March to April : snapshots of the western desert at high noon

In a fit of nervous energy and excitment plans were made (if not hastily then lustily at least) as we hurried about town trying to finish up our obligations. What of it we would be done with before our trip time came. But the weather was promising us things, and we were all three hungry for adventures to begin again. Adventures like flowering alpine meadows, secrets hushed like wild forest streams, and the quiet intimations in the flanks of arid hills, rolling along as some tongues do.

Anxious, I hustled up my stuff and mustered the courage to face a deep blue day set aside (just for fun) without too many expectations. The fun of feeling unattached for once, not that I don't also apprecitate attachment. Seem to need it, even (all those deadlines I've set for myself and kept twice over) as I curse the loosey goosey odds and untied ends of my raveling and instantly unraveling desires. I had been desiring the river.

Cut to a broad, green river--dammed but flowing on. Me beside it. My friends, with me, and all of us rolling along too. Two wheels each, and 200 miles round trip covering floating about three feet off the ground on shining angular frames. We rode out past the waterfalls of the Columbia River near Portland as familar landmarks heralding the beginning of our trip into river country and camped at Ainsworth State Park. As usual, here a fine mist seemed to flow up from the grounds and to eminate. We drank from groundwater faucets and wore warm waterproof clothes. Despite looming clouds sometimes, it would not rain on us until a light sprinkle on our way back, traveling west on highway 14 in Washington after a steady downpour interlude between entering and exiting a small cafe in Bingen. But our bedrolls didn't even get too wet that time.

We had good luck with the roads, too, as much as I feel anyone can. The roads serve a paradoxical set of roles in this experience and in others for me: I go, I am able to go the way I do, because of the roads. My two skinny wheels would have a hard time traveling the distances they do and would hardly be able to go the places without paved surfaces. And the roads are also so violent as I see them. They were constructed on top of and through the ecosystems and bioregions which had been naturally productive without any kind of tampering. But now people take and make things out of the land that were not thought to be profitable before, because they gave them no unfair advantage, pretended to no false security, could not be hoarded for tomorrow or stolen from today.
Maybe I wouldn't feel compelled to travel so far without them, or at least no further or faster than my own two feet could take me. Maybe it is silly for someone like me to assume that I can still have my slice of a vast landscpae in an amount of time squeezed between task-saturated city-stays. But,without the roads, where would I go? I can't get out of town too often. Confinement looks a lot like parking lot after parking lot in the hour between a post office and a daycare center job. Not that I don't like the social action. I just take mine with a lot less cement and some cleaner fresher smells. Among other things.
The roads have taken me and take me where I need to go now, I suppose, while I try and improvise... Seeing life this way is at least a million times more vivid than I'd once thought it could be. It does make me a little sad to know that the limits of my imagination restrict me from even fathoming the exponential potential of such a wealth which, growing daily, embodies the wilderness of truth. So much there! I'm a tardy pupil but I'm me.

We saw the beginnings of spring in the desert after crossing Hood River and descending, ascending, gliding along drying vegetations turning yellower and marking our journey with wildflowers. Those broad vistas of water and Cascade mountains rising over that river, seen and loved by beavers, bald, eagles, squirrels, salmon, and by us people who now live here and visit here, command attention and nurse the movement of time between attention both. We pass the Dalles near dusk and roll on along the Columbia on I-84 (the only road through the area) and are blasted by the bursts of wind pushed from the paths of semi and rvs. We are shoved close to the gaurd rail by a double rig with a big mac dripping on the back. Horse trailers. Hay bales. Into the evening.
Finally, we arrived, tired and after 75 miles, at Deschutes River State Park. This is the place where the Deschutes meets the Columbia and the site of Celilo Village, home of natives who once fished from bountiful salmon runs trvaling up Celilo Falls, an oddity in the Columbia flattened and quieted by the dam nearest it.

It was sunny, relatively warm, and there were lots of birds to watch and flowers to smell. The sunset was pink and purple and blue and orange and we waded in the river and drank beer.


We split two days of 50-miles lengths by camping along the Columbia in Washington on our way back, before crossing back over on the toll-collecting "Bridge of the Gods." There is a casino being planned here, which could dramatically increase levels of traffic and of pullutants in the air and water. A Native American tribe is proposing it, claiming they need money for basic social services and to alleviate rampant poverty and to stengthen lobbying positions. You can see an article I wrote about it in this spring's The Bear Deluxe. We took the same route back on the Columbia River Highway on the