Rural Washington Lives!!!

Category: tips I don't want to forget | Posted: Thu Dec 13, 2007 9:34 pm

The thread I started about the storm devastation here was strictly to help me deal with it. But this story was just too much fun so I'm blogging it to remember.
DH has been fixing phone lines in storm-damaged areas. Since some major areas are still unreachable (still underwater 2 weeks later!) the company sent him off to tend to the hinterlands. So way out beyond Humptulips (yes, that's it's real name, a tribal name) he went. The lone road to a few scattered homes had washed out completely, leaving nothing but a 10-foot-deep and wide gorge where it had been. And low in that gorge in the middle of nowhere was a broken phone line. The walls were still crumbling as DH walked up to the gap, and he was more than a little concerned about working so deep, 45 highway minutes from the phone garage. So on an off chance, calls out to the unresponsive wild rhododendrons, madrona, and firs. To his amazement, a voice calls back.
"I don't think anyones home", a response aimed at the woodland cabin nearby. Steve (DH, that is) replies that he just wants a spotter as he climbs down into the gap . So out of the woods steps a very kind-faced hunchback.
Seems he'd been riding his quad nearby and a belt broke, so he was headed out to find someone to tow it for him. He stayed to make sure the rocks didn't collapse on DH, and went on his way.
So Steve is working on splicing the phone line in the silence of the woods for awhile. Suddenly, there's a woman standing at the edge of the hole. In Carharts. Just checking on his progress. Seems she hadn't been able to call another fellow, who lived about 3 miles into the woods, so she'd parked her car nearby and hiked the distance in to check on him. In the freezing weather. Made sure he was ok and was now on her way home.
This is the way I remember rural Washington from my childhood. Even the way I remember the once-microscopic-now-bedroom-community that I live in now. I'm so glad there are still places like that out on the penninsula, even if they have to endure names like Humptulips and Lilliwaup!

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Droopy wrote on Thu Dec 13, 2007 9:55 pm:

It's good that people think of others in the middle of such a devastation. I had to laugh, imagining Steve's face as the bushes answered.

dooley wrote on Thu Dec 13, 2007 10:43 pm:

Sometimes it takes a disaster to bring people together but in the hinterlands people have to look out for each other. People still did that when I was growing up but not sometimes it's not safe unless you really know the people. dooley