The Northwest, Day 6 & 7: Heading East

My grandparents moved to Coeur de'Alene, Idaho when I was eight or nine, and though visits to their little northern town were treasured, the cost and distance made opportunities to do so rare. Two years previous, my dad's side and I dropped in as a surprise for my Grandma's 92nd birthday. Since then, Lizett and I married, but she had yet to meet Grandma Anita and Grandpa Dwayne, who send touching Christmas cards and correspondence and good wishes for every occasion.

And so we drove eastward, away from Seattle, into the dense tree-realm and mountain territories that surround the cities.

Along the way we found a snowy resort and a snowbear dog, and I think I spilled my coffee.

Mountains soon leveled into long stretches of flat, bucolic farmland. It could have been a rural California expanse but for the Northernly quality of the sunlight, and the occasional signs pointing to Canadian cities.

It was a somber drive. Lizett received the terrible news that a good friend from years back had passed away. We shared quiet and reflection as the small towns went by. Lizett composed a letter for her friend, letting her know the effect her soul had had on Lizett's own. She was a unique and genuine person, and a light in the world gone out much too soon. Having one day crossed paths with a friend from back home, how heartbreaking to learn that the path of another could no longer meet ours the next. And here we drove, a thousand miles from home, unfairness an unwanted companion, the clockwork of life ticking on.

Cour d'Alene

We passed through Spokane, and from the airport to neighboring Idaho retraced the route I'd taken half a dozen times as a kid. Only now I was in the driver's seat. I'd say it was a coming-of-age moment, but the closest corollary I can compare it to is Link's return to the Kokiri Forest after seven years in the Chamber of Sages, so maybe I haven't come very far.

Just off the highways, small town Cour d'Alene looked much like the other gentrified burgs that passed our window, and nothing like the snow globe wonderland I remembered, but there were no Deku Scrubs or Babas. We dropped our stuff at the Ramada and hustled to Grandma's house, for it was late afternoon and they go to bed by 8.

Grandma's House

The streets got familiar. There was the sloping picket-fenced housing tract we used to walk by. There was the winding, well-manicured residential road that would lead to the park we used to play at. There was the pink-trimmed house that seemed a million times bigger inside than the outside could hold. Lizett probably got tired of me saying things like this.

And what can I say about a visit to my grandparents' house, introducing them and wife after years of correspondence, catching up and enjoying company?

It was a different perspective to visit, no longer in tow behind an entourage of family, but as some kind of Adult, flying up the country and driving a rental car and everything. One of the few times I've felt like I was actually playing the grown-up role, reinforced by Grandma's repeated declarations that, with my beard and glasses, I looked like a professor.

I may have aged, but at a spry 94 years young, Grandma Anita was the same bouncing ball of energy she always was, and just as effusively polite, accommodating, and considerate as ever. She and Grandpa Dwayne even cooked a vegetarian dinner. They weren't aggrieved by our meatless condition as one might expect a grandparent to be, but let it be known that Dwayne proudly eats nothing green, if he can help it, and his fruit and vegetable menu includes only those which grow in his garden. You can't argue with success.

After dinner we played a relatively complicated post-war card game called Hand and Foot. It's a team game that requires a lot of counting, memory, and strategy. They trashed us badly.

By the end of the session it was after 9 and well past bedtime, so we headed on. White-people dinner being more a late lunch, we went through a nearby Mexican drive-thru on the way back to the hotel, and were flabbergasted by the low prices. If there were $4 wet burritos like that in Anaheim, things would be different. We also stopped in a gas station for beverages and found zip fizz singles. I could like it here.

DTCDL & Tubbs Hill

The next morning, the mythic lands of my childhood awaited. I assumed running "Downtown CDL" though the GPS would get us to the lakes, shops, hiking and parks that I remembered, and was right; three miles on a single street and we parked in a lot outside the main street.

There was a light rain and solid overcast, as there should be.

Lizett met the moose and mouse duo whose childrens-books adventures connect the parks of Downtown CDL.

The indoor mini-mall, with its collection of mom-and-pop shops, was just opening for the day. An employee at the toy store saw us looking in the window and let us in early. He even gave us a carny demonstration of some gizmo or another, and we felt obliged to take a great interest in marvelous high-end toys we had no intention of buying. There was also a store of dog stuff, with its mascot black lab laid out by the register. Wife spent a lot of time here.

