Destiny

The Snoqualmie River runs south to north through the valley, snaking back and forth across the valley floor. Two of the ox bows of the river come right up to the road that runs along the east side of the valley; you could hurl a bottle out of the window of your car and right into the river as you hurtle past.

It's a pretty spot, and the rise of the embankment makes it a great place to make photographs. The added elevation always helps get a bit more shape into the sand bar that forms and re-forms along the river bend with every heavy rain. I used to stop there every little while, just to take a moment to look at the river.

Last August, a mother and her daughter were driving up the road. It was dark, and raining, and the mother was apparently drunk. She ran off the road, off the embankment, and into the river. The car hit the water upside down. The mother was rescued by the folks who live on the other side of the road. It took rescue crews a frantic 80 minutes to locate the car in the river, in the rain, in the dark. The little girl drowned.

It's taken me this long just to consider stopping there. Taking a photograph sometimes helps me figure things out, and I was sort of hoping that I might find a glimmer of understanding if I could just make even one photograph. But I still don't get it.

Not even a little bit.