Metaline Falls' Mrs. Claus

METALINE FALLS, Pend Oreille County – Sunday, Oct. 2 — Lee McGowan, a 76-year-old woman with a sharp eye, a quick wit and elegantly penciled eyebrows, took me to jail this morning to meet her elves.

True story. Nope, I haven't been eating funny mushrooms out in these wild woods.

McGowan, who owns the Washington Hotel where I was the only guest Saturday night, used to be mayor of this remote little burg, the northeastern-most incorporated town in Washington. While she was mayor, the mayor of Ione (another little town nearby on the Pend Oreille River) came to visit, and made a sarcastic remark about Metaline Falls' holiday decorations.

"There wasn't anything but one old Santa Claus up in a tree, and he was covered in cement!" McGowan told me.

See, up until about 18 years ago, a cement plant was the town's industry, and it kept the town perpetually coated in cement dust. Which, when it got wet, turned to cement. So the town didn't bother to put up many Christmas decorations.

This is all getting back to the jail and those elves, bear with me.

When the cement plant shut down, McGowan resolved to decorate the town like mad. So 18 years ago, she made elves to decorate the town's storefronts.

An artist in other respects, when she made elves, she didn't fool around. With papier mache , she worked night and day for six weeks and created about 40 three-dimensional, lifesize (for elves) figures. Toy-making elves. Music-making elves. A Jack-in-the-Box elf. Even Mrs. Claus.

She got some nice Seattle City Light workers, who operate the nearby Boundary Dam, to spray them with waterproofing.

And ever since, the elves have been displayed in front of shops on Main Street every December. Oh, and the rest of the year, they're stored in the old town jail in the basement of City Hall, which is where McGowan showed them to me. One elf, an orchestra conductor whose arms move, sits 11 months of the year on the old jail toilet.

The town now has an annual Christmas festival, created around the elves.

"People love them, kids especially. People drive from miles away," McGowan said. Which in this far corner of the state, at the far end of a long highway, means a lot to a town that is trying to boost itself a bit.

"So," McGowan said, arching an eyebrow, "the elves get to spend a year in jail, and they come out once a year."

In a small town, far, far away

Awoke to a showery Sunday morning and said goodbye to Metaline Falls, a town that feels like the end of the earth — and likes it that way. I've seldom been in a town more otherworldly – like it's 50 years behind, and surrounded by dark woods full of beasts. (Bears wander into town and shake people's apple trees, because the woods are only 500 feet away and "bears will do anything they want to do," Lee McGowan told me.)

I was never offered a key to my hotel room, and I never worried about locking it. At the town's single coffee shop on Sunday morning, another diner saw the only out-of-towner in the place and came over to offer the newspaper he had finished. Not looking for thanks, or even conversation, just doing a good turn.

"People are nice here," McGowan explained. "If you see somebody lock their car out on the street, you know they're a stranger."

Understand this, before you go tearing off to discover her almost-100-years-old Washington Hotel: It's not restored. It's not renovated. It's fairly well preserved, and you'll find embroidered pillow cases, clean sheets and a bathroom down the hall, for $35 a night. No teddy bears on the pillows. Don't expect anything too dear.

Except Lee McGowan, who does needlework for hours at a time in the same chair downstairs in her gallery/workshop (along with her elderly peke-a-cocka-schnauz-apoo dog, Buddy), and chats contentedly with whomever drops by.

More history of the dark north woods

The Car of Discovery climbed curving Sullivan Lake Road out of town, past the picturesque abandoned powerhouse on Sullivan Creek. Soon, a historic site beckoned. I can't get enough of these.

This was the old Mill Pond, where back in 1910 the founder of Metaline Falls and his cronies dammed the creek and built a water flume to feed the powerhouse, so they could build the cement plant that made the town its fortune.

The pond is still there, a perfect mirror to autumn colors. Bits of the crumbling flume remain, along with a still-standing pioneer cabin that was home to the first flumekeeper, one Aeneas MacDougall, and his family.

Interpretive panels show remarkable photos from the era, including MacDougall's small children, and a memory from his daughter, Martha:

"My father would patrol the flume on snowshoes in winter and look for leaks and potential slides. He would use a .405 rifle – the 'elephant gun' – to shoot off large icicles. He would come home in the evenings with a black and blue shoulder from the recoil."

The flume operated until it was washed out by a storm in April 1956 – the month I was born.

Yikes. That can't be right. The flume is all, like, rotted away.

I felt a little black and blue as I toddled back to the car.

Want to be alone?

Take a drive up to Sullivan Lake in Pend Oreille County on a misty October Sunday. You won't see another soul for miles. You'll hear an osprey now and again. And if you watch closely, you might spy a Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep on 6,222-foot Hall Mountain, which rises behind the lake.

Looking for fall color? This drive was the most dazzling yet. Who needs New England?

Say what?

Sign at the boat launch at Sullivan Lake: "Warning to all watercraft, these waters may be used as a source for firefighting aircraft which pick up water while taxiing at takeoff speeds. Aircraft will give advance warning by low pass with siren sounding. On this warning, please clear the center of the lake."

Holy cavern of the Kalispels

Now for something completely different: Manresa Grotto.

On the Kalispel Reservation on the east side of the Pend Oreille River near Usk, I climbed a steep path among giant boulders to a cave unlike any I've seen.

This is a holy site to the tribal people. Since the mid-1800s, Kalispel people have held services here, and they still hold an annual Easter mass in the simple rock shelter. The missionary priest Father DeSmet named the grotto for a famous cave in Spain in which St. Ignatius, founder of the Jesuits, meditated.

Inside the cave, rows of flat stones are arranged for seating in front of a simple, low stone altar. The grotto is like a small auditorium, some 60 feet wide by 25 feet deep.

It's believed that wind and waves from an ancient glacial lake formed the caves. That's a credible theory – I noticed pockmarks in the rock identical to the weird formations of China Rock on Sucia Island in the San Juans. But this grotto is a long way from the sea.

A Wyoming moment:

Coming around a bend to see a large pasture full of bison, on the Kalispel Reservation.

Favorite Adopt-A-Highway group of the day:

Inland Empire Sled Dog Association (on a stretch of U.S. 2 north of Spokane).

Odd-place-for-a-town award:

Goes to Newport, Wash., the county seat of Pend Oreille County. It straddles the Washington-Idaho border (though officially the Idaho half is called "Oldtown"). I asked a clerk at a Safeway if the store was in Washington or Idaho. "Oh, we're in Washington. But the fishing-tackle store across the street is in Idaho."

Tomorrow: A quick wander around Spokane, then on to the Palouse!