Wednesday, December 30, 2009

Oh Diane, I almost forgot. Got to find out what kind of trees these are. They're really something.

the town is pocketed in an intersection between two highways, off I-90 to Seattle, hidden amongst valleys, huge snow capped mountains and americanism that is unintentionally tacky and predisposed to tourism.
The main street is speckled with wind chimes, club house sandwiches, book stores, and pieces of small-town history, including a large cross-sectioned slice of a tree, and ancient trains stretching for blocks that housed the tortured body of Laura Palmer, from Twin Peaks.
We followed the rustic sign to Snoqualmie Falls, and arrived at a vast amusement park-like parking lot, immediately turning the experience sour, as RVs, sight-seeing buses, and family sedans were unloading squawking tourists, as we fought for a space to park our car. We joined the mass waiting in line for viewpoint A, viewpoint B, and viewpoint C, mingling with children on leashes with names like “nugget” or other exotic names that are only decipherable if one spoke spanish, grunts or whistles.
We followed with the movement to a half mile trail that declines to the bottom of the falls, where we stood determining whether or not to continue down watching people that looked so juxtaposed onto nature, as they exasperatedly climbed with their alien-eyed sunglasses, cellular devices, and coyote and eagle print faux velvet blankets. Such a crowd never looked so out of place to me in my life, totally alien. At ground level, people were merged into a single file line to see viewpoint D, this line stretched along for several minutes, and I couldn’t help but to laugh loudly, almost manically, as two chicas screamed and singed hot breath on my neck and squealed at their gatorade guzzling chicos, yards in front of me. I peered over shoulders to see a view of the falls, it was almost like we were at the vatican. The best view I had was through a camera’s LCD screen.
Leave it to man to turn a natural landscape into a Disney-Land like experience, one where you even forget you are in nature, altering your reality and time, much like that of the Twilight Zone.
If anything, its nothing like what I was expecting, and I guess thats something.

No comments:

Post a Comment