Link back to Gorge-osity III.

The St. Johns Bridge, lending its name to the St. Johns neighborhood of Portland, is absolutely beautiful. In some light it sticks out against the background of the hill, a reverse silhouette. Other light makes it the silhouette against the sky. The river, far, far below the deck, the gothic tower design creating a cathedral of crossing.

One of the reasons I wanted to visit the bridge was the photography of Zeb Andrews, linked above. That and the fact that Andrews’ profile linked to a camera store in the St. Johns neighborhood, called Blue Moon Camera.

I wandered in to Blue Moon and guess who greeted me. I told him I had seen his stuff on flickr, and that we had exchanged contract subscriptions. He was busy, and I have no reason to think he’d remember my stuff, so no biggie. He was very gracious.

Blue Moon endeared itself to me by having two things I want: A Pentax 400/5.6 lens, and two Zero Image pinhole cameras. I still wasn’t feeling very good from the tuna melt, so I didn’t stick around the camera store very long. I should have picked up a pinhole.

Cruising around St. Johns a little bit, I went to the grocery store to get a few things to tide me over later. The neighborhood reminds me of what I like about Ballard, except without the people I know. Right under the bridge are some condo/townhomes going up; there’s just no escaping the housing boom, even this far from downtown PDX.

I planned my escape route. I would take US 30 up the Oregon side of the Columbia river, hopefully with some photo ops along the way. I planned to spend the night in a motel because, frankly… The tuna melt was really uncomfortable.

I knew there was a Motel 6 (cheap) in Longview, and there’s really no other bridge over the Columbia between the St. Johns and Astoria (at the Pacific ocean). So over the Longview Bridge I would go.

There were no photo ops, because there wasn’t really any place to pull off the road. Besides, I was eager to get into a motel room. I should have at least taken some pictures of the Longview bridge, in the dusk with car light trails. But I didn’t. And driving across the thing….

Driving across the Longview bridge is like being in a David Lynch movie: you can’t quite understand why you’re so freaked out. It was the longest and highest bridge in the US when it was built in the ’30s. The wooden spans were replaced with steel in the late ’40s, but yikes! 210 feet in the air behind a semi-truck in light rain and some gusty wind…

One day soon I’ll retrace many of these steps and take pictures. The Columbia between Portland and the ocean is interesting to me, because so much history has happened there, both social and natural.

I found the Motel 6. Watched ‘Austin Powers: Goldmember’ on cable TV. Slept well.

Today’s bass line of the day is from John Giblin, in Kate Bush’s ‘Love and Anger.’ It really starts grooving about half way through the song.

I’ve been on a Kate Bush jag of late, which started when I finally hooked up the turntable and started listening to EPs.

So here’s Mr. Giblin and Ms. Bush. M-m-m-m-m-m, yeah.

When last we heard from our intrepid explorer, I had been to some waterfalls and was making my way east along the Columbia Gorge.

The Columbia Gorge, it should be noted, formed over a short period of geological time during the last ice age, when a huge glacial dam in present-day Idaho formed a huge lake which extended throughout the eastern half of present-day Montana. The glacier would give way, causing a huge flood to wash across what is now eastern Washington state and northeastern Oregon. So powerful was the deluge that it cut a channel through a mountain range. The range is the Cascades, and the channel is the Gorge. This flooding happened dozens of times at least; the glacier would move southward and re-clog the Clark Fork River, and then eventually the ice dam would give way again. Over and over. Until the global warming of the day caught up with it.

I love this story. Just the idea of an area from Spokane to Portland being a giant flash flood of 500 cubic miles of water, traveling at 65 miles an hour for two days resonates inside me, like it just happened yesterday and I’m here to look at the damage. And, oddly enough, that’s exactly what I was doing, driving down US 30/I-84. In geologic terms, the second hand has barely moved.

And sometimes history repeats itself: About a thousand years ago, long after the last deluge from Glacial Lake Missoula, a chunk of the Cascades collapsed into the riverbed, forming another natural dam. The lake from this dam is said to have reached back to Idaho, as if eastern Washington hadn’t had enough flooding already.

This event made its way into the traditions of the natives, who say that the great spirit built a bridge across the Columbia. This bridge eventually eroded its way down, the last remnants forming a rapid for the river to cascade across. And thus: Cascade Rapids.

Cascade Rapids was treacherous, and the walls of the gorge were narrow, so anyone traveling through here would have a hard time with a portage. This section was so dangerous that many immigrants on the Oregon trail would choose an overland route, rather than float down the river here.

