"a mystery wrapped in an enigma squeezed into a skirt that's just a little bit too... tight." - Dr. Who

An Elk, somewhere above The Dalles Dam, but below the John Day Dam, below the stereo and on this side of the Bicentennial glasses, between the ashtray and the thimbles in this three inches that includes the Chiclets, but not the erasers.

I had a teacher once (Vicky) who posited with a straight face that the most important thing you can give to starving people is art. Now as then, I still vote for bread, or more specifically, an educational program that teaches sustainable farming and a financial package to help such an endeavor along, but the outlandishness of my teacher's claim haunts me to this day.

I wish I could remember the words my teacher used, her normally brash and cool character terrifyingly subverted by the threat of oh-my-god-actual-tears, as she tried to convince us, a handful of her young sculptor's in training, that what she said was true. But I can't. It was thirty years ago or so, and while that may not pose a great problem for gospel writers, it does tend to make me, at least, a little sketchy on details.

I'm not a great student. What I got out of that teachable moment was that my teacher was very likely crazy...but also that art was important, probably more important than I've ever since been able to imagine.

A gallery wall at the Portland Art Museum

Art is a funny thing. It's hard to define. And, as with most things that enter the realm of culture and taste, people of privilege survey, record and contribute to its history and subtle nuances, ultimately creating a complex narrative or context to impose on the uninitiated. Art intellectuals might go on and on about what a painting says (overtly or symbolically) about motherhood or welfare states or perhaps feminism, but about half the people I know, seeing the same painting, will simply shrug their shoulders and comment matter-of-factly, "nice rack". 

A gallery wall in a narrow rock shelter

If you know culture and context, then you have a better chance of determining what art means. One of the problems for me is that when I chance to look at a 'gallery' of art that spans not only cultures, but centuries, I don't know for sure if I'm looking at... 

An inscribed painting of mountain sheep

a masterpiece,

Large scale 'public art' at the beginning of a once difficult river passage.

graphic design, 

d-stretch* enhanced detail of rock shelter image

or graffiti . 

Modern view from site of rock shelter.

It doesn't help that the context for much of the rock art in the Columbia Gorge has been drastically altered by the serial damming of the Columbia River. This has created 'lakes', where formerly, the river cut through narrow rock channels.

Markings that were still accessible when I was eleven have long been submerged under 'lake' Umatilla. 

Preserved petroglyph at Columbia Hills State Park

People did what they could to save bits and pieces from inundation by chipping them from their original sites and preserving them in arbitrary collections. 

Horsethief Butte from the middle of the Columbia River.

I do what I can to imagine the environment the way it must have looked hundreds of years ago.

Note: Photosynth is no longer supported by Microsoft...and I haven't found anything else like it to put in its place.

Specialized software from Microsoft, called Photosynth, attempts to recreate three-dimensional space by linking together overlapping photographs. I've tried to use this software to help provide a better idea of what it's like to visit a largely intact rock painting gallery. (Note: There are 73 photos incorporated into the 'photosynth' so, depending on your connection speed, be patient and wait for images to snap into full resolution.)

When some people look at rock paintings, they're tempted to think they're looking at something primitive - that half-naked aborigines struck with the first glimmerings of consciousness set about recording their first abstract thoughts - as if it was the apex of their civilization...

A mask from the Portland Art museum composited onto a picture of the interior of Chief Lelooska's long  house.

...but that's a mistake.

yep...it's a dumpster

It's kind of like discovering a graffiti covered dumpster and assuming it was done by Picasso - although, you never know.

Detail of Rock Shelter wall incorporating d-stretch* enhancements and assembled as an animated GIF file.

The artifacts of Native American cultures preserved in the Portland Art Museum testify to the fact that they had sophisticated artists just like we do. While some surviving rock paintings divulge the craftsmanship of their creators, many seem to have more utilitarian functions. Perhaps they act as signatures or attendance marks, or perhaps they serve to record events or tally them.

Detail of Rock Shelter wall incorporating d-stretch* enhancements and assembled as an animated GIF file.

Some panels appear to tell stories and include a rich vocabulary of visual symbols.

Detail of Rock Shelter wall incorporating d-stretch* enhancements and assembled as an animated GIF file.

Detail of Rock Shelter wall incorporating d-stretch* enhancements and assembled as an animated GIF file.

And some paintings, collaborative works visited again and again over time, seem to transcend the mere recording of earthly things ... 

Vandalism of petroglyphs at Sherer Falls

Unfortunately, there are some who have come to the conclusion that the most important thing you can give a starving person is not art or bread so much as it is beer.

Detail of vandalized petroglyph at Sherer Falls

And the remaining rock art suffers because of them.

Vandalism of rock paintings at picture canyon

Even the Earth and Time itself seem anxious to erase the lessons our species has wrested from nature. Erosion, moisture, ice, heat, mineral leeching, fire, abrasion from plants - it all chips away at our most timeless recordings.

Before and after wildfire pictures. The artwork seems mostly intact. Changes in color are likely attributable to the difference between sunny and overcast skies as well as time of day.

I can't help but think that there are important messages preserved in these paintings - warnings and signs from people who faced the end of their world. So I visit them when I can, and try to collect more context...

...and pictures.


*Dstretch,  is a specialized plugin for a graphics program called ImageJ. It allows for the enhancement of rock art images through...magic I guess...and seems particularly clever at picking out red pigments on rock. It can do much more, but there is a learning curve. It was written by Jon Harman and can be obtained here:

(http://www.dstretch.com)

ImageJ can be acquired here:
(http://rsbweb.nih.gov/ij/index.html)

Willapa Bay Indecision: Kayak? Camp? Oh Screw it.

