SOMETIMES I SUFFER FROM DISTRACTIONS: Miller Island Meditations

“When I'm sampling from your bosom / Sometimes I suffer from distractions like / Why does God cause things like tornadoes and train wrecks?”

- Crash Test Dummies

Heritage Landing is strategically placed near the confluence of the Deschutes and Columbia rivers. Pulling into the parking lot, I noted that there was only one other car and it might as well have been abandoned, considering all the other people that I saw, which was none.

The sun was hot enough that I imagined skinny or fit young people might do things like take their shirts off in public and try to get some color. It was considerably more nipple-y in the shade. The river was benign if not friendly and inviting. The surface of the water was wrinkled by waves, like a forehead thinking about something, but not thinking about it all that hard.

I prepared the kayak and wiggled into my new dry-suit. I’d been saving up for one ever since my trip to San Juan Island where The Oracle explained to me that my likely life expectancy in cold water approached a whopping 10 - 15 minutes. I was pleased to be wearing a bit of life insurance, but was a little concerned that I looked like a cross between a clown and the Michelin tire creature. Though I had trimmed the neck gasket with an X-acto knife to make blood circulation to my brain a possibility, it still seemed a bit tight as demonstrated by the red balloon shape assumed by my face. To be honest, it wasn’t clear that blood circulation to my brain would have much effect on my survival chances, so I called it good and shoved off.

As I paddled out into the current and was gently carried to the Columbia, I imagined how many times scenes like this must have played out at this spot throughout history. I thought of Northwest Indians setting out in elaborately carved dugout canoes to pioneer new trade routes for their lucrative salmon market. I tried to share in the illusion of humanity’s mastery over nature by lamely mimicking these earlier explorers who ventured into new and strange environments aboard specialized boats shaped over time by the great successes and spectacular failures of pragmatic generations trying to turn water into a road (phew! That sentence got a little away from me).

Sometimes I wonder if I have it all wrong. Were explorers really brave and smart and courageous, or were they the outcasts and the unloved who had no choice but to find some new niche?

It takes all kinds I guess.

Some aspect about sailing into the Columbia River Gorge is like sailing into time. Maybe it’s all the geologic history laid bare by the river when it was free and in its prime. Or maybe it’s the hostile desert landscape that fought off dense human habitation up until the advent of irrigation technology and fertilizer.

I gradually settled into a paddling rhythm - concentrating on taking efficient strokes until they became reflex. Somewhere in the middle of the river, also gradually, the incessant, blaring messages of our attention-deficit-culture began to fade away…

There are neuroscientists who say that our brains don’t have sufficient bandwidth to consciously evaluate all the sensory input we receive, so it delegates monitoring responsibilities to the brain stem and various other specialized structures and concentrates instead on recognizing the things that change.

I sensed the wind through the difference in sound from right ear to left ear, through feeling which part of my face was coldest, through how hard I compensated to keep the kayak from veering off course, from the pattern and direction of the waves, the sound of water lapping – sometimes slapping - against the bow, and through the fingerprints of invisible fingers that pressed ripples into the waves.

I set up camp in a new location that gave me easy access to the center of Miller Island and a back door to the high basalt cliffs that line its southward facing side.

A rapid drop in temperature reminded me that the day’s good weather was only the faintest rumbling of a still distant spring. But this pair of geese also reminded me that of all nature’s animals, I’m probably the only one that’s still single.

In summer, the basalt cliffs prove to be an irresistible location from which to watch the sun go down. But at this time of year, the sun traces an arc in the sky so far south that the Oregon rim of the gorge acts as an artificially high horizon. This makes sunset an extended event in which the actual presence of the sun plays no role. Instead, all the color in the world slowly gets sucked away. Vibrant blues fade to pastel purples and pinks, then gray…then black.

When the sun goes down in the city, streetlights automatically blink on. Families gather around dinner tables. Warmth and light leak past blinds and curtains and out of windows into the streets. Flickering T.V. shadows and dialogue betray the presence of unseen watchers in otherwise darkened rooms.

