The Slice: Quick drive leads to ideal setting

If you feel like taking a drive and don’t want to travel all that far, I have a recommendation.

Head out to the Washington State Veterans Cemetery near Medical Lake.

If you have never been there or have not been out since it was just a driveway and a field, you might be surprised. It is still pretty modest. But it has become a bona fide burial ground.

For those with loved ones interred there, the place’s significance is obvious. Same goes for those with a special regard for military veterans, for whatever reason.

But even if you do not have a personal connection, the setting can be an ideal spot for a contemplative walk or a few moments spent gazing at Mount Spokane off in the distance.

Perhaps the most remarkable aspect is the quiet. I could tell you about it. But maybe you should experience it for yourself.

I suppose military aircraft can be heard overhead on occasion. Though that would just sound like a salute.

Warm-up question: If birds named their nests the way human developers name residential subdivisions, what would they come up with?

Today’s Slice question: There’s a scene in Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice” in which the supremely self-impressed Lady Catherine de Bourgh volunteers that though she never learned to play the piano, she knows that she would have been great if she had.

So here’s the question. What musical instrument would you have played like a virtuoso if you had learned way back when?

Me? The banjo. No doubt. Unfortunately, the 10,000 hours I might have spent practicing were tied up with watching reruns of “The Twilight Zone.”

On second thought, maybe it would have been the trombone or the clarinet. I had a brief big band music infatuation when I was about 19 and thought it would be cool to be a young Glenn Miller or Benny Goodman. Unfortunately that ambition was sidetracked by a dedicated exploration of how much beer one 1970s college student could drink before getting kicked out of school.

OK, your turn.