Page 16 RAIN February/March 1982 Petroglyphs that were once near the Long Narrows. ENVIRONMENT Bridge of the Gods, Mountains ofFire, A Return to the Columbia Gorge, by Chuck Williams, 1980,192 pp., $29.95 from: Elephant Mountain Arts P.O. Box 902 White Salmon, WA 98672 The white men would change the rivers if they did not suit them. —Chief Joseph Anyone who has never seen the Columbia Gorge would have a hard time believing the descriptions of that place. It's a little like the story of the blind men and the elephant. The Columbia River, in its last hundred miles to the sea, passes by and through a primeval rain forest complete with towering waterfalls (tributaries left hanging when the river cut too quickly through the rock), a range of still active volcanos, a rolling California style high plains and ultimately an immense sprawling desert. Along the way there are basalt monoliths (one, 800 foot high Beacon Rock, has been scheduled for quarrying more than once) and miles of mortarless stone walls that are now covered with moss. There is even an isolated castle (it houses quite a collection of Rodin drawings and sculptures) and a replica of Stonehenge! There's no question but that the Gorge is an all-out visual extravaganza. But, grandeur aside, the Columbia River had two things going for it from a capitalization point of view; it was fast and powerful and it provided the only sea-level passage through the towering Cascade Mountain Range. It was destined to be the energy and transportation heart of the new frontier, and to a large degree, it still is. That is unfortunate for both the river and the life that it kept. Before the white men, the river was both the heart and spirit of several Indian tribes who shared its bounty. They were famed as traders, and their great surpluses of fish and wappato and other roots provided a handsome income and much leisure time. So much, in fact, that many early white observers considered them downright decadent. . . Even though they often worked hard especially during the fishing season, the Chinookan people were, to use a current expression, laid back. . . . I am descended from the almost-extinct Native American tribe that lived at the west end of the Columbia Gorge and from the European pioneers that replaced them and immediately began remodeling. The Columbia Gorge is the mystic center of my childhood memories. With those credentials. Chuck Williams seems to be an almost annointed guardian of the Gorge, and, in the tradition of John Muir and other naturalists, he is arguing his case for its preservation on several fronts. Working with the Columbia Gorge Coalition (P.O. Box 266, Hood River, OR 97031) and the Oregon legislative contingent in D.C., Williams is pushing diligently for legislation that would make the Gorge a National Scenic Area protecting it from further destruction. And, like Muir, his most powerful tool in this struggle is likely to be his writing. His account of the reining in of the river is another of those "march of progress" horror stories, but his history of the formation of the Gorge and his chronicle of the Indians who flourished there until the Europeans "remodeled" it, make for very fine reading. The combination of myths and science and the interplay of personal history with the advance of Manifest Destiny works well, without seeming gimmicky or rhetorical. The often conflicting values of land, of resources, or of a river once as mighty as the Columbia, are never easy to resolve. Now the shape of the river has been changed. The salmon, whose abundance stunned the first white settlers, are nearly gone. Most of the Indians have been eliminated. The Columbia, because of the leaking of radioactive waste at Hanford, Washington, is considered "the most radioactive river in the world." Surface mining and clear cut logging continue along its banks and recreational and residential sprawl threaten. It's not quite the "Pittsburgh of the West" that its promoters hoped it would be, but it is still largely up for grabs. There can be little question which side of the Gorge debate you'll come out on if you read this book. The photographs, drawings and reproductions of paintings alone are convincing evidence in the river's behalf. Let's hope that David Brower (Friends of the Earth) is right when he suggests that we can use our "genius" to "find ways to go back over the bruised places, heal them, and let them sustain (our) civilization." That would constitute a real "return to the Columbia Gorge." I hope Tm at the homecoming. —CC From: Bridge of the Gods
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NTc4NTAz