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The Fall Out Kid

© Mary Trotter Kion

Guest author and Washington State resident Mary Kion, our Suite101.com Great American Plains writer, shares her view of Washington State.

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I usually roam around the Great American Plains here at Suite 101 and would like to thank Jerri Brooker for this opportunity to write about the desert of eastern Washington State. My portion of this desert is in the southeastern sector where three towns nestle together along the Columbia River: Richland, Pasco, and my town of Kennewick.

Washington hasn't always been my home. My infancy began in Nebraska where I fell out of my crib and rolled under a bed. I wasn't hurt but this started, and almost finished, my career as the "Fall Out Kid." The house was on fire and I nearly wasn't found in time. As a child in Missouri, California, and Arkansas I continued to fall out, or off, of things. I fell out of trees, trapezes in trees, tricycles, bicycles and once a carousel horse. I nearly fell out of a car, though I was saved by my father's quick grab at the hem of my little dress.

Somehow I managed to grow up and fall in and out of love a few times before I fell out of a forty-foot wave. That rolling wall of water dumped me, minus snorkel and flippers, on a beach in Hawaii. Fortunately, like a toddler grasping her dress-tail for balance, I grabbed the bottom of my green bikini or I'd have put a new twist on the meaning of a "topless beach."

Since then it's been a tale of falling snow and downward drifting ash. Just prior to arriving in Washington State in 1979, I left Wisconsin while a few fluffy feet of snow fell during the worst storm they'd had in years. Snow began falling on New Years Eve in 1978 and was still falling when I left Wisconsin in February of 1979. Oh was I looking forward to wonderful green Washington where the weather is mild even in winter.

Wrong!

Before I got here snow fell across the desert and the fog was so thick it seemed as though a cloud had landed. But with the arrival of spring the desert transformed into a heavenly pallet of muted hues washing across the dry land. Everything was beautiful until, like the country song about Sunday morning coming down, Sunday morning really did come down. Ash and soot was falling from clouds doing a topsy-turvy act. Mount St. Helens had blown her top.

The copyright of the article The Fall Out Kid in Washington State is owned by Mary Trotter Kion. Permission to republish The Fall Out Kid in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.