Tag Archives: Columbia river

Last Bridge To Rivendell

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Rivendell7811

Often reality and fantasy can overlap for those who wander. Sometimes in small ways, other times in huge overwhelming ways that wash over them as they suddenly see what they’ve only imagined from reading someone else’s verbal pictures.

Such was the case for me when I viewed Multnomah falls for the first time. It wasn’t just the slender falls itself with its graceful plunge of over 560′ into the clear pool  below. Or the bottom falls which fell another 69′ onto a rocky platform where the cool water gathered itself then rushed musically down the side of the cliff to empty into the Columbia river.

That alone would have been awe-inspiring in itself, but then to add the graceful bridge spanning the distance over the lower falls where one can stand and feel the cool mist drift across your senses had to have been done by someone who knew Elves and the magic folk personally. Or perhaps having traveled to those places and experiencing the beauty couldn’t bear to leave them behind.

As you approach up a wide stone staircase to a viewing area that allows you to see the entire scene at once, you are suddenly thrust into another place, another world where anything can happen, where you might meet creatures from a land of fantasy that you only thought was imaginary. A place where magic was possible and you might have powers you never dreamed of before. This could be a gateway that, if you allow yourself and can throw caution to the winds, you might just visit a land of wonder and adventure the likes of which you have never imagined before.

Multnomah falls is just one of the many waterfalls in the real world that you can visit while traveling along old highway 30, a scenic byway that parallels I-84 in the Columbia gorge. If you get the chance, go there, you might just get an opportunity to take a journey to a place you did not expect to go.

Taming The Columbia

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ParaSailing5334

There is an area of the Columbia river that is bounded on one side by I-84 and the Mosier-The Dalles highway and by the Lewis and Clark highway on the other side. It is a narrow spot on the river made more so by the high cliffs on either side which forces the river to run faster and have very choppy water. It also forces the wind, which blows through here screaming like a banshee, to funnel through this valley at a very constant rate. It is located in the Cascade Locks area of Oregon and the border between Washington and Oregon runs right down the middle of the river, invisibly dividing it in two.

I saw these individuals on the river performing activities that I had never seen before, so as an investigator of new phenomenon I was duty bound to stop and, well, investigate. I wanted to find out as much as I could about this strange waterborne behavior. Luckily there were local experts there that were eager to fill me in on the facts.

My questions were quite pointed. “Why do people do this?” “Is there any useful purpose being accomplished here?” “What kind of glue do you use to hold your feet to the board when you leave the water?” “Does it bother the fish to have someone jumping up and down on their roof?” Amazed at my questions and after learning that I was on a fact-finding mission and would be reporting their answers to the world at large through this blog, they virtually fell all over each other to give me the straight story. Setting down his 40oz can of Olympia one thoughtful fellow looked at me and began to tell me about how they were involved in a major environmental struggle to contain the mighty Columbia river and prevent a catastrophic event that could endanger half the western Pacific.

It seems that in times past the Columbia ran down to the sea completely unchecked. There was nothing between its origin and the Pacific ocean to control its riotous, mad dash to the sea. As it did so it’s level would rise to startling but dangerous heights. Countless times trees were uprooted and sand bars washed away, creating mini-environmental disasters. Fish were disoriented and couldn’t tell upstream from down and consequently were swept out to sea to die a horrible death by drowning. Native Americans were fearful of throwing their nets into the river, less they too, would be dragged down to Portland and suffer the fate of being exposed to the white people’s sinful ways in the strip clubs and gin mills of the inner city. It seemed that natural chaos reigned and something had to be done.

The answer was obvious after a fortunate accident occurred. A carpenter named Phil, fell while carrying a plank across a dock and landed on the river astride the wide board. Knowing of the dangers in reaching Portland he immediately removed his shirt and by holding it by its arms to try and flag down help, watched in amazement as it filled with the strong winds of the Columbia gorge, becoming a sail which he could safely guide his way back to shore.

Soon carpenters were falling in the river with their planks at an alarming rate until all you could see was a field of flag waving, wide board carpenters filling the gorge from one side to the other. It was then that the real discovery was made. A waterman whose main job it was, was to watch the water for suspicious activity, noticed that the more carpenters they piled on the river the lower it got. It was one of those eureka type moments that those Oregonians are noted for. It wasn’t long before the discoveries of jumping up and down tamped the river down, as it were and packed it to a more acceptable level. It was also noted that you didn’t need carpenters to do this. Almost anyone with a minimum level of brain cells could be trained to strap on a sail and go out and ‘Tamp the River’.

Today, right now in fact, if you’re driving down the gorge you can see swarms of maintenance crews out there, sails in the air, boards on their feet, tamping the river for all their worth, keeping it at acceptable yet safe, levels. Yes their gear has changed. No longer do they use the heavy old pine planks of days long gone, nor do they rip up perfectly good shirts to make their sails. Everything is poly-this and Poly-that and the brighter the better although I think that is more due to them not wanting to be hit and sunk by the pesky freighters that sail up and down the channel.

