Into the Breach

Into the Breach

Today we are trekking Eastward from Astoria, Oregon at the mouth of the Columbia River, towards the famous Columbia River Gorge. That will take us directly past Portland, the scene of the greatest crime against American democracy the country has ever known. Just being close to Portland gets my blood boiling. We will start the day with a visit to Fort Clatsop in the midst of the Lewis and Clark National Park. This was where the great expedition, perhaps not rivaled for daring until we reached for the moon 160 years later, spent their time during the winter of 1805-1806. It is a strange location since it is seven miles from the Ocean and downriver (down the appropriately called Lewis and Clark River) by several miles from Young’s Bay on the southern end of the Columbia mouth (which itself is ten or more miles wide). It had been a long trip West and would be an equally long trip back East to return to the inhabited side of the country. Lewis, Clark and their Corps of Discovery, as they called themselves, now had their eyes on St. Louis and must have spent an anxious winter, itching to get going. Surprisingly, none of the expedition longed to stay in this remote and distant new land, which I suspect warned them of its harshness with its perpetually shrouded mists and chilled, though not frigid, normal temperatures.

The Oregon Coast is hostile to the initial senses with its ruggedness, but quite survivable with its temperate climate attenuated by being at the end of the Pacific Current, which turns into the California Current. Strangely enough, while this water flow keeps the Pacific Northwest moderated, it is colder than the Alaska Current that heads northward from that same originating Pacific Current. What this all translates into is that this area gets plenty of rain and fog and doesn’t get severely cold until you move more inland where the mountain altitudes drop the thermometer. As I look out over the Columbia River this morning from my Hamptons Inn room, I see a thick marine layer and a generally steel grey Sunday summer morning. Like my friends Lewis and Clark, I too consider this the turnaround point of our trip and have my eyes on the warmer climes of Escondido.

It took Lewis and Clark three weeks to cut logs and build their little Fort Clatsop, named after the Indian tribe in the surrounding area. It only took us ten minutes to check into the Hampton Inn, but it did take another two minutes to wait for the elevator. The word Clatsop meant dried salmon to the indigenous people. This river is, indeed, the source of all those sea-going salmon that each year spawn by heading “against the tide” upriver to lay their eggs where Mother Nature has taught them and hard-wired into their cortex. Have I mentioned that I don’t care for salmon and that it is Kim’s preferred meal of choice? One more reason to turn around and go home to the land of Taco Bell.

While at Fort Clatsop, we got the benefit of hearing from an obtuse, elocutionally-challenged older Ranger in buckskin pants named Ranger Bill and a sharp-as-a-tack older female ranger, also wearing buckskin. Ranger Bill used to be a college professor and was spending his golden years shuffling through laminated photos of Lewis and Clark’s paraphernalia to show tourists like us. I’m estimating that he was batting .500 on finding the visual displays he was looking for at any moment. The woman Ranger, by contrast had interesting and relevant stories, many about the famous female guide for the Expedition, Sacagewea. My favorite comment was that she explained that the mere presence of a native woman and young child with the expedition helped the tribes they encountered be less threatened by the corps of 33-40 men of different cultures (Americans, French-Canadian, an African-American slave and Native-Americans) and several members like Lewis, Clark and Clark’s slave, who were of significant physicsl size. The analogy to today’s Wall of Moms in Portland seems noteworthy, the difference being that hostile Indian tribes along the way waved the Expedition on without incident and did not feel the need to show dominance through aggression and tear gas. Imagine that.

We continued on into the Columbia Gorge and found an airy Caribbean eatery called the Puffin Cafe dockside at a local marina where all the tattooed youth of Portland seemed to frequent with their jet-skis and speedboats. One Nacho platter with jerk chicken later we were headed for Stevenson and the lovely and quite opulent Skamania Lodge perched on a hillside looking out over the widest spot of the gorge. These are not the narrow, deep glacial gorges of Ithaca or Franconia Notch, but the more broad and expansive Western gorges you find in Yellowstone, Glacier, Yosemite and here. We will explore the length of this 80-mile natural wonder tomorrow morning before we head south towards Crater Lake.

I want to wax eloquent for a moment on the topic of road trips. I am finding this one especially pleasant. I am seeing country that I have never travelled before and while we all see lots of images of the world, compliments of video and National Geographic before that, it is not the same as embracing it and being there. That seems like a trite observation, but I, as much as anyone, fall prey to the notion that I have been somewhere and bought the T-shirt so why return to wallow in the place. The best travel and vacation (as in true re-creation) have always been times when I feel that I have gotten to know a place better than a video or photo montage might allow. I immediately think of our summer family trips to Normandy and Ireland. Strangely enough, neither place is known for their beaches or their sunny spa-like aspects. Both are rugged and overcast areas more often than not, but both had great texture and people and a sense of place that far exceeds the usual Club Med spots. I think I can safely declare the Oregon Coast to be a similar venue. It is rich in history and it makes one think of the struggles of the people who came before and broke the back of this land (or perhaps broke their backs ON the land). Since this was not a destination vacation, the road trip with its modest daily mileage goals was perfect to embrace this new area for us. We can and have stopped wherever the spirit moved us to soak in the local ambiance.

The only admonition I would make in general about road trips is that they are probably better when there isn’t a global backdrop of geo-political angst. The backdrop of pandemic angst works OK because it forces us to eat outdoors (our choice since Oregon is an indoor-dining state at this time) and that forces us to feel the climate at midday and evening. In a place like this, the climate governs psyche, so that is a good way to get in the right mood for the place. We are driving in COVID-separate cars, which is also OK. We can each listen to podcasts or books of our own choosing (even though we are all four of very similar political mindset). The only problem is that it is hard to not be judgmental of those around us. This one isn’t wearing a mask or that one wants to joke about the Coronavirus rather than take it seriously. As we drove the coast yesterday, Kim repeatedly opined that the rural folk who served us were likely far more red than blue and more prone to ignore the virus threat than cower under its gaze. I have no way of knowing if that is true or not, but I do know that without that politicization of the pandemic (which I attribute in majority part to our friends of the Republican persuasion as they defend their man-child Trump at all costs), this would be a better trip with a greater desire to embrace local culture. Nevertheless, we have passed through Portland and survived, and plan to continue forward into the breach.