Tour Deshais: Charred Methow Valley landscape tempers joy

The scorched lands around the road leading to Loup Loup Pass are a grim reminder that not even a year ago the Methow Valley was under siege by Mother Nature.

Wildfires jumped rivers and highways – the same ones I crossed today. Houses and power lines fell to the flames, and the largest fire in state history threatened town after town, including Twisp.

As I peddled up to Loup Loup, the forest that I can only imagine was verdant a year ago now consists of blackened, dead trees. At one point I simply stopped pedaling, in awe of the destruction.

I tried to not let it ruin my joy of making it to the top of the pass, my climb of the day. But that was impossible. The fires and merciless actions of nature never left me.

Later on, my final 25 miles of the day took me from Omak to Tonasket, an easy final leg I looked forward to, and a distance I do regularly back home. But a stiff head wind pushed against me the entire way, turning what should have been a two-hour leg into three long hours.

I bellowed my curses at the wind and begged it to stop. It didn’t. I raged at its infinite uncaring, and it just kept blowing.

Earlier in the day, I had read about the Curtis sheep slaughter, where cattlemen attacked the newly arrived shepherds and their sheep. The conflict reached a climax when hundreds of sheep were clubbed to death. Their sun-bleached bones remained for years in the fields near Okanogan as a reminder of the hostility.

As I rode, I imagined the wind as sheep.

My dark thoughts didn’t work.

Rather, I’ll just change my direction tomorrow as I follow U.S. Bicycle Route 10. Instead of due north, I go east into the mountains and toward Republic.

I hope the wind stays behind.