Staring at the Kosmos

We walked a half mile down a closed road, past a closed boat launch with pad locked restrooms, down an over grown boat ramp to a wide prairie where Riffe lake once covered.  It took about an hour of wandering the high grass and stopping to inspect jaw bones and intriguing pieces of metal and rock, but we found the remnants of the main street and bridge in town.  Standing in the middle of the razed, abandoned and water worn rounded town, considering the mountains looming over head, it wasn't hard to relate to to folks who kicked stones and muttered 'good riddance' when they heard the town was to be inundated by the Mossy Rock dam in 1968.  Kosmos, probably named by an optimistic homesteader whose few belongings included a bible seemed an apt name for the promise of the land in the 1880's.  To a young woman or man in the 1950's, the mountains probably shrouded the overhead passing of Sputnik and seemed like walls denying a world rapidly changing and entering a nuclear age of rockets and space travel.  This all may be prevarication, however I think it's safe for me to assume these long departed people hated their home town as much as I hate mine.

Leaving Kosmos we stopped at a closed Chinese food restaurant miles from the Interstate.  Desiree had a work meeting with our built in wifi, cellular cancer extender and hand held super computer.  I rolled a cigarette and peed in the bushes.  I wondered if all the water behind the Mossyrock dam would fill the nations radiators and off we went.