When you cross the bridge from Hood River into Washington State and take a right on Hwy 14 you will eventually come to the Old Highway 8 that veers off to the left. A few miles further you have a choice: take a delightful little stroll on paved paths – Catherine Creek – overlooking the Columbia river.

Here is the river at different times of day: 

Or get ready for a serious hike up Coyote Wall, through a constantly changing landscape, flat boulders, Aspens stands, pine forests, the occasional remnant of structures for collecting and branding cattle.

Steep, slippery, with chances of rattlesnakes in the summer and chances of being shot in the fall…. it’s all worth it to get a sense of the might of the river snaking through the Gorge.

No kidding, by the way, about the “being shot” part – it was typical for me to read the warning sign about wearing orange vests to be visible in deer hunting season AFTER I returned to the car. Never thought that public hiking paths could fall within hunting grounds. No harm, no foul, I guess. I do admit, though, that it is not particularly wise to hike there alone. I will keep that in mind, and a SPOT locator in my pocket that can call 911 from anywhere with satellite GPS. Floppy ears might not be so lucky….

In the late spring a profusion of wildflowers can be found in these places (and many others in the Gorge.) So today’s book recommendation offers a variety of sources to get you hooked on some serious beauty in our region. The compilation was done by the native plants society/WA chapter.

http://www.cbwnps.org/books/

In my elementary school there were 4 grades to a classroom. Often when the teacher needed a break from the chaos he declared it was time for Heimatkunde – local history and geography – a subject that allowed him to entrust the first grade to some aide, and take the rest of us for a walk.  We would visit the old water tower, left over from Roman occupation, or the poplar-lined roads, planted for shade by the occupying French, or a windmill from the time the Dutch governed the region. We were then asked if we had already visited these sites on the practically obligatory Sunday afternoon family stroll, and all but one said yes.

“I take it, young Friderike, your family does not like to walk in the countryside?””No Sir, it’s just that my father has no legs.” “This time, Missie, you are going to far even for someone known to have a rich fantasy life – I will inform your parents.” Inform he did, only to walk away with tail between his legs, since I had spoken the truth. To this day I do not understand why he, a veteran himself, so shortly after the war, did not put the pieces together.

In any case, I have made up for the missing walks ever since, and will document some of the most delightful places in the Pacific Northwest this week.

We begin with the Klickitat river, which flows into the Columbia at Lyle, WA. There is a 9 mile trail following the stream, with beautiful vistas, and enough width to allow you to avoid the rampant poison ivy on each side. Native Americans have restored the salmon population, and when I hiked there some government agency was trying to get cables with antennas across the river to help count the fish. I saw salmon fishing with nets – it requires unbelievable strength and agility to hoist those huge fish out of the water, on platforms or the rocks; the law now requires safety lines for the fishermen, since too many lost their lives on the slippery granite. And here is the perfect book to learn tribal history from:http://pharoseditions.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Naked-Against-the-Rain-Front-Cover.jpg

The fall color was beautiful,the moon visible and for a few short hours one could forget about the election.

We have seen the damage inflicted by torrents of water in the wake of hurricanes, both from above filling rivers as well as through breaking levees. Whether Hurricane Katrina or Irene or Sandy, now Matthew, the surging waters create far more damage than the winds themselves. Hurricanes, however, are isolated incidents, even if there frequency and their intensity seems to be on the rise. What about the day-to-day changes of water levels that we’ll see in the course of climate change?

I recommend a link to a piece about what rising water will do to populations, written in 2014, and long enough that I don’t expect anyone to read it fully. Here ist the upshot: if the predictions about climate change hold (and since 2014 they have been even more dire) 50 million Bangladeshis will have to flee their country by the year 2050. Think of how Europe, for example, has drifted into a xenophobic nationalism with a mere million refugees coming ashore last year.  The psychological fortress that is forming in so many people’s heads might well be constructed in the real world in the form of fortified borders. The Brexit was just the first step into such a direction.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/29/world/asia/facing-rising-seas-bangladesh-confronts-the-consequences-of-climate-change.html

50 million – from just ONE country. I cannot begin to think of all the low lying areas in the world that will be equally drowned, forcing migrations that are larger than anything mankind has seen, even during the worst of wars.

As Paul Krugman wrote in last weeks. NYT:

It’s time to end the blackout on climate change as an issue. It needs to be front and center — and questions must be accompanied by real-time fact-checking, not relegated to the limbo of he-said-she-said, because this is one of the issues where the truth often gets lost in a blizzard of lies.