Out on the island, I endeavor to do my essential tasks, cooking, eating, preparing for the cold night, but in the end I have to fill big gaping holes of darkness and silence with that old retrograde pastime; thinking.

I ended up thinking about the book I had just finished, Pastwatch; The Redemption of Christopher Columbus. In the book, a remnant of civilization has survived a catastrophic plague event. They seem to be doing O.K. They appear mature and their technology surpasses ours, their major invention being devices that allow them to watch the past. It is a golden age for anthropologists.

The horrible surprise is that even though this older, wiser civilization is finally getting along and not engaging in wars, even though they have adopted sustainable lifestyles, even though they care about and encourage the potential of each individual, and even though the population has been substantially reduced, the environment has already been too severely damaged and the irrefutable numbers point to inevitable famine and the collapse of this last civilization. And when this civilization collapses, there will be no return since all of the easily obtainable resources that a new civilization requires are gone.

Have we already delivered the fatal wound to the Earth? Are we just waiting for her to finish bleeding out?

Maybe the Columbia is a case in point. From its headwaters to the Pacific Ocean, there are 14 dams constraining the once free-flowing river. This number doesn’t count all the dams built on the Columbia’s many tributaries (There are 227 major dams in the Columbia River drainage basin). These dams make the generation of electricity and irrigation possible, but also seem to have a major effect on salmon. We’ve learned to make fish ladders and limit our catches, but is it enough?

Or will we have ultimately already removed an important link from the food chain?

Undoubtedly, Miller Island today is a different island than it was before the construction of dams. Much of its lower expanse must now be under water. East winds currently seem to be blowing a sand dune down the middle of the island, and stands of trees appear to be struggling.

On the other hand, maybe this is just what trees do when they try to survive in arid landscapes. These tortured limbs remind me of the long lived trees that try to pioneer the timberline.

Miller Island has witnessed passage of an ice age and more recently the collision of civilizations. When I was taking high school history, the clash of civilizations was charitably called ‘manifest destiny’ (I’m not kidding). Manifest destiny was the idea that God had determined that the early United States should spread across the entire North American continent. Presumably, distributing small-pox infected blankets to indigenous people was only a very teeny tiny part of God’s plan.

While the distribution of blankets for purposes of germ warfare is hotly contested, the idea of manifest destiny is not. It was a popular idea that inspired U.S. territorial expansion. And just as some Christians were able to wink at genocidal activities because of a questionable interpretation of God’s intent, so too are some able to look at pollution, overpopulation, and climate change as inconsequential because of their belief in a special ‘escape clause’.

Nothing against God, but his spokesmen leave a lot to be desired.

In 2004, Newsweek reported that, “…92 percent of Americans believe in God, 74 percent believe in Satan and 75 percent believe there is a Heaven where people who have led good lives are eternally rewarded. A majority (55%) believe in the “Rapture”, that before the world ends the religiously faithful (presumably only Christians) will be saved and taken to Heaven…”

Is it even possible to work out the politics of saving our world if more than half of us think we’ve got nothing to worry about since an apocalypse is inevitable and all the ‘good’ people are scheduled for departure before things get ugly?

Sam Harris writes, “We have become increasingly deranged by our own religious certainty. We have a society in which 44 percent of people claim to be either certain or confident that Jesus is going to come back out of the clouds and judge the living and the dead sometime in the next 50 years. It just seems transparently obvious that this is a belief that will do nothing to create a durable civilization. And I think it’s time someone spoke about it.”

Life in the gorge still seems abundant…

…and surprising.

…yet human fingerprints are everywhere.

On this planet at least, life of some sort (bacteria? phytoplankton?) will likely struggle along until the sun finally dies. The trend for large brained primates isn’t very encouraging. As for intelligent life…well, we still may not have any evidence for that.

WILLAPA BAY: Decisions with Gravity

Long Island - as seen from the WNWRH boat ramp

The bulletin board at the Willapa National Wildlife Refuge Headquarters’ parking lot had a tide table posted, but it was for December, and I was already more than a week into January. The tide table itself was a marvel of graphic economy: For each day, a vertical sunrise and sunset line were superimposed over two mismatched blue humps in a space the size of a postage stamp, ostensibly to give an approximate idea of when the bay’s water would be high or low.

