Progress

Kennewick, Washington, has everything you’ll ever need. At the Columbia Center, just down the street from my Fairfield Inn, you’ll find Build-a-Bear and Cinnabon, Hot Topic, Sephora, Macy’s. It is, in fact, “The Tri-Cities’ family favorite shopping dining and community destination.” (I don’t know why they reject the serial comma.) Target is just across the street, Costco’s around the corner.

For at least 9,000 years, the original residents of the area–Umatilla, Nez Perce, Wanapum, and Yakama–managed without these conveniences. According to records from the Lewis and Clark expedition in 1805, about five to six thousand people lived peacefully here, catching salmon in the Columbia, living comfortably through the relatively mild winters. Then, as Wikipedia so deftly describes it, the area was “discovered and settled by European descendants.” Now the native American population of Kennewick is .8%. In spite of what website photos suggest, you’d spend a long day at the Columbia Center S’barro before seeing anyone but those European descendants’ descendants. (Kennewick Black population = 1%.)

I’m happy to have cheap(ish) Costco gasoline handy to fuel up for the final leg of my journey, but I’m feeling a lot of loss here this morning: loss of my absolutely privileged October Dream Trip, loss of my Chipper’s youthful resilience (and, of course, my own former vim), and loss of a convenience-free Kennewick. Thanks, again, to T. Roosevelt, and other progressive politicians and activists for working to save some of our past, for knowing that our wild, undeveloped land is not just valuable, but essential.