Voyage of a Summer Sun: Canoeing the Columbia River

12. Turning for Home: This Is Our Mother, This Country

12 TUnninG fon HOm( This Is Our Mother, This Country The Columbia River leaves the Tri-Cities as if headed for Texas, southeast, but then it sniffs the Pacific Ocean and starts a slow fifty-mile bend toward Wallula Gap and into the Columbia River Gorge-Oregon on the left, Washington on the right. More rivers-the Yakima, the Snake, the Walla Wallajoin east ofthe gap and braid themselves into the Columbia. In August, now, these tributaries run low and tired. The mountains they drain lost their snowpack months ago, and water reaching the Columbia has already visited crops-Yakima apples and pears, Idaho potatoes, Walla Walla onions. Long before dams on the mainstream Columbia, farmers along these feeder rivers built weirs, ditches, and canals that altered the waterflow and killed off migrating salmon. Soon after pushing offfrom the Richland Shilo and passing the freeway bridge, on a calm Sunday morning, I poked the canoe into the Yakima River, one ofthe most used and abused ofall the Columbia's tributaries. Wallula Lake had backed into the Yakima's throat so there was no current and not much to see, but a lot to think about. The Yakima has an Indian reservation along its now-diminished flow, and the native people hold treaty rights to the fish that once swarmed here. Guilt- 212 VOYAGE OF A SUMMER SUN soaked power money-over $1 billion in the 1980s-rains down from BPA on fish and wildlife projects throughout the Columbia River basin, and much of it pours into the Yakima. The tribes, the state, and a thicket of federal agencies are working to repair the river. New bypass systems at the irrigation works give adult salmon and steelhead a clearer path upstream, and give their offspring a fighting chance to get out. Screens at the heads of irrigation canals divert fish from deadend flows. In 1989 a hatchery run offall chinook returned to the Yakima River for the first time in living memory. The emphasis in the 1980s was to boost the total number of fish returning to the Columbia River basin, and hatcheries were the quickest way to score. Numbers increased for many strains of salmon, but hatchery fish crowded the natives for food and habitat. And by putting more hatchery fish in the river we artificially respirated the sport- and commercialfishing industries. A trawler in the Pacific or a gill netter at the mouth ofthe Columbia cannot avoid catching the endangered Snake River spring chinook along with the more plentiful hatchery salmon. Indiscriminate harvest-the effects of which are exaggerated by a series of low-water years and poor ocean conditions-now threatens the biological diversity and longterm health of the whole fishery. Mter probing the mouth of the Yakima, I paddled on through the Tri-Cities. Columbia Park, on the right, held four shoreline miles of tall sycamores and tame geese and joggers and bikers. I passed under a blue steel bridge and then a white suspension bridge connecting Kennewick to Pasco. No wind. It was still early, Sunday. Sun dappled the river, and powerboats weren't out yet. A hard-to-break rule ofColumbia paddling is when the wind is down you don't stop. But here on the left I approached the history-rich confluence of the Snake and the Columbia. I put ashore at Sacajawea State Park, a low green delta between the two rivers. Turning for Home 2 I 3 A small museum in the cottonwoods was open but empty, guarded by a firm young rule-keeper who said I couldn't go in eating an apple or shirdess or barefoot. I was about to walk back to the canoe when the guard, suddenly an ally, scanned the terrain for helicopter gunships and whispered he would admit me as is to his museum. But I wasn't wearing money either. At that, he drew the line. I walked back to the canoe and returned with two dollars, shoes, and shirt to visit the Lewis and Clark Museum. In 1803 the United States concluded the Louisiana Purchase with France. Thomas Jefferson paid Napoleon $15 million -three cents an acre-and more than doubled the land area of the United States. The vast new territory was shaped like a New Orleans fire and all ofits smoke, billowing north and west into the unknown.Jefferson wasn't sure what he'd bought. To find out, he...