Canopy at the Hoyt Arboretum, Portland, OR
It’s all downhill from here
No complaints, but it just happens the apartment building I live in—just a well-struck seven iron from the Spokane River—leans slightly toward the southwest. If I spill water, or coffee, or Guinness (god forbid) it flows in that direction. I have to move swiftly to head it off.
When that happens the observation the great geologist J Harlen Bretz penned in 1959—“Like roads to Rome, all scabland rivers led to the Pasco Basin” invariably comes to mind and usually gives me a chuckle.
Gravity. What can you do?
My mother grew up in Pasco, in a modest house that’s still there, overlooking the Columbia River from a sandy bench above the Pasco marina. She harbored memories, from her childhood, of gathering wild asparagus along the river bank, when the river was still free-flowing. Two of my favorite books—Jack Nisbet’s Sources of the River, and Blaine Harden’s A River Lost, are about life on the Columbia—from the journals of the great British explorer David Thompson (Nisbet) to the modern challenges of managing the river’s waters for salmon and agriculture (Harden) and the persisting cultural and political tensions at play.
In a more intimate way I chase the spilled water toward my daughter, Audrey, whom you can sometimes read in this space. She now lives in Portland where she’s working on a Master’s degree in Art Therapy, and is never far from my heart and soul. We’re both aware of the waters and stories that connect us.
Some favorite photos, along the ways between here and there…
The inlet at Hawk Creek, a favorite swimming spot, near where the creek flows into the mid-Columbia in Lincoln County
Morning mists at Wallula Gap, where the Columbia makes its final turn toward the Pacific
Hat Rock—a prominent nob of Pomona basalt, noted in the journals of Lewis & Clark, above the river east of Umatilla, OR at Hat Rock State Park
The Deschutes River near its confluence with the Columbia east of The Dalles, OR
Wachlella Falls, one of the lower gorge’s famous falls, in westernmost Multnomah County, OR
The great river, looking east from the Rowena highlands on the Oregon side
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—tjc