The brunch spot was Honeys, and their veggie-friendly specialty was a surprising chickpea bowl that I still think about.

Here we sat and watched the rain gild the antique streets to their proper northerly shine.

When the weather ebbed, we headed to the lakes.

I could see myself aboard my grandparents' boat so many years ago, gliding over the calm waters, tracing the shoreline, wondering at the presumably uncharted lands hidden beyond the overgrown banks.

But the central expedition of every trip was the conquering of Tubbs Hill, a modest hiking mountain which presides over the lakes region.

The entry point leads up and around the mountain, and the town you struck out from is quickly forgotten. Branching paths take you deeper into green or out along the perimeter, where panoramic views of the surrounding lakes, mountains and sky are unbroken.

The paths climb higher as you go, but one can navigate craggy cuts down to hidden shores. We had this one to ourselves.

For a long time we watched the specks and pebbles sift in the tide, granular elements of the mountain displayed like jewels under glass.

The unique qualities of the geology shine in every shore and sheer rock face. It's like the whole Earth is replete with fool's gold.

(It's shinier in person.)

It was hard to move on from so rare and private a pocket of creation, but I'd sown more memories into the mountain over the years and wanted to see how they'd grown.

Like the swinging rope bridges, which once seemed so precarious an escort over steep clefts and roiling fecundity.

And the dizzying elevation, hosting hikers among the treetops.

And the metal dandelions, sprung impossibly from the ground, to one day release their shrapnel spores and plant a new town.

Childhood paths retraced to satisfaction, we launched a new expedition: find a bloody mary.

Though a general store floats fifty yards into the lake, sailors setting anchor at these docks would find no hand-crafted refreshments.

We found the lounge of a lakeside resort, but the view couldn't make up for the bad value and we didn't linger long.

Getting back to the main street, the Moose bar offered a shady lookout, and just happened to be the official home of the best bloody marys in town. What luck.

They were good. While we sat, the bar staff prepped a stage area for music, which would start that evening. DTCDL nightlife? How about lunch first.

We went back to Grandma's house, and with a deck of gift cards sent by family on many a birthday and Christmas, got takeout from the nearby Outback Steakhouse.

We had time for a longer visit, and to talk about our far-flung family groups, and Grandma and Dwayne's own plans for the future. Their home for retirement, though beautiful and comfortable, is a long way from the family. The household chores get a little harder every season, the snow piles high each year, and neither have been without health issues. They'd thought long and hard about moving back to Southern California, or finding a retirement community in Couer d'Alene, but neither was eager to leave. The boat was long sold, Dwayne's workshop was mostly abandoned, and the basement I used to play in had become an rare endeavor, but it was still the home they built together, and for that, it had everything they needed. Though the trials of age are inescapable, they weather them together with a love and positivity that affected us both to see.

When it was time to say goodbye, they walked us to the door. Grandma took Dwayne's hand, though she insisted she could see us out well enough. On the porch, Dwayne drew down the large American flag that hangs proudly outside their door. It takes effort for him to put the flag up and take it down each day, but he will continue to do so until he no longer can.

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DTCDL After Dark

For our final night in the north, we returned to downtown to see how the city plays on a Saturday night.

Most of the shops on the main street were dark, but groups of bar goers loitered here and there, and music poured up from stairways leading to underground gathering spots. One such stairway led beneath Honey's, where we'd eaten that morning, and opened into a turn-of-the-century basement bar with live band. It was packed to the walls, but we ordered food and drinks and squeezed onto a bench seat.

The crowd was mostly friendly kids in their early 20's. Everyone seemed like they knew each other, and they probably did. The Couer d'Alene youth on their Saturday night. We'd come a long way from Seattle's trans warehouses, goth dungeons, and DnB bunkers, but it was definitely the speed we were looking for.

The band was a duo or trio playing pop and hiphop covers on a pretty cool rig of samplers paired with live vocals. The highlight was a cover of Hotline Bling that got the beanies bobbing.

The crowd got thin around 1. We might have hopped down to another basement around that point, or we might have gone home to the Ramada, but it was fun either way, and I was glad to have tread a new landing beyond Couer de'Alene's placid shores.