Wind Meditations in the Columbia Gorge

Wind racing over the waters

Careening around canyon corners

Ice cold waves leap with delight

...Idiot kayaker, not so much

High desert mountains

Try on a flimsy spring dress of sheer green

Teasing again

Blooming flowers witness

 The grass being whipped

Trembles in the shredding wind

Curious clouds

Sniff alien contrails

As they scurry by

 I don't think flowers

Often experience existential dread

But you never know

 Before the gale

Flickering like bright yellow

Daylight fireflies

 In a symphony of windblown grass

There's no telling which baton

Belongs to the conductor

There's those flowers again

Acting all happy

And shit

Shy plants looking back and away

All the time nodding consent to nothing in particular

 Surveying the dead and wounded

At the end of the grass battle

In memory of those

Who dared to show their faces to the sun

Hey flowers!

Suck it!

"the sun is a miasma of incandescent plasma"

- T.M.B.G

FROZEN WATER / FROZEN TIME @ Multnomah Falls

How it looked Saturday Morning

Midweek, I saw a picture of Multnomah Falls in the Oregonian (Portland’s big daily newspaper) that showed the giant waterfall as a kind of hybrid water/ice sculpture and decided I’d try to see it for myself if daily temperatures would agree to stay close to the freezing range until the weekend.

Multnomah Falls is situated toward the west end of the Columbia River Gorge, an eighty mile long canyon that stretches east through the Cascade Range. This high walled ‘funnel’ turns out to be an excellent conduit for frigid arctic winds that seek an avenue to the Portland Metropolitan area.

Anticipating ice, I stopped at REI Friday night and picked up some traction devices that are supposed to allow a person to walk on ice. There were three options, but the two in my price range were All Purpose Traction Aids by Due North and the Yaktrax Walker. I chose to try the Due North offering since I couldn’t see how the little metal bands on the Yaktrax wouldn’t slip on solid ice. I thought maybe the Monkey-cam could test-drive the Yaktrax, but he had spent the night bar hopping with Picasso in Old town and couldn’t be persuaded to wake up.

I’ve begun to think that Monkey-cam’s deliberate hangovers are really just an excuse he manufactures to avoid going hiking in the cold since he steadfastly refuses to wear pants. Last week I finished knitting a little non-confining ‘hat’ for his disproportionately large berries. When I gave it to him, he tried to act appreciative, but he looked kind of embarrassed and he’s never worn it. Now I guess I know how my grandma felt after she sewed me a hippie shirt.

Early Saturday morning - really early - I noted that internet weather sites were listing winter storm warnings for the Columbia River Gorge. The snow and freezing rain weren’t expected until about 10 o’clock. I thought maybe I’d be able to hike in at daybreak and get out before the storm’s onslaught.

Multnomah Falls is a pretty big deal as far as tourist sites go. It’s the kind of place you can take your relatives from Kansas who’ve never seen geography more interesting than a plain. It is easily accessible from an island parking facility in between the west and east bound lanes of interstate 84.

The clouds were approaching in an ominous fashion, disguised perhaps like fog, but with their baggy pants hanging low and their gang colors showing. A preliminary vanguard of little ice pellets fell from the sky and bounced on the ground.

I didn’t think I could beat the establishing pictures of the falls that I’d already seen in the newspaper, so I hustled up to the bridge and tried to take some more detailed images. The mist that came from still unfrozen, falling water single-mindedly sought the surface of my lens and immediately started to collect and freeze on the lens hood.

Taking pictures from the bridge was proving to be a losing proposition. I stood there among half a dozen other would-be photographers, all of us distinguished by our self-conscious maneuverings of cheap gangling tripods. I felt like some kind of lemming confined to a cage.

The waterfall mist had, over the last few days, coated the bridge and the trail in multiple layers of solid ice. The grasses and vegetation around the punch bowl were growing elaborate ice flags that pointed toward free flowing water. Nobody was moving beyond the bridge because the upward slanting trail was clearly a functional ice-slide.

I sat on a bench and pulled the Due North traction devices out of my pack. It was as easy as pulling on slippers to fit them to the bottom of my boots. All told, there were only six little tungsten spikes on each sole, but that turned out to be as effective as magic. The spikes made a satisfying crunching noise as they bit into the ice. This aural and tactile feedback helped make me confident the little spikes were engaged and working with each step I took.

