II, were trapped in our little city on the river. Destruction Point was to the South and Knapps

Hill to the North. The mountains to the West and the Columbia River on the

East completed the encirclement. You had to have a good reason to drive into

Wenatchee and nerves of steel to maneuver your car around Destruction Point. You had to have a really good car to drive up Knapps Hill to the tunnel. Hiking out over the mountains was something that only a few could

undertake. Taking the Orondo Ferry across the Columbia was a rare

occurrence."

Al Shannon recounted the major flood of 1948, describing his memories as a 10-year-old boy on the last day of school, observing bridge after bridge being swept away by the raging waters of the Entiat River Valley. How like this year's devastation that flood must have been.

Life in our valley has endured and adapted to the storms of the seasons. Challenge is what has kept us strong and what will continue to help us to grow as we work together to build community. It is the beauty of earth, sky, mountains and wildlife and the compassion and empathy we feel for each other and the world that inspire us to keep going.

Yesterday , I read a passage from Bruce Foxworthy's book, "Making Do and Hanging On - Growing up in Apple Country Through the Great Depression" that brought me such joy. He first tells of "The Big Freeze" in which his family lost their entire crop of apples, due to an early freeze, despite their herculean attempt to save the fruit by harvesting and storing boxes in their house, only to have the fruit go bad, and the moisture from the thawing apples to penetrate the walls of the house, causing them to buckle and warp.

In the very next chapter, titled "River Skating" he writes of a magical event.

The winter of 1935 was historic in its early arrival and severity and a rare thing happened ... the Entiat River froze solid and thick and stayed that way for weeks.

The river surface froze in a beautiful way, as a series of flat shelves of smooth ice with rounded "waterfalls" dropping a couple of inches or so to the next lower surface. The river became a sinuous band of white-blue ice perhaps a hundred feet wide, frozen solidly to the rocks that protruded above the surface. Through our part of the valley, the glistening ice extended for miles between the snow-topped riverbank, and for days the ice remained free of snow. It was, of course, a magnet for skaters of all ages ...

Winter evenings, especially in times so cold that even starting a car was a major challenge, were times when the valley adults needed all the recreation they could contrive. So I guess it was only natural that Daddy, Aunt Ascha, and some neighbors should come up with the idea of a nighttime skating party... The evening of the party, kids were put down for naps so we could stay up late. I could barely ear supper, let along wait for darkness.

When I was finally allowed to go to the river and clamp in my skates, the bonfires were flaring up along the riverbanks. Magically, neighbors began appearing on the ice, bundled up against the cold, skating with all manner of equipment, some pulling kids on sleds. They happily greeted each other, perhaps for the first time in months, and many clustered by the bonfires, talking.

I hadn't heard the term "winter wonderland" but that is exactly what it was. The darkness and the flickering fires transformed daytime's dull scene. Now we had mystery and adventure. The streamside trees, no longer ordinary, now reached out in shapes that make me veer away when I skated past. The dancing bonfires flames make flickering orange streaks on the ice and threw long shadows of protruding rocks and bundled skaters. The air was still and very cold scented only by the bonfires. Crispy sounds of our digging skate blades and our high pitched childish banter, echoed between the riverbanks as we stroked along the ribbon of ice. From the fireside came rumbling conversations of the grownups, punctuated by eruptions of laugher - and occasional ringing of dinner bells. At intervals through the evening, one or another of the neighbors rang these bells to call the skaters for fireside treats and beverages.

... That evening was the more notable because it came after the early freeze in October of that year, when most of our apple crop and those of some neighbors were frozen and ruined. That night while those folks drank coffee and chatted pleasantly around the fires, they knew that some of them faced financial ruin, with loss of ranches built up from nothing. Yer, then or later, I heard no bitter complaints, no railing against God or Nature, no wails of "Why Me?" All I sensed that night was the warmth of neighbors gathered, the celebration of community and the joy of living in our valley.

May the friendship of neighbors, the kindness of strangers, the recognition of our mutual desire to live peaceably with and gratitude for each other and the earth warm our hearts encourage us this winter and into the years ahead.