This Is Our Country Too
A Fourth of July Reflection from WA‑5
On this day, across hills and valleys, city blocks and gravel roads, the sky above Eastern Washington fills with the sound of memory. Flags wave in Republic and Rosalia, in Pullman and Pomeroy. In Spokane’s Riverfront Park, families gather by the clock tower, waiting for dusk. In Dayton, the Fourth of July picnic boasts free hot dogs, watermelon, and a dunk tank. Somewhere near Ritzville, wheat fields catch the wind and shimmer like gold.
We celebrate this nation not with noise but with roots.
The strength of WA‑5 has never come from one town or one tradition. It comes from how we live alongside each other, farmers and students, tribal elders and immigrants, nurses and veterans, orchard workers and linemen. It comes from knowing the land and staying through the hard years. It comes from the shared work of feeding people, raising families, and showing up.
There is something quiet and unshakable about this part of the country. You can see it in the way neighbors gather after a fire, or in the hands of the men and women who load fruit in Walla Walla, staff the clinics in Clarkston, or maintain power lines in the Blue Mountains. You can see it in the tribal canoe families paddling the Columbia, and in the small-town high school bands marching down Main Street with borrowed uniforms and unpolished pride.
We are rural and urban. We are Salish and settler. We are the children of homesteaders, of Dust Bowl survivors, of Basque shepherds, of Vietnamese refugees. We are irrigators and engineers. We are union labor and small business. And we are still here.
The Fourth of July gives us more than permission to celebrate. It invites us to remember who we are, and who we’ve been trying to become. That journey has never been simple. It has meant confronting injustice and learning to listen. It has meant expanding our definition of “us.” Our region has known exclusion. But it has also welcomed generations of those who came to harvest apples, study at WSU, or escape violence and begin again.
We still gather. In Spokane’s parks and at county fairs from Newport to Pomeroy. We still sing and eat and watch the sky light up with color. We still believe this land is worth tending, and that our neighbors, even the ones who vote differently, are still our neighbors.
Patriotism doesn’t have to be loud to be strong. Sometimes it’s a folded flag passed carefully from one hand to another. Sometimes it’s a clean-up crew after the fireworks. Sometimes it’s simply staying …. in hard times, in small towns, in uncertain futures.
This is our country too. And here in WA‑5, we carry its promise forward, quietly, together.
