The Narrative Image

Sagging rainclouds took a sideways glance at me and pointed wet threatening fingers in my direction but ended up not touching me as I headed up the Hamilton Mt. Trail. In the distance I could see the Bonneville Dam stretched out across the Columbia, and as I gained elevation, this particular fruit of my species’ technology began to take on the semblance of building blocks - a child’s toys cluttering the living room (but never-the-less generating relatively cheap energy). At about a mile and a quarter in, the trail meanders near a couple of waterfalls. Evidently, ultra eco-sensitivity has resulted in the construction of a nature trail that effectively keeps hikers from touching the water. Either that or trail manufacturers have been forced to build safety barriers geared to the public’s lowest common intelligence denominator. The end result is an ambiance that harkens to comparisons with standing in line at Disneyland. At Pool of the Winds, the cascading water pours into a carved r...

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...

It seems that one of the consequences of staying alive for a long time is that you begin to gain a sense of appreciation for the cost of change. This is achieved through the accumulation of memories, through the death of more and more of your contemporaries, through cycles of human construction and demolition, and occasionally, demonstrations of environmental tinkering via Mother Nature’s big box ‘O’ tools. Evidently in November, Mother Nature determined that a portion of the Sandy River needed a make-over It used to be that you would drive to Zigzag and turn North at the Lolo Pass junction, drive a little over four miles to forest road 1825 and then…but then it doesn’t really matter because forest road 1825 has a gate across it now. So it’s get-out-of-the-car-and-walk-time. At first, as you walk along the trails that snake along the river, you marvel at the delicate ground cover and the tenacious tree-like things that struggle to grow out of the moss and lichen covered rocks. But then...

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...