I grew up about a mile from a swath of channeled scablands caused by massive Ice Age floods from 15,000 years ago. 8 miles south of Rock Lake, with bluffs of massive basalt lava flows several million years old, scoured by the floods. The lake is very deep with only a small creek entering into it and a small river (the Palouse, which eventually flows into the Snake, which flows into the Columbia) exiting to the southwest.
My mother, however, used to play as a girl on the chalk flats just south of this lake and claimed that she could hear water running under the ground, and that if she stomped her foot hard enough in places, there was an echo, so presumably an underground river feeds and drains this lake. I'm sure that underground river was caused by the floods so many thousands of years ago.
I miss this landscape. It looks barren and desolate to the untrained eye, but it really is a series of formations that bear witness to the unequalled primal power of the earth. It makes a deep and lifelong impression upon one. When I'm in this area, my whole spirit unfolds and spreads out over the land for miles.
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