We were late for Christmas: This traveler’s hunt for smalltown Christmas ended in a different kind of magic
We missed Christmas.
And it isn’t even Dec. 25 yet.
We went looking for smalltown Christmas and mostly found that it had already happened.
The road took us west out of Spokane, then north into wheat country: Odessa. Wilbur. Creston. Davenport. Reardan. Town after town where the businesses along the main drag were lit, wreaths in windows, strings of lights doing their duty.
Festive enough.
But no grand displays.
No crowds.
No moment that made you pull over and say this is it.
More Ho Ho No than Ho Ho Ho.
It turns out we were late.
Hometown Christmas in Davenport and Odessa had already taken place. Big craft markets wrapped up back on Nov. 29. Judging for the Harrington light displays is still to come.
Different towns. Different calendars. Different ways of marking time.
I’m used to Christmas happening at Christmas – the markets this weekend or next, the sense of occasion swelling right up against the holiday itself. I’m also an atheist who celebrates Christmas, not as doctrine but as season. As gathering. As light. Humans have been marking the dark far longer than any single belief system, from Christmas to Alban Arthan, the Druid celebration of the winter solstice. Different names. Same impulse.
Inside the car, though, none of that mattered much.
The fuel
When I pulled into the apartment parking lot to pick up Caitlin Miller, my co-pilot for the day and Spokesman-Review copy desk chief, she was standing there holding her chihuahua, Izabell.
She just wanted me to meet her dog. I said, “Izzy’s coming, right?” She asked if I minded. I pshawed and Izzy got her first Eastern Washington road trip.
We fueled up on coffee at Jacob’s Java on Sullivan in the Valley and hit the road. The music was playing, technically, but we didn’t really have a soundtrack because Caitlin and I talked nonstop.
We’ve worked together at The Spokesman-Review for four years, but I’m fully remote. Slack doesn’t count as time together. Seven hours in a car does.
Outside the windows, we were getting a respite from the endless onslaught of rain. The sky was clear and blue. Sandwiched between floods and wind damage on the West Side and North Idaho, Spokane’s been relatively unscathed, but the nonstop rain has worn on everyone’s disposition.
This day felt like a release.
Bella, the Maremma sheepdog, felt it, too.
She’s three months shy of 12 and living with an aortic thromboembolism that’s changed the way we move through the world. She tires quicker now. She’s less interested in sitting for my camera. Her breathing can be labored. And yet, after the last couple of months, of blood draws and ultrasounds, she needed this day as badly as I did.
And there’s Caitlin and Izzy, who needed it, too. Like me as a young journalist, Caitlin is far from family and focused almost entirely on work. I wanted to get her out of the building, out of routine, into the strange quiet beauty of this region.
This route was not new to me. We stopped first at that old farmhouse, then a barn, another abandoned farmhouse and a schoolhouse. The advancement of decay – the once-beautiful barn now reduced to a pile of toothpicks – feels less like loss and more like time doing its work.
One of the two farmhouses remains standing, a testament to its build. Brick resists time, while wood absorbs the years and walls bow under wind, snow and years of neglect.
The most striking of the four is the one-room schoolhouse in Govan that hasn’t seen a class since 1942. Once a place of order and learning, it now belongs almost entirely to the elements. The roof has caved in. The interior is open to sky and rain and snow.
Maybe not everything is meant to be preserved. Some things are meant to be witnessed for a brief span in time. It’s on us to acknowledge their labor and build from it.
Christmas, where are you?
In Wilbur, finally on track to find smalltown Christmas, we stopped at Billy Burger.
Everyone who road trips with me has to have a Billy Burger and a milkshake. It’s a rule. A ritual. A reward for showing up. Despite a recent gluten allergy, I devoured my burger knowing full well I’d pay for it later. Some moments are worth the consequences. This was one of them.
We found the small Christmas display at Wilbur Community Park. Nothing extravagant. Just lights, a little care and space enough to stop. We took photos of the dogs. It felt intimate. A nod to the season without being too much.
We cruised east on Highway 2, always hopeful we would stumble onto something. Santa was at the Depot in Creston … earlier in the day, so we missed that, too. And train rides with Santa at the Inland Northwest Rail Museum near Reardan … missed. There was a tree lighting at the Rocklyn Zion Chapel near Davenport … tomorrow, and missed.
Harrington’s downtown strip is a treat. Festive lights string from light pole to light pole and the shops boast displays of Christmas that are oldtime-y and yet timeless.
Alas, they were all closed. We got there too late in the day, another missed opportunity.
What we didn’t miss? A gorgeous sunset. Spied in the sideview mirrors of Eddie the Edge, we pulled off the highway onto one of the many dirt roads and found a spot with a gorgeous view of the mountains to the north.
An Eastern Washington sunset is really something to behold and worship, all gold and open sky. The stubble of the wheat field glowed in the golden hour and the dogs posed masterfully in the last good light (Izzy has some work to do).
Not Christmas magic, exactly – but magic all the same.
We went looking for Christmas and found something quieter instead.
A reminder that time is the thing we’re actually marking – not what lasts, but what we’re present for while it’s here.
Some things are built to endure. Some are built to weather.
Both count.
Angela Schneider is a part-time copy editor with The Spokesman-Review and part-time dog photographer. Follow her adventures with Bella at @our.gr8.escape.