Eagle Creek Fire Jumps Over the Columbia: Childless Adults Even More Thankful to be Childless.

The Columbia River Gorge 09/05/2017 at 3:00am (As viewed from the Cape Horn Viewpoint on SR 14. Phoca Rock visible in middle of river.)

The Columbia River Gorge 05/31/2010 (from Cape Horn Viewpoint)

I've aligned these images based on the positions of Phoca Rock and the navigational structure in the middle of the river to estimate what areas are burning.

When I arrived at the viewpoint, it seemed I had missed the explosive advance of the fire's front. Still, as the wind gusted, and photographers scrambled to secure their tripods, one or another tree or other combustible item would explode like a solar flare.

The smoke stung my eyes. The buffeting breeze reminded me of speeding through central Oregon on a 104 degree day with the windows down.

Whenever the breeze lagged, voluminous, billowing smoke would hang briefly, as if in collusion with the ravenous flames, attempting to cover their sins of gluttony.

Starting around 4:00am, I started receiving emails indicating that the fire had jumped the Columbia and set Archer Mountain aflame. The photographer next to me pointed out an ominous glow to the East.

I drove to the St. Cloud recreation area and caught site of the flames — ever expanding.

 Looking South to the Oregon side of the gorge from St. Cloud recreation area.

Another view of Archer Mountain from a vantage point at Skamania Landing.

Looking South from Skamania Landing. Here, having exhausted its orgy options, the fire begins a more refined winnowing process.

At dawn, the fire is still occupied with Archer Mountain (from a viewpoint at Shahala Lake).

I had hoped to catalog the landmarks affected by the fire in the daylight, but smoke from the fire proved to be too thick, obscuring even the sun hours after dawn.

The blanket of smoke continues to obscure the sky at 9:00am (as viewed from Rocky Butte)

Editor's Note (09/07/17):
Thank you for your comments (here, and on Facebook). I find them fascinating.


Let me re-assure some of you, particularly my mother, that my self-preservation instincts are fairly well refined. I am keen to avoid burning, blunt force trauma, falling great lengths, suffocation, drowning and drunken drivers — for starters. But thanks for the reminders.

The wildfire in the gorge is frightening. It is like an uncaged wild thing, or like a malevolent genie unwittingly released from its lamp. It feeds with evident cunning, and takes what it can with absolutely no empathy. With the capriciousness of a tornado, it obliterates some locations, while leaping over others and leaving them nearly unscathed. Lives and the works of lifetimes hang in jeopardy.

I do not take lightly the terrible consequences of this fire, but I do want to briefly address the recurring theme of sadness at the loss of so much beauty in the gorge, by suggesting that the very beauty we have grown up with is itself a product of volcanic ‘disasters, geography altering super floods, tectonic plate level seismic events and countless fires through the eons. 

Living in a scenic area where we have found it necessary to fence off our waterfalls and pave our wilderness trails, it is easy to believe that our Gorge is a permanent unchanging feature, bereft of natural cycles. But I suspect this is an illusion fostered by our short lifespans. 

Born from the stars, life has always contended with fire. Indeed, some life intimately depends on it. New niches will open, and various specialized plants and animals are just waiting to move in and make the world new again. And we humans, I suppose, will continue to risk building our houses near flood plains, or deep in the new forests of the future, because … it’s always going to be pretty.

Karma, Statistics, Repetition and God’s Plan or, Even More Eagle Creek Images

This is Yolanta (not her real name). She’s from Kazakhstan (No, she isn’t). I know what you’re thinking. “Poor girl!” you worry, “With looks like that, how will she ever acquire a husband?” Fortunately for Yolanta, they still have arranged marriages where she comes from. 

When my car engine blew up, Yolanta was kind enough to give me a ride to and from work until I was able to get it fixed (we work at the same company). She refused to take money for gas but eventually agreed to take one of my photographs instead.

This was the photograph she originally chose. It’s the punchbowl at Eagle Creek at the end of January in 2010.

I immediately had an enlargement made. But when I picked up the enlargement, I found the image to be unacceptably grainy.

In the figure below, the image on the left shows how the picture looked straight out of the camera. The image on the right shows how the picture (the one that Yolanta chose) looked after selective brightening and color saturation (I liked how brightening the water revealed details of the rocky river-bed). Since I typically use small-file-size/low resolution images for web content, this kind of picture manipulation didn’t appear to be causing any obvious degradation in quality… at least for web use. However, ordering a 12 x 18 inch enlargement showcased the ‘quality compromise’ I had not been aware I was making.

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The enlargement (below) shows how ‘grain’ became much more noticeable in the brightened image.

And so began my quest to procure the ‘definitive picture’ of the Eagle Creek punch bowl for Yolanta lest the scales of Karma be irretrievably unbalanced.

In August of 2010, I took another hike up the Eagle Creek Trail, certain I could capture an image that Yolanta would like. I presented her with the following options: 

Option 1.  Tried to recreate the same picture as before but with more attention to the rocky riverbed. Used a longer exposure to cut down on distracting ripples. The reflection of the sky is distracting. 

Option 2. Tried to compose a shot without the distracting reflection in the foreground. Kind of felt like this angle creates an inviting sense of mystery…to wonder what is around the corner. Picked up on some emerald greens in the deep water and tried to emphasize them while post processing. 

Option 3. Tried to show the waterfall in its greater context.

Option 4.  Post processed this one to match the warm brown colors from the original January picture. 

Option 5. A slightly different angle revealing more canyon features.

She didn’t like any of them.

So I went back the following weekend to give it another shot. This time I was accompanied by fellow photo enthusiast Mr. T. 

Mr. T. displaying his bionic calves. 

Give an infinite number of cameras to an infinite number of monkeys, and pretty soon, one of them has got to take a decent picture of this waterfall. But that’s a pretty expensive way to do photography. 

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Tried some vertical compositions 

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                                          Scott-O-vision                   Mr. T

I find it very interesting to see how different people approach the same subject. 

 Photo credit: Mr. T.

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Photo credit: Mr. T. 

Mr. T. reviewed my pictures using the LCD screen on the back of my camera. “Why don’t you have any close-ups of the waterfall?” He asked. “After all, that’s what you came to take a picture of.”  He showed me his pictures which included this close-up (I find the blue tint un-natural so tried to eliminate it).

I didn’t really have an answer so I probably just stood there gasping like a fish for a while, wondering why it really didn’t even occur to me.

In retrospect, I guess it’s because I’ve taken quite a few waterfall pictures, and up close, it’s always the same idea – that is – without their context, they all look alike to me.

This time when I showed Yolanta all the pictures I’d taken, she picked this one -
just a throw-away shot of some un-named stream flowing into the creek.

I guess there’s a sermon in there somewhere – something about beauty arriving from unexpected directions.

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 Something about seeing every day with new eyes.

 Something about getting up early and taking that trail again…

 …because …