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16. The Pull of Tide: So Big and So Soon
- Oregon State University Press
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TH( PUll Of TIO( So Big and Soon From Portland the Columbia turns north, accepts the Willamette River and climbs the map to find a dogleg left through the final barrier--the Coast Range-to the sea. The Coast Range parallels the Cascades but it's lower and more rounded, with fir and hemlock and cedar and thick brush that closes in and makes it hard to hunt, good for deer and Roosevelt elk. Coast Range peaks won't hold year-round snow, but the mountains take the first punch of winter storms off the Pacific and pass them on as slow dark clouds that bunch against the Cascades and drip over the Willamette Valley. It's not the total a~ount ofrain but the rain's winter constancy that gets you. A whole February can go by without a sun-break, without a glimpse of Mount Hood from the city. Whether it's raining or not you think it is, and wonder why anyone with a choice would live here. The answer to that comes in May, when the roses bloom and the dogwoods and rhododendrons and azaleas come out. And then into summer, cool breezes off the Pacific keep the air moving and clean, for city air, and you wonder why anyone with a choice would not live here. In August, now, the river left Portland and split around 284 VOYAGE OF A SUMMER SUN Sauvie Island, flat as Holland, with berry fields and pumpkin patches. Chopped corn rows corduroyed the black earth. On the other side ofSauvie Island-three miles away at the island's broadest-lay the Columbia's deep-water channel where the ships come and go, but here in Multnomah Channel were houseboats with flowered decks and rowboats pulled up to dry. Fat white yachts poked their rears to the channel in competition for the silly name prize. Past the houseboats and farms, great blue herons topped the pilings, and a red-tailed hawk on a utility pole ruffed his white chest feathers. A kingfisher swallowed a fish in one neck-stretching gulp, and blackberry vines were alive with birdsong. I had a touch of Virginia Wyenian frustration that the world now calls this place Sauvie Island. The place I grew up with was Sauvie's Island. That might not look like a big difference , but it was said as all one word-So-vee-ZY-lund-a spongy foreign land across the channel from Scappoose Airport . Uncle Pat, five years older than my dad, was the flight instructor at Scappoose. When they played semipro ball together , Pat was the shortstop to Dad's second base, and they taught grade school in St. Helens before Dad went in the navy for World War II, Pat into the air force. After the war they came back to St. Helens. Dad taught school again and Pat taught people to fly small planes. They hunted ducks, and sometimes I got to go along. From the airport, we crossed a fence and slogged through bogs to Pat's duck blind of plywood and cattails. We'd get out there before the sun came up and wade out in hip boots to place rubber decoys in a ducklike attitude on the water. Then hide and be quiet in the duck blind, where there was a bench and a gun rest on the sill of an open window. We lit hand warmers. Pat and Dad passed a flat metal flask between them and sipped from it, and daylight rose over the Columbia River wetlands. Whenever live ducks appeared in the distant sky, Pat honked on the duck call, which was supposed to bring the birds veering [18.116.13.113] Project MUSE (2024-04-17 21:18 GMT) The Pull of Tide 285 toward us but seldom did. Ducks aren't stupid. More often Pat's quacking gave rise to huge fits ofgiggles. I thought I must be missing what it was all about-these double-barrel shotguns, this camouflage rain gear, and two grown men doubled over in helpless laughter. There was something large here to live up to, but I didn't know what it was. I remember guns blazing and the smell ofhot spent shells. "Out ofrange, I guess," Pat would say, blue smoke issuing from the gun barrels. They must have in fact killed ducks, because I remember plucking ducks, eating ducks, but I can't recall a duck ever falling from the sky. The Columbia...