The old salt that was telling me this looked me in the eye and said with a perfectly straight face, “and that’s why we do what we do”. I couldn’t write fast enough. To be able to get the hidden story that isn’t shared with the public at large was an honor. It isn’t often that the truth gets shared as honestly as this and I was more than glad to pay for the next case or two of Oly’s as they called them. The old salt simply smiled at me and I almost felt as if I were taking advantage of them because now I had a story that I could tell that hadn’t been heard before and how could you put a price on that.

Battle Along The Columbia

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As many of you already know the Bokeh Maru, the Institutes premier research vessel, is a remarkable vehicle. Outfitted with all the modern attributes of a world-class media center and loaded down with sophisticated electronic equipment including GPS, a Smartphone, contact receptacles mounted in the walls that interface with portable electronics like laptops, toasters, handheld devices that remove facial hair and a place to recharge batteries in all the professional photographic gear that is needed on an expedition such as this one. The power source alone that is a regenerative unit that provides nearly an inexhaustible amount of power in the form of AC/DC electricity, requires an advanced degree in mechanical engineering just to turn it on.

But perhaps the greatest and most useful device on board is a portable, slightly oversized, hyper-organic computer with the ability to perform incredible feats of observation and analysis of the conditions around it. Programmed with the latest algorithms and lightning fast calculations it is able to instantly react to stimulus occurring in a 360° radius of its location. That is until it goes on overload, reboots, gives you a blue screen and you crash into the guard rail and spill your tea. Fortunately that didn’t happen but it could of.

It, the organic computer named after the Hal 9000’s cousin Leland, was running its wildlife acquisition app as we sped down I-84 along the Columbia river just east of The Dalles in Oregon, when it suddenly sprang into action after locating life-forms just off the hwy and up a nearly vertical wall of rocks, sand, boulders and scrub. Sensing images to be had I immediately pulled over to the side of the road where fortunately the shoulder was just wide enough that if I nearly scraped the side of the Bokeh Maru against the concrete divider placed there to keep foolish gawkers from falling into the Columbia river, I could get far enough off the roadway to avoid being crushed to death by the semi-truck traffic rocketing by at 70 mph.

The life-forms turned out to be Bighorn Sheep, rams to be exact, that were girding their loins in preparation for the rut which would allow them to have unprotected sex with any female sheep they could coerce into mating behavior. There were 5-7 of these bachelor boys who took turns ramming their heads together (hence the name Rams) to see who would get first pick of any females they might blunder into. Half these guys  were so loopy that they didn’t know which way was up after several rounds of striking their heads together with enough force you could hear it over the sound of 18 wheelers screaming by inches away. Their numbers varied as they came and went, as they did battle, then retreated to take whatever headache remedy they could before returning to the jousts again. This went on for hours, all in all a magnificent display of the ridiculous, I mean, they could’ve just sent a nice bouquet of roadside sage or some tasty twigs they located, then after some small talk and a little wine, they could accomplish what nature intended without all that head-banging and bleating. But that is just a personal opinion and not to be taken as scientific fact.

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Here two of the Bachelor Boys contend for contendership and the right to do this again with someone bigger. The average good-sized ram will weigh between 250 and 300 lbs. with 30 lbs or more of that weight being their horns.

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Contact! They put every ounce of power they have into these moments.

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The impact is so intense that the energy rocketing through their bodies results in one or both of them actually being lifted from the ground. It is impressive to see and one wonders about the longevity of Nature’s crash-test dummies after being subjected to this dozens of times a day. Makes these NFL linemen we hear about today seem like pansy little whiners in comparison with their measly little concussions and all.

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After the immediate impact they stand there motionless, or I might say paralyzed, while they contemplate what just happened. At the moment of impact these 250-300lbs. rams are striking each other at speeds up to 20 mph which is the equivalent of a 250lb man on a fat-tired bike slamming into the concrete wall of a Starbucks at 40 mph. One can only wonder what they might be thinking at this moment.

As a trained observer I have theorized that those thoughts may be something like “Holy crap, did THAT hurt.” or possibly a false sense of bravado with one saying “Didn’t hurt.” and the other one responding “Did too!” or perhaps something along the lines of “Where am I? Better yet, what am I?” While these boys are standing there trying to figure out if they walked to work or carried their lunch, another pair begin the same ritual. These bouts can last up to 24 hrs. before they finally concede its dumb and they go get breakfast somewhere.

Although this was a unique adventure as there was no expectation that wildlife would be spotted in the narrow confines of the Columbia gorge, the real adventure was not getting sideswiped by every semi that came down the highway. The rest was that act of reentering 70 mph traffic from a standing start. For those who have never  driven through the Columbia gorge it is one of the principal entries into the city of Portland and consequently every truck in America is required to go through it, sometimes several times a day. And they, the large, malevolent, evil-smelling ogres of the road, do not like RV’s. Or cars. Or other trucks. They don’t even like their mothers, or Jesus, or Country and Western music, so reentering their domain takes an act of courage that many simply don’t have. But the Bokeh Maru does. She leapt into the fray with never a thought for her soft-bodied passenger inside and fearlessly held up her tail pipe in a obscene gesture in the face of that 90,000lb behemoth bearing down on her and pulled into the traffic lane. We lived.

It was on to bigger and better things as we pointed our broad nose to the west and headed for Portland, the city of narrow roads and high-speed traffic. New adventures awaited us.