The Eastern Washington Fires - A Year Later

By: Bob Spiwak

August 1st, 2014, promised to be a busy day. The fires had been pretty much quelled and the rains - which would create their own devastation - had yet to come. I was on my way to the new Gamble Sands golf course near Brewster in north-central Washington for a media event, a prelude to the course's grand opening the following day.

As long as I was driving down valley my friend Cathy in Everett, Wash., asked me to check on her large motor home parked on her property a mile north of Methow. The property is at the bottom of a grade and the vehicle was parked 20 feet or so above the Methow River. Next to the dirt road to the river was a deep ditch going down the hill.

While en route, the sight of charred properties contrasted with fields of greenery that the fire had not consumed all the way down from Carlton. Such was not the case when turning into Cathy's driveway. The first close-up view of what the fire had done appeared in the ditch, utterly scorched all the way to the river. On the other side an asparagus field was decimated.

At the bottom of the grade I was surprised to see the motor home still standing, apparently unscathed, whereas a travel trailer behind it was totally burned. Taking some close-up photos, I was amazed that my friend's rig was seemingly untouched, yet on the river bank below everything was charred. Looking closer, I could see where the fire had gone underneath the vehicle between the front and rear wheels and then resumed its charge to the river. Such are the vagaries of wildfires.

From here, it was on to the Alta Lake Golf Course. The road here goes up a fairly steep hill and to the left was what I remember to be a vineyard, acres of grapes. It too had not been spared. The road makes a turn at the top of the grade, and forks left and right, the latter going to a string of homes across from the fairway. The other road goes to the clubhouse, with homes overlooking the course.

Most of the homes had burned down - only a chimney remaining of one - yet a couple seemed unscathed. As I remember there were three cars along the way that were totally destroyed. Proceeding another few hundred yards, the motel adjacent to the clubhouse seemed to be unscathed but the clubhouse was gone. Next to it the clean-up crew was busy with a backhoe piling the remains of the golf cart fleet into a large, blackened mass. The green fairways contrasted with the blackened rough.

Then it was off to Gamble Sands, through the devastation in Pateros and the north side of Highway 97. The fire did not get to the new course. After lunch and some speeches we went out to play.

Hours later, after finishing the 18th hole, I drove the golf cart to a collection area and, before I was even out of it, a course employee I knew ran up to me and said that I could not get home as the highway had been closed because of another fire south of Winthrop. I called home and my wife Gloria suggested I might make it by taking the Eastside Road. That worked.

Back home, across the way the new fire was visible and, at the airport, I could tell it was in the vicinity of Hoot 'n Holler development and Rising Eagle Road. There was a long line of cars and people were watching the fire across the valley. It seemed unreal that after two weeks the fire had jumped back 40 miles.

Obviously it had to be a new conflagration, and subsequently was blamed on sparks from a dragging flat-tired wheel.

It was not a happy day, and somehow did not seem right to be playing golf. It still does not.

Bob Spiwak took up golf in 1953 while awaiting the Korean War draft. First published at the age of 12, he entered the golf-writing arena in the early 1980s as a freelancer and staff writer for Golf Course News and GolfWeek, all the while freelancing for other publications in the U.S. and abroad. A co-founder of the Northwest Golf Media Association and contributing editor of Cybergolf, he lives below a mountain near Mazama, Wash., with a wife and pets on his former Whispering Rattlesnakes Golf and Flubbers Club. They have unwelcome guests like cougars, bears, deer, and Bob's very high handicap.

Tweet