So before too long, some enterprising folks built a channel next to the rapids, with a lock. This allowed traffic to go up and down the river with relative ease. And a town sprung up to support the locks, and to give travelers some place to spend their money on their trip. This town was creatively named Cascade Locks.

And then… They built a bridge. The bridge is called Bridge Of The Gods, after the native legend. And you know what else? They built a dam: Bonneville Dam. Bonneville was downstream from the Bridge of the Gods, and necessitated raising the bridge by 44 feet. The Cascade locks were also now underwater, which meant that the people of the town of Cascade Locks now had little to do but try and get a job at the dam.

Which is where I come into the story. I need to eat. I take the exit for Cascade Locks. I say “Bridge Of The Gods!” in a hyper-dramatic voice when I see the sign. I stop at the only decent looking restaurant I can find: Cascade Inn. There’s a place called Char-Burger that looks promising, but the word ‘char’ puts me off. It turns out I made a bad call.

I walk in and I’m literally the only customer in the place. The owner will be my waiter, and she pipes right up: “Yes, we’re open. There hasn’t been much traffic down the highway today, so no one’s come in. We’re thinking it’s because of Thanksgiving, and people are in the city getting stuff or being with relatives.” She tells me the specials. One is turkey melt. I say, “That one. Turkey melt.” I say this because I don’t have any clue what to get.

She relays the order to the cook. She starts talking to the cook, and tells her the same exact story about it being close to Thanksgiving and that’s why no one’s eating at this diner. I try not to believe that I heard a pained sigh from the kitchen.

The owner comes back out and makes small-talk with me for a little while: “You know, sometimes people go to the city and they just eat while they’re there, and don’t wait until they get back to town. I bet that’s what it is. Oh, here’s another customer. My dam man.” I know she wants me to ask about her damned man, but I already got the joke. I ask anyway: “Your damned man?” “No, my man who works at the dam.” She smiles.

He comes in. Orders “the usual.” She tells him all about Thanksgiving, and how it’s close and all, and how there aren’t many customers because… I begin to wonder if he’s her dam man because he can get free food.

Life isn’t easy in Cascade Locks, the town named for infrastructure deluged by infrastructure. The turkey melt is to be avoided, as well. It stayed with me for the next 5 hours.

Check it out: Save The Salt, an environmental group dedicated to making sure Kaiser Chemical doesn’t extract too much salt from the Bonneville Salt Flats. Why are they concerned? The 450+ mph race course is unuseable beyond 7 miles!

I love this kind of story. Environmentalists who are into land speed record attempts.

I once met a totally reactionary conservative-movement kind of guy. A real jerk, who would always try to yank my chain about this political situation or that. He’d mock me for being a traitorous liberal. He also happened to be an amateur astronomer. He was bitching about light pollution affecting what he could see. He’d head out to eastern Washington to get away from the cities and still not be able to see much. He told me all about the International Dark Sky Association, which tries to convince municipalities to use lower wattage streetlights and so forth.

I waited for just the right moment. I could barely contain myself. When he got to a pause in his story, I said: “You’re an environmentalist!” He squirmed.

The trip didn’t quite work as planned.

I got a late start, due in part to procrastination, but also because of a record-breaking storm that dumped a whole lot of rain on the area. I set out just as it was dying down, at about 7pm. High winds as I pulled out, calm skies when I ate dinner in Tacoma (Burger King).

Spent the night in a rest stop. Kids, don’t try this at home. It’s dangerous. Booga booga! Don’t do it!

There was something I’d never seen before at this rest area: I thought it was a pile of luggage until I figured out that it was someone sleeping on the concrete near the entrance to the bathrooms. Nearby, a sign asking for a ride to Portland. I was completely conflicted about it; I was headed that way. I made a deal with myself: If this kid (couldn’t have been more than 20) was there in the morning, I’d figure out if I was going to make another deal with myself. I woke up, and the kid was there, this time with one of those silvery space blankets someone had obviously donated. I got my free coffee and walked slowly by. Get involved? Not get involved? Maybe to my shame, maybe to my credit, I didn’t get involved.

Breakfast in Vancouver (more Burger King). Vancouver, WA, not Vancouver, BC. They’re at opposite ends of the state.

I got lost in Portland during morning rush hour. Not so much lost as took a wrong turn and ended up in traffic so I tried to find a back way and didn’t. *That* kind of lost.

Later, I got on the Historic Columbia River Highway. The road winds around through the hills a while before entering the gorge proper, somewhere near Vista House, known as the world’s most expensive rest stop. Unfortunately for me, there was no indication on any web site I visted or anywhere earlier in the trip that the highway was closed to traffic just to my side of this landmark. I had to backtrack and bypass it. O well.