There is, quite simply, no other issue this important, and letting it slide would be almost criminally irresponsible.
Do we want more headlines like this? https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/capital-weather-gang/wp/2016/10/10/thousands-of-people-are-stranded-in-north-carolina-city-as-flood-waters-rise/?wpisrc=nl_rainbow-nonsub&wpmm=1

We’ve had the first taste of real rain yesterday. The photo above attests to it – a watery veil in front of my lens. This week, then, I will focus on water, too much and too little of it, the fight over it, the need to conserve. And before you roll your eyes over the fact that there is depressing politics again associated with a topic, I’ll cheer you up with someone who’ll brighten your Monday.

http://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2016/10/benedict-cumberbatch-magic-trick-video

And if that didn’t work, you can always dream yourself into a Caribbean free of hurricanes….

Remember Velvet Underground? Mid 1960s, Lou Reed, John Cale, Sterling Morrison – Andy Warhol as the background handler? Morrison died at age 51 of some kind of lymphoma; Reed died 3 years ago after a failed liver transplant. Cale is still with us – and the reason all this comes to mind is because I came across an old concert of his, Fragments of a Rainy Season. I had meant to write about the arrival of the rain, as a transitional theme.

But when I heard him sing Do not go gentle into the good night – rage, rage against the dying of the light  – I was hooked. He somehow added something with his music to the Dylan Thomas verses.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42JTU4vuyEg  

So, today’s transition is NOT about death, but simply about the fading light. Fall light is simply extraordinary at times! It should not fade so fast!

And if you go inside and need a little magic lamp to brighten up your environment – here you go:

May 5777 be a year that offers us multiple paths to peace and sees us willing to take them. May it provide a garden of Eden with the sweet scent of an apple orchard that feeds the hungry and nurtures the bees who will bring sweetness with honey. May nature be restored to some kind of balance in 5777, may refugees find a home, and racism wiped out while justice prevails.

And if I have a New Year’s wish left over, let politics be rational again.  But that might be just wishing for too much…..

Interspersed are some montages from previous years all sent on Rosh Hashanah.

Actually less into the woods and more into trees: I find them most spectacular in the fall, when the light is reflected by rather than absorbed into their more brightly colored leaves. Here is a poems that points to something important:

Earth is the right place for love.

Birches

When I see birches bend to left and right
Across the lines of straighter darker trees,
I like to think some boy’s been swinging them.
But swinging doesn’t bend them down to stay 
As ice-storms do.  Often you must have seen them
Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning
After a rain.  They click upon themselves
As the breeze rises, and turn many-colored
As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel.
Soon the sun’s warmth makes them shed crystal shells
Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust--
Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away
You’d think the inner dome of heaven had fallen.
They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load,
And they seem not to break; though once they are bowed
So low for long, they never right themselves:
You may see their trunks arching in the woods
Years afterwards, trailing their leaves on the ground
Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair
Before them over their heads to dry in the sun.
But I was going to say when Truth broke in
With all her matter-of-fact about the ice-storm
I should prefer to have some boy bend them
As he went out and in to fetch the cows--
Some boy too far from town to learn baseball,
Whose only play was what he found himself,
Summer or winter, and could play alone.
One by one he subdued his father’s trees
By riding them down over and over again
Until he took the stiffness out of them,
And not one but hung limp, not one was left
For him to conquer.  He learned all there was
To learn about not launching out too soon
And so not carrying the tree away
Clear to the ground.  He always kept his poise
To the top branches, climbing carefully
With the same pains you use to fill a cup
Up to the brim, and even above the brim.
Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish,
Kicking his way down through the air to the ground.
So was I once myself a swinger of birches.
And so I dream of going back to be.
It’s when I’m weary of considerations,
And life is too much like a pathless wood
Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs
Broken across it, and one eye is weeping
From a twig’s having lashed across it open.
I’d like to get away from earth awhile
And then come back to it and begin over.
May no fate willfully misunderstand me
And half grant what I wish and snatch me away
Not to return.  Earth’s the right place for love:
I don’t know where it’s likely to go better.
I’d like to go by climbing a birch tree,
And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk
Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,
But dipped its top and set me down again.
That would be good both going and coming back.
One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.





Where are the politics, you ask? Far from me to disappoint you:

http://forward.com/culture/198181/even-trees-can-be-political/