One side of my family comes from Eastern Washington. My Great Grandfather settled there in 1908 and started the local bank. After some success, they moved into a beautiful big house with their four daughters and stayed there until 1964.
The home was then purchased and run as a bed and breakfast, Haus Lorelei until 2003.
One of their daughters (my great aunt), Frances, built a house adjacent to the old home and stayed there until she died in 2002 at the age of 92. She left me that house, intending we use it as a getaway. I loved the house and history and the land it occupied, but it just wasn’t feasible for us to keep it.
Enter Harriet Bullitt and a fine fellow named Jeff Parsons, who had a vision for the entire original Field Family property: to piece all the parcels sold over the years back together and turn it into the Barn Beach Reserve. The home now houses the offices of the Reserve and the Upper Valley Museum in Leavenworth, Washington.
I know all of the original family members would be delighted that the property is now restored, and that my Great Aunt France’s home has been turned into something they call The Barn:
A beautiful, state-of-the -art classroom for visiting schools to use as a platform for discovery of all sorts of flora and fauna in the area, as well as climate and other global issues.
One such class of 4th graders presented the director of the Barn Beach reserve with a collection of Haikus commemorating their experience at The Barn classroom. I share them below:
A Chinook salmon
Splashing, swimming upriver
Now lays eggs and dies
Josh & Joseph (H)
A leopard gecko
Cautious gecko slowly walks
It is curious
Greta (H)
See a stonefly
The little insect can swim
Six legs and two tails
Jack & Reid (H)
Microscopes looking
At macroinvertebrates
Close up observing
Raven (H)
Eat sweet blackberries
At the Wenatchee River
Black juice on your face
Ranger & Kieran (H)
We went fish-tagging
We saw a great blue heron
We felt the water
Riley & Makiya (C)
A scavenger hunt
With digital cameras
Spider on a log
Wyatt & Baxter (C)
Salmon on a redd
Not eating for many days
Ready to die now
Karina & Gracie (C)
Salmon washed on shore
This I see; it makes me sad
Then it struggles free
Gracie & Karina (C)
Graceful dragonflies
Fly over the gentle breeze
Beautiful creatures
Jonah (C)
Characteristics
Of simple and compound leaves
And more than just that
Jonathan & Colton (D)
Black widow spider
Red hourglass on belly
Poisonous spider
Olivia (D)
Gopher snake curls up
Slowly stretches out and looks
He wants to get out
Olivia (D)
Boots in the river
Lamprey eel, very slimy
Catching bugs is fun
Bryson (D)
Guinea pigs are soft
Guinea pigs are very cute
Sometimes they are loud
Taylor & Erin (D)
In the morning light
The salmon died by the shore
Life keeps on going
Cody (L)
We went to Barn Beach
We looked at orange autumn
Leaves, bugs, fish, and birds
Lydia & Sydney (L)
The blood-sucking leech
It attaches with its teeth
And sucks all the blood
Jose & Reiley (L)
At Barn Beach Reserve
Salmon spawning, salmon redds
At Blackbird Island
Noemi (L)
Golden, yellow trees
Blow in the October breeze
They look beautiful
Kendra & Kessler (L)