It’s about a mile to the top of the falls that you can see from the bridge, and I walked that mile in solitude. As I climbed in elevation, I noted that the once visible Columbia River was disappearing into a white-gray fog. The ice pellets I noted earlier hadn’t stopped falling. I couldn’t tell by looking if they were falling faster or not, but the noise the bouncing pellets made when they hit the paved trail allowed for a rough estimate based on audible volume – like listening to a Geiger counter.

The stream that feeds Multnomah Falls is supposedly fed by underground springs from Larch Mountain - and also rain. The water careens around corners and bounds over rocks in a headlong plunge toward the canyon rim where it launches itself into space.

This frenetic motion of the water – this activity – is the best evidence or proof for the passing of time. In a way, winter appears to stop time. Animals enter various states of suspended animation. Grass stops growing. Trees shed their leaves and loose their link to the life giving sun. Water freezes.

In the still areas of the stream, ice would find footholds and crystal fingers would reach out to claim a branch or a rock – to stop the vital motion – the flow – the pulse - and bury it beneath frigid covers.

I don’t know where this apple came from - Well, O.K., I bet it came from an apple tree, but like I said, there didn’t seem to be anyone else on the trail. In a landscape of black and white and gray and green, I liked the surprising spot of red.

Now and then, the background noise of the freezing pellets falling from the sky would swell and amplify till it sounded like the ocean. The rocks began to shine and glisten.

As careful as I tried to be - protecting my camera from precipitation with an unwieldy umbrella - an ice coating never-the-less began slowly spreading from the lens hood down the length of the lens barrel and eventually began interfering with the zoom ring.

It was cold out, but I felt fine as long as I kept moving. When I stopped to take pictures I would also take time to drink from my thermos which I had filled with a hot cocoa - dark rum concoction suggested by the Monkey-cam. Three cups of steamy goodness later, I was feeling much braver about walking on the ice than was probably warranted.

One of the benefits of having a digital camera is the opportunity it affords for reviewing pictures as soon as they are taken. Unfortunately, the differential between the sub-freezing ambient temperature and my rum-stoked core temperature in excess of 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit rendered my bifocals next to useless. I had to unzip my coat and find a dry patch of material to wipe the glasses, and then I had to put them on quickly and review pictures before they fogged up again. I determined that I liked the longer exposures though I don’t know if I can explain why.

It has something to do with multiple layers of frozenness.

Maybe I’m unduly susceptible to metaphor. Winter attempts to freeze and capture the stream. Cuffs of ice are everywhere visible. The camera shutter opens and shuts capturing a limited moment. But the stream is somehow, even now, not yet frozen.

The stream begins to disappear. It leaves a trace of its pattern, a memory of its motion. The stream is ephemeral - fleeting – as long as it moves it transcends the frozen moment.

I began to feel comfortable in my high private sanctuary from time. Meanwhile, far below, in random moments of chaos in the realm of a winter storm, cars careen across lanes and bound into medians. They leave patterns of their passing – angry ruts torn into a rich brown earth, white ash from a sputtering red flare, a human body – motionless. A freeway closed between Hood River and Troutdale.

WAHCLELLA FALLS - COLUMBIA RIVER GORGE

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 and wiped the big drops off. I heard a noise behind me and whipped around to find an unassuming old man offering me an umbrella. In retrospect, I think maybe it was Picasso, but I guess I didn’t recognize him with his clothes on.

My first view of Wahclella Falls.

Some of the clouds were so dark that I thought perhaps night had come.

I took about fifty pictures of the falls, but almost all of them suffered from over-exposure so that all the detail was lost in the white areas. Over and over again, this created a featureless white void as a central focal point of non-interest. I tried to combat the loss of detail in the white frothy water by shortening my exposure times, but this strategy resulted in an associated loss of detail in the shadows. I was getting frustrated, especially because I’m pretty damn sure Picasso knew exactly how to fix this problem, but he continued his policy of not speaking – encouraging me to experience the fullness of ‘the journey’.

The trail looped around so that I could see I would soon be traversing the territory I had previewed from above. Periodically, I’d look back and try to find some award winning angle of the falls that nobody else had thought to shoot, but I didn’t find one, and I started feeling embarrassed, especially with Picasso patiently holding the umbrella for me.

