Columbia Dawn

It’s a four-part scene, this panorama. Tall forested mountains rise on either side, their peaks but a doorway to grander views beyond. The spiny slopes hold hidden waters, cascading down narrow gullies, carrying the season’s runoff to the valley below. Veiled waterfalls mark the point of stiff resistance the mountains put up to the liquid’s unending assault on their bedrock. In this, the rainy season, the splashes can be heard from some distance, drawing visitors in to the coves that enclose them.

The expanse of forest that mask the streams are but a mass from where I sit; individuality marked only on the ridges where the tops of trees silhouette against the sky, or at lower altitudes, fog. Underneath the canopy is an array of coniferous stands with little underbrush, adding to the majesty of the solid trunks visible therein.

The river rules the valley floor, carrying glacial waters from far away mountains and whisking it away to the distant shoreline that awaits downstream. It is a fast mover, its currents strong and determined; a challenge to the fish that attempt to navigate her on their way home. She was here first, before the mountains. She was too fast to be brushed aside by their rise and she still is. Her channel cuts deeper then the growth of the hills, and her children run down their slopes to greet her, filling her with water from the slopes above. Stony outcrops dot her channel and banks, big rocks that refuse to give in to her power; but they too, will succumb in time.

The icing to the morning is provided by the clouds. The misty banks drift and break as they hug the mountain valleys, rest over the river, and whiten the sky. The sun brightens a spot as it attempts to penetrate the blanket, but can only be a minor player at this hour. They emerge from the hillsides like groggy children waking to breakfast on a school morning. They join the others, floating above the river on the way to the sea as the air from East descends into the gorge, bulldozing its way downstream. There, as the gorge opens to the wide Willamette Valley expanse, they will collide with the winds and clouds from the shore, and meet their end.