Columbia River

Only passing through

October 19, 2008

Driving east from Portland on Interstate 84 is humbling. I’m but an insignificant speck squeezing between the Columbia River’s slow-flowing expanse on one side and cliffs on the other. As I cross the Cascade Mountains and encroach upon the high desert at The Dalles, a question arises: is there anywhere else in the United States […]

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Feast amid ghosts

August 13, 2008

We sit at long tables, nearly one hundred of us, amid fields of bounty. It’s Sauvie Island, ten miles west of Portland. I can smell the earth, fertile from Columbia River floods. The sun eases toward the hills, setting aglow acres of vegetables sprawling between guardian white oaks half a millennium old.

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