The Columbia spanning bridge at Astoria

Well…just about one holiday ago, with my kayak strapped to my car, I headed back to Willapa Bay. This time I was determined to successfully use a tide table to help me safely cross over to Long Island while there was still actually water in the bay.

However, once the weekend started in earnest, so did the rain. I don’t mind cool weather and a little bit of rain, but this spring’s prolonged rainfall, and the increasingly foreboding incidence of animal pairs traveling towards a single large boat in the Middle East made me reconsider my plan to maroon myself on an island.

I wandered in and around the Long Beach peninsula for the better part of a day…but there was none of the frenzied clam killing that I witnessed the last time I visited.

…just a long beach.

I wasn’t very impressed with Jake, the Alligator Man, who resides at Marsh’s Free Museum.

(I wonder if this is what Aldous Huxley meant when he used the word ‘pneumatic’?)

But my estimation of him improved when I saw a picture of his bride.

I’ve recently spent some time searching for old rock paintings in the Columbia River Gorge. If I could read them, I’m sure it would tell me something about a civilization that is all but gone – tantalizing messages from across time. The still bright red and white paintings must surely preserve some truth or fact about the past. But I can’t read them. I can only apply my cultural context to a mystery – and end up with a lousy translation.

I’m in a much better position to regard the artifacts left behind by my own civilization.

…some of which testify to a gradual shift in how we perceive each other.

I enjoy those moments when evolution’s long work results in behavior that appears to transcend instinct and creates the illusion of conscious, creative problem solving.

I’m not sure, but I have a sneaking suspicion that this is an oyster farm. I think so because I’ve taken this picture from the main pier in Oysterville.

Of course…

…there is other circumstantial evidence.

Some of the locals head out from Leadbetter Point with rakes. When I was out in my kayak, watching the bay wash out from under me, I imagined the resulting soupy mud would have been much like quicksand, trapping me until the next high tide. I guess sometimes you just don’t know until you try.

As highway 101 sidles around Omeara Point, it affords a picturesque view of something that topographical maps call Round Island, but which I’ve heard referred to as Baby Island. It’s postcard pretty (when you happen to be there in person), and this time as I passed it on my way to the Wildlife Refuge Headquarters, setting sunlight from the horizon snuck under the cloud ceiling and painted swaths of harmonious pastels behind the island’s silhouette. I wanted to stop and take a picture, but the road is narrow and curvy and by the time I found a place to pull over without infuriating the inevitable tailgater (apparently bent on destruction in what appeared to be a monster truck), I practically ended up in another time-zone. The first place I found to pull over had trees and bushes in the way, so I had to walk back and forth looking for a clear shot or a way to incorporate a foreground element. The picture above is what I ended up with, and as I stared at it on the LCD display of the camera, I was once again frustrated by the difference between what I thought I saw, and what my camera chose to record.


You can try this yourself. Drive around that point and experience the view. The sky is immense and the colors vibrant. The Island is reflected in what water remains and its diminutive size and artful placement create a feeling one might experience when appreciating a particularly elaborate bonsai garden – somehow both natural and planned.

But the snapshot – damn-it – crams the sky into a tiny little square and washes it clean of all its color and freezes the dynamic motion of its cloudscape while at the same time failing to distinguish any foreground detail or color in what was a rich garden of green accented with Queen Anne’s Lace.

Even worse, the camera works desperately to impose its concept of ‘correct’ exposure on the scene, believing in its soulless heart that the details of the island’s vegetation must be revealed at the expense of all other concerns - after-all it is at the center of the composition.

I fool the camera into exposing for the value of the sky and regain some of the color bled out of the first images, but now my close up of the island strips it of its environmental context. The sky is flat and mono-colored and the island silhouette could be almost any dark blob. Even in this subdued lighting, the camera is unable to see a range of color wide enough to capture even half the scene. This isn’t what I remember seeing.

I return to the vehicle and drive back and forth until I find a broad rocky beach from which to try again. While I like this composition, the images I capture still must be compromises between exposing for the sky or exposing for the foreground. The image above doesn’t really please me until much later, when I am able to post process it with Photoshop and brighten the foreground enough to show the texture of the beach. By de-saturating the color in the foreground, I accidentally introduce an element of barrenness that I did not feel when I was really there.

Already clued in to the fact that I have a dynamic range problem from the feedback from the LCD screen, I try throwing light from my flash onto the foreground in hopes of balancing the light coming from the sky. It almost works, but creates an obvious circle of artificial light that looks kind of …un-natural.

I return to the vehicle and search out yet another vantage point. The puddles in these tire ruts give me some interesting illuminated foreground elements, but compositionally, they point away from my center of interest.

I try different viewpoints, but ultimately, I can’t move the road. So I keep walking.

All the while, the light is fading and I have to stop and pull my headlamp out of my messenger bag. I keep looking for the image that matches my mind’s eye and stumble upon this fortuitously placed tidal pool. I set up my tripod first to the left and then to the right, backward and forward and finally end up with the picture above. It’s almost what I’m seeing.

Later, with Photoshop, I brighten the foreground to see detail and pump up the contrast a bit.


As I reflect on the process of vision and how the human eye works, darting this way and that, sampling brightness and darkness, adjusting on the fly and filtering electro-chemical impulses through a brain that imposes its lifelong paradigm on all the data streaming in from the senses, I know that a photograph must always be a different experience than 'seeing', but these images, at least for me, trigger my memories and remind me of what it felt like to look over an alien landscape caught in the midst of an eternal tug-of-war fought between the earth and moon.