The Narrative Image

I got a new waterproof, breathable jacket for Christmas so I took it out for a test drive on the Wahclella Falls trail. The canyon walls rose on either side of me as I followed the path in along Tanner Creek. Heavy dark clouds scraped across the treetops enclosing the chasm below in a dark gray gloom. Ice fell from the sky. Soft hail accumulated on the ground here and there. Like water overflowing leaf clogged gutters, streams and rivulets of instant tributaries poured into the valley. The rain-jacket did an admirable job of keeping exterior water out, but I’m afraid no current technology is sufficient to dissipate the sweat produced by a feverish semi-fat man. It seemed I had only got started, when the trail forked upward to the left or downward to the right. I chose to head upward and was soon surveying the lower trail as it snaked its way through an evident landslide. The unremitting precipitation was making it difficult to keep my camera lens dry. I found a dry spot on my t-shirt...

In a previous blog entry, Bridge of the Gods ( http://thenarrativeimage.blogspot.com/2007/03/bridge-of-gods.html ), I noted that some geologists have posited a link between a landslide that likely occurred in the 1200s and local myths/legends describing a land-bridge across the Columbia. Current, apparently misnamed, Bridge of the Gods. John Eliot Allen, author of The Magnificent Gateway, writes, “The lobe of the latest (“Cascade”) slide covers about 5 ½ square miles. It diverted the river a mile to the south, and contained a dam long enough, in all probability, to give rise to the Indian legend of the “Bridge of the Gods” Mr. Allen describes the unstable geologic situation like this. “Heavy Grande Rhone Basalt-flows cap Greenleaf Peak and Table Mountain, resting upon 1000 feet of weak, clay bearing Eagle Creek sediments.” The trail I took to Table Mountain starts at the Bonneville trail head. It’s on the Washington side of the river across the highway from the Bonneville Dam’s visito...

“Long ago when the mountains were people…” The Columbia River as seen from vantage point below the current Bridge of the Gods at Cascade Locks The Great Spirit settled a land dispute between two brothers by giving them each territory on opposite sides of the Columbia. The Great Spirit made a bridge across the river as a sign of peace. A natural land bridge on a somewhat smaller scale than the legendary one The two peoples visited each other for many moons, but soon they became greedy and quarrelsome and began doing evil. The Great Spirit was displeased and stopped the sun from shining on them. Clear cutting on the Pacific Crest Trail on the way to Table Mountain The people had no fire and when the rains came, they became cold. They began to pray to the Great Spirit for fire. Cloud shrouded trees at the edge of the Columbia The Great Spirit sent an Old Woman (who still had fire) to the middle of the bridge to tend the fire for the people on both sides of the river. In exchange for th...