At first I was also embarrassed about the umbrella. I didn’t think any self-respecting Oregonian would be caught with an umbrella in the rain. But time and again, the umbrella allowed me to take pictures without getting drops all over the lens, even when I tipped the camera upwards. When other hikers passed me, I’d say, “It’s not for me, it’s for the camera!” Usually, they would just kind of squint and step way, way out of my way.

For a brief moment, it looked like the clouds might break, and a rich yellow glow permeated the mist.

I felt happy for a minute – anticipating the sun.

But it began to pour.

Rain, Water and Digital Cameras

As the guidebook says, digital cameras, “…are not waterproof, and may malfunction if immersed in water or exposed to high levels of humidity.”

Don’t be deceived. If you immerse your digital camera in water, there is no ‘may’ about it, it will malfunction! (Don’t ask me how I know.)

But digital camera owners in the Pacific Northwest face the prospect of never being able to use their cameras outside if they don’t come to terms with humidity in the form of precipitation.



It’s been raining in the Columbia River Gorge for about two straight weeks now and I’ve been thwarted by ‘humidity’ in two ways in my efforts to get pictures at Oneonta Gorge. The first way is by high water that confines me to the mouth of the gorge. The second way I’ve been thwarted is by raindrops on the lens which I don’t notice until I unload my images to the computer for review.


I thought the solution to my first challenge would be hip-waders, but the helpful outdoorsmen at work suggested neoprene bib overalls with built in boots. In fact, Bob had a pair he was willing to let me borrow.

Bob hunts with arrows and also fishes, so it shouldn’t be surprising that he invested in a good pair with an excellent camouflage design.

I then set about devising a means by which to protect the camera from rain.

1. Get a plastic sack.

2. Get a rubber band.

3. Poke a hole in the sack.

4. First place the rubber band at the base of the camera’s lens, then enlarge/stretch the hole in the sack over the tip of the lens.

5. Fasten the sack to the lens with the rubber band (be careful not to interfere with the focus ring).

6. Fold the sack back over the rubber band, creating a plastic-sack-housing for the camera and lens.

7. The sack will help protect the camera from rain. Finally, put a hood on the front of the lens to minimize the number of raindrops that will land on the glass.

Feeling a little bit like Jacque Cousteau, I step into the flowing water and search for a shallow route upstream. I manage to get to the large boulders in front of the logjam, but to get beyond the boulders will require some graceful jumping on slippery rocks over deep fast running water. Though my brain - clinging to idealized memories of my body’s athletic capabilities - suggests that it would be easy, my body reminds me that it hasn’t forgiven me for the snowshoe adventure yet, and my wallet reminds me that a single misstep will likely result in financial hardship, either in camera replacement or medical costs, provided I survive.

Though I know there is a waterfall at the end of this gorge, I settle for this view beyond the logjam.

Even though I have taken steps to protect the camera from water (keeping it in the camera bag, wiping the lens regularly), picture review time on the computer shows me that there continues to be a high correlation between the degree to which I like an image and the number of raindrops which appear on the lens – that is, the more I like an image, the more raindrops it will have.

As a last resort, since I have taken multiple exposures, I am able to use imagery from similar pictures to save the shot I prefer by cutting and pasting to layers within Photoshop.

Detail: Before Photoshop / After Photoshop

Final repaired image of logjam

Equipment Evaluation:

Neoprene bib with built in boots

Pros: These things work. I stayed dry and warm even when I sat on a rock in the middle of the stream to fiddle with the tripod. Also, I'm told that if you should fall into the water, they float (as opposed to hip-waders which act as water anchors).

Cons: You have to have the skills and agility of Harry Houdini to get in and out of them. This has scary implications if you should fall into the water. I felt clumsy with the big boots. They are so comfortable in the water that one tends to become reckless. I think if you ever get a hole in them, they would become instantly useless.

Plastic sack rain shield

Pros: Works briefly to keep rain off camera body

Cons: In practice, after lengthy exposure to rain, the inside of the sack becomes as wet as the outside of the sack. An invaluable tool to have is an old T-shirt to periodically wipe the camera and the inside of the sack. Keep the camera in a camera bag until you're ready to shoot.

Wet/dry bag (Used in rafts and canoes)

Pros: As long as the camera is in the bag and the bag is closed, you don't have to worry about immersing your gear.

Cons: These bags don't have shoulder straps so you have to carry them by hand. In practice, this means that you almost always have the bag open, and when you are using your camera and trying to set up the tripod, the wet/dry bag has a tendency to migrate down river with all of your extra batteries.