Rejoining the Historic Highway, I came to Wahkeena Falls, which are pretty darn lovely. Another guy a little younger than me was taking pictures as well, and we joked about the perils of getting our lenses wet in the spray of the falls. Here he is:

Here’s another one with him. I’m so tricksy. By the way, if any of you know this guy, please let me and/or him know. Thanks.

I showed you this one of the falls already:

I saw him again later at Multnomah Falls, where I took some pictures. I had the tripod and the big, scary zoom lens and everything. There was this little girl who was so, so very excited to be there (with her dad and brother). She would point at things and say, “That’s the Multnomah Falls Lodge, built in 1925! Look, salmon in the creek! They’re probably spawning, and will die soon…” On and on. She came to me and said, “Look! A photographer! Are you photographing the famous Multnomah Falls?” I said, “Yes, indeed I am! I have taken a number of photographs already!” Her dad looked at me, unable to figure out if I was mocking her. I wasn’t. I wish more kids were like that little girl.

Other kids were throwing rocks at the salmon in the creek. I managed to get a mom to make her son stop endangering future generations of salmon in this way with an eye roll. Such power I have! I saved the salmon with my eyebrows!

Later, I balked at the idea of a $3 hot dog at the stand, but went in to the gift shop and smashed a penny.

And then… Off I went to the east. In another entry, all about Cascade Locks.

Sometimes craigslist ads defy understanding.

Go look at the big version.

Mt. Saint Helens is the poster child for volcanic danger in North America. Everything in the valley that’s green has grown up since the eruption in 1980. The floor of the valley is made up of ‘hummocks,’ which are rapidly-eroding remnants of the giant mudslide/avalanche.

We’re standing at about ~3300 feet above sea level, just above the snow line. The mountain is 8364 or so.

It’s a beautiful place, despite all the ‘Weyerhauser Tree Farm’ signs. I hope I can get back there again, during the winter. Maybe there will be another magical day of respite from the rains.

Taking this picture got me thinking about what photography means, specifically landscape photography. I’ve had a couple of ideas knocking around in my head. The first is that when you look at landscapes, either in photography or any other art form, you’re looking at your mind. Photographs of objects, like cat pictures or an ad for a new car or whatever, are more didactic; they tell you what to think about. But landscapes are your mind, both in a more superficial sense where you’re inhabiting the place depicted in your imagination, and in a deeper sense. It’s this deeper sense that I’m having trouble describing. It has to do with the fact that a landscape asks you in, rather than telling you who you are. Or maybe it was just the altitude getting to me.

Another aspect I’ve been knocking around is this: If I take a stunningly beautiful picture of Mt. St. Helens, you might be inspired to one day see it in person. On the other hand, you might believe yourself to have seen most of what’s important about it just in the photograph. In this sense, I think landscape photography is a sort of reverse-defacement, especially if the photograph is more tweaked and filtered than not. If you think you understand the subject based on my photograph, then I’ve done a disservice to the place. The mystery has to remain. This gets back to the old idea of a photograph taking your soul away. In my position on the Elk Rock viewpoint, taking the picture above, I couldn’t help but thinking how silly an idea that is. But from your position, staring at your computer monitor, maybe I stole the soul of Mount Saint Helens, defaced it, and gave it to you without even knowing. And without your knowing, either.

Do you think you know much about Mount Saint Helens from that picture?

Update: More at flickr.

Wahkeena Falls, Columbia River Gorge, OR. (After Owen Higgins. )

WA state highway 504, near Mt. St. Helens.

Whenever I see ‘Iraq Study Group‘ in the news lately, I can’t help but read ‘Office of Special Plans‘ instead. I have to take a few seconds to get my bearings before proceeding.

It’s rather confusing how many elements there are to the total incompetence of the Bush administration.

This evening I shall drive to the Columbia River Gorge, and stay in a motel in The Dalles. And then tomorrow I will follow the river on its way to the Pacific ocean. I’ll stop and take pictures of waterfalls and other points of interest. For dinner, I’ll discover if Waddles is still open…

Oh, wait. I just looked it up. I won’t be able to go near there unless I want to have an aneurism. Waddles is now a Hooters. Progress: What a mofo.

…for dinner, I’ll find an Original Taco House (another Waddle family property). Well-fed, I’ll visit Blue Moon Camera and investigate the St. Johns neighborhood for possible permanent migration.

Then it’s the long drive home up I-5.