I tried to divide the space between the lines into twelve units and pick the one that correlated with the high point of the blue graphic, but reckoned my margin of error might be a range of nearly six hours. Then, because I didn’t really know how much the tides shifted each day, I suspected that the unhelpful range I was considering (based as it was on an expired table) was really nothing more than wishful thinking.

Sitting in my packed kayak, poised in the water at the foot of the boat-ramp, I could see grass and sticks slowly floating past, unwitting volunteers headed for the ocean. This made it clear to me that I had missed the high tide, but I still clung to the idea that maybe I had not missed it by much, and honestly, how fast would the bay empty out anyway, even if the tide was ebbing?

The answer (it turns out) is, “Pretty damn fast”.

A maze of mud walls rose out of the water.

Also, it didn’t escape my attention (while I frantically searched for a suitable campsite among the frustratingly meandering, vanishing sloughs of Long Island) that yesterday’s rainclouds were not gone after-all, but only hiding behind a low line of hills.

By paddling along the outside edge of each bend in the slough, I managed to stay in carved channels deep enough to keep me afloat.

A fortuitously placed tree trunk gave me the footing I needed to exit the kayak and scale the increasingly imposing mud bank.

By the time I had the tent set up (on ground that was suspiciously spongy) my avenue of escape was simply gone.

The mud remaining in the channel had the consistency of tomato soup… but it didn’t smell anywhere near as nice.

I would have to survive here until the next high tide.

It wasn’t too bad. The slough had provided (however briefly) passage into the interior of the island where both topography and tall trees provided a sheltered space like the eye of a storm. Mist emanated from the wet grass like steam over a cup of coffee. Birds sang from hidden perches. Whales bounced tiny blasts of sonar back and forth from forested bank to forested bank…

well…probably not whales.

I sat quietly and waited to see if I could identify the unusual noise.

Then, suddenly, the sharp crack of wood on wood came filtering through the thick forest behind me as if free spirited monkeys had stolen all the rhythm sticks from some elementary school music-room and employed them in a spastic sword fight waged high in the swaying tree tops. “Monkey-cam! Is that you?” I wondered.

I went to investigate.

It was only four-thirty but the sun already seemed to be setting. Entering the forest was almost like entering some vast cathedral. Towering bark covered columns (most closely resembling the Corinthian style) reached toward heaven, their capitals supporting a dense green canopy shot through with the last dying rays of the sun, perhaps the inspiration for stained glass.

Even with my camera’s ISO set to 1600, my shutter speed was a miserable 1/10^th of a second or longer and I hadn’t brought a tripod. Experienced photographers will instantly recognize that these are precisely the conditions that presage remarkable occurrences likely to make one wish they had brought a tripod.

Back at my emergency camp, as it got darker and colder, I broke out the new stove and cooking gear that my sister and her husband Ron gave me at Christmas and fired it up for the first time. I think my sister sometimes worries about my propensity to hike or kayak solo and she and Ron seem to have taken it upon themselves to provide me with items that might potentially one day save my life. They bought me a headlamp when they noticed I hardly ever made it back from hikes before sunset. They bought me a Gore-Tex paddle jacket after I told the story about Fred capsizing in the Columbia. They even bought me a pocket knife with a wickedly sharp serrated blade when they read the story about the lone hiker who saved himself by cutting his own arm off after he got stuck by a huge boulder for several days.

If that isn’t love…

I poured a 16 ounce beer into a pan and boiled a couple of brats. When they finally split their skins, I crammed them into toasted stadium buns with Tillamook sharp cheddar cheese and Tabasco sauce.

While tackling the second brat, I eyed the steam rising off the golden beer. The world was turning gray and cold and the wafting aroma of beer suggested the ambiance of a brewery. Why not drink the warm beer I wondered. How much worse could it be than coffee?

The answer, it turns out, has something to do with sausage grease.

