Voyage of a Summer Sun: Canoeing the Columbia River

9. Change a Big River: Rattlesnake, Milfoil, and Carp

9 CHnnO( n 810 HIY(H Rattlesnake) Milfoil) and Carp It's impossible, not just illegal, to launch a canoe at the base of Grand Coulee Dam. The river roils from the penstocks into a narrow channel between steep rock banks. So Ben Seibold drove me two miles downstream to a boat launch where the river ran swift but flat. We shared a moment of awkwardness when Ben wanted to see me safely onto the river, and I wanted to see him safely turn the pickup around and head back. We couldn't do both. Nor could I say, without insulting him, what I was waiting for. So I pushed offon the Columbia, wheeled a 180 and waved him thankingly good-bye as the current took me around the bend. As the Columbia moved into Rufus Woods Lake, the shoreline eased to rounded hills with blond bunchgrass. The only green was at riverside, where roots of short trees tapped the water. This was open range. Herefords and Black Angus sought the shade near shore when the sun blazed highest in the sky. A calf bawled and scampered away, but mostly the river lay quiet. Only the isolated ranch and the hum ofits irrigation pump broke the silence. All three boats I saw that day were idling, fishing, the kind of lost-to-the-world fishing you acknowledge with a slow salute and pass by without words. 156 VOYAGE OF A SUMMER SUN Sage grouse. Quail. A spotted sandpiper, on busy little stilts, skittered about the shore and poked its needle beak at mud-bugs and minnows. Large boulders, rough and red-called "erratics" because they don't belong here-pocked the tan slopes as if they'd dropped at random from the sky. Glaciers left them behind after scraping the ancient riverbed and melting. These basalt stones were the active agent ofprehistoric scouring, some as big as woodsheds but most the size of Yugos or smaller. Hillsides lay littered with this giant grit, which took on a time-shadowy beauty as I paddled past. The current slackened but pulled me along. I dodged no hazards, met no traffic, felt no wind. Because shade was taken by cows, I ate my apples and sandwiches in the canoe and let the river-lake drift me at its own slow pace. No need to paddle. I splashed water on an inner tube to cool it, and leaned back on the tube. With the straw hat between my face and the sun, I drifted off-as well as down-the big river. Sound goes a long way on a river. I awoke to conversation, as if the voices were inside my canoe. But I was alone, still in mid-river. After blinking and searching, I found the source of these voices. They issued from a pair of ranchers, half a mile downstream, setting irrigation pipe in a hay field. The next day, early, I came across a fish farmer sowing food pellets into pens that floated on pontoons anchored to the left bank. The man was wiry and open-faced, wearing a green baseball cap, a flannel shirt, and tennis shoes. He'd parked his aluminum skiff with II5-horse Yamaha beside the four fish pens, each the size ofa squash court. He introduced himself as Bill Tattersall and said he was raising Donaldson trout, a breed ofrainbow. Swarms ofthree-inch youngsters rose to meet each spray of pellets he cast on the water. Change a Big River 157 "We're going to try Adantic salmon next," Tattersall said. He was tending these pens for Seafarms of Washington, a private outfit based in Port Angeles. "These fish are happy here," he said. I thought that was an odd thing to say, so I tied up the canoe and he let me cast fistfuls of rice-sized pellets at flashing fingerlings. He had 25,000 young fish. I helped him adjust the nets, which hung over each pen to foil herons. "Herons will sit on the nets," he said. "Their weight drops the net close to the water. They poke their beaks through and spear fish, but they can't get them out. That's what these dead ones are." Life is hard in the West. Tattersall lifted the netting and scooped out some silver belly-uppers from one corner. We pulled the net tight and fastened it. Permit hassles had delayed Seafarms...