The
signpost reads, “1.25 Miles To Waterfalls.”
Beside it, a broad trail winds upward through a tunnel
of tangled understory and heaven-bound red cedar and
fir still dripping from last night’s downpour.
A Stellar’s jay, flashing like a sapphire in the
emerald setting, jumps to a nearby branch, jabbers at
me, and cocks his plumed head quizzically. “Alright,
I’m coming,” I tell him, laughing. I bend
and tighten my stray bootlaces, sling a water bottle
over one shoulder, and begin climbing in long, quick
strides that match the rhythms of my escalating heartbeat.
Here,
a mile from the highway, there are no rumbling trains,
no sleepy-eyed interstate travelers, no swaying logging
trucks, no slow processions of out-of-towners tailgated
by impatient pickups, and on this midweek day, not even
another hiker. In the late afternoon stillness, I can
just make out the faint whine of a plane making its
descent into the airport, 40 miles to the west, but
otherwise civilization feels far away, on a distant
planet called Portland.
I
have come to the Columbia River today, as on any number
of occasions, to try, metaphorically, to grasp this
tiger by the tail and understand it better. Euroamericans
dubbed it The River of The West. Its earliest inhabitants—the
River People—called it ‘Nchi-a-wah-na, “Big
River.” Thomas Jefferson believed it might be
a Northwest Passage, the last link uniting America from
“sea to shining sea.”
It
took President Franklin Roosevelt to make that dream
a concrete reality in the thirties. FDR’s legacy—dams,
elictricity, irrigation, farms, salmon hatcheries, interstate
shipping, roads, and tourism—is everywhere apparent
on the modern-day Columbia River, and in the 80-mile
stretch of river gorge protected since 1986 as a national
scenic area. The river’s more ancient ways are
quieter now, yet strangely omnipresent, as if biding
their time, waiting for the tide to turn—as it
is now beginning to do.
—From
“Land of Falling Water” by Nicky Leach
Land
of Falling Water
Nicky Leach
32 pages with 30 color images. 9”x9”
ISBN 0-939365-62-6
$5.95 
- OTHER TITLES THAT MAY BE OF INTEREST
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- Mount Rainier: A Perilous Paradise by Ron Warfield
- Mount St. Helens: The Rebirth of Mount St. Helens by Barbara Decker
 Mt.
St. Helens: Fire Mountain: The Eruption and Rebirth
- Columbia River Gorge Postcard Book
- Olympic: A Timeless Refuge by Nicky Leach
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