The stars came out with surprising intensity. To the south, Orion the hunter lay horizontally across the tree line like some Indian yogi lying on a bed of nails.

It was time to try out the new tent.

I’d be interested in knowing what the creators of this particular tent were thinking when they had the audacity to label it a two man tent. Perhaps the word ‘two’ really means ‘one’ in other countries where tents are assembled.

trail mix

And while I’m being critical, just whose idea was it anyway to put so many peanuts in trail mix. I mean, I understand that peanuts are very nutritious and that their protein content allows them to release energy over time, but really, once that stuff goes through the ‘grinder’…

peanut butter

… all I can say is I’m grateful I had a roll of paper towels.

The new tent was fast and easy to set up, but after an hour or so, condensation issues had soaked my sleeping bag, a process that was likely accelerated by the fact that I hadn’t brought one of those foam pads to sleep on. I always considered those foam pads important primarily for comfort, and since the pads I had tried out over the summer were not comfortable and/or screwed up my back, and since they take up considerable space that I don’t have in the kayak, I had mostly been doing without them. This time I think I learned that their insulation qualities are probably their primary purpose and that comfort, if achieved, is just sort of a lucky side effect.

I tried to stave off heat loss through conduction by sleeping on my side and thereby reducing the surface area in contact with the ground, but I got cold anyway. Eventually I ventured out to the kayak to retrieve my personal flotation device and was fairly successful in using it as an insulation layer.

Things to think about in a tent on an island when you can’t sleep:

Are those sirens echoing across the bay part of the tsunami warning system?

Did the guidebook really mean it when it said there were bears on the island?

How many miles per hour is the wind blowing if it makes that whistling noise as it sweeps through the tree tops?

Just how long before the next tide arrives that will be high enough to get me out of here? Six hours, twelve hours, twenty-four hours or more like a month?

When sleeping morphs into an endurance exercise, it becomes pretty clear that you’re doing it wrong.

I dreamed my kayak sailed out to sea while I was sleeping.

I slept on my right side.

I slept on my left side.

I unzipped the tent and tried to see if the water was coming back.

I was compelled to produce half a roll of soiled paper towels.

I dug a giant hole with my camp shovel to bury half a roll of soiled paper towels.

I slept on my back.

I rearranged the PFD.

I slept on my right side.

I dreamed the elk were running full speed with their antlers down, not expecting my tent to be blocking their game trail.

I unzipped the tent and tried to see if the water was back. I took two steps and there it was. I was standing in it. Fortunately the tent was just as quick to take down as it was to put up.

By the time I had the kayak packed, all I had to do was sit in it and push off.

Like I said, the topography of the island and the surrounding trees created a sheltered area from the wind. The surface of the slough was as smooth as glass and as reflective as a mirror when the sky began to brighten.

I don’t have any pictures after this point because the death grip I had on my paddle didn’t really allow me to take any more.

I spent close to three hours paddling into wind and waves, riding an awesome rollercoaster-like wave treadmill. I was scared at first, but the longer I stayed upright, the more I began to relax. At the end, as the boat ramp came into sight, I realized I’d been having fun.

I felt something that I didn’t recognize at first.

I think it might have been a twinge of self confidence…

…and gratitude for that morning.

Autumn / Fall / Decline

Spring – Summer – Autumn – Winter

...the pattern of life rehearsed year after year.

I remember the life force within me used to be independent of the seasons, as if in my youth, I remained in an extended perpetual Spring.

But now, the crisp cold autumn affects me.
My limbs seem brittle like seared red leaves poised to fall into decay.

The rich muck of decay…

…smells like money…

… or poop…

…and occasionally, so do I.

Into the blue again/into the silent water

Under the rocks and stones/there is water underground

Letting the days go by/into the silent water

Once in a lifetime/water flowing underground

Same as it ever was... Same as it ever was...

…TALKING HEADS

Edge of Smith and Bybee Lake – Low clouds drifting in the Willamette Valley beyond…

Smith and Bybee Lake

The sun, the source of life, visits only briefly and does not linger.

The long night sets in.

Sandy River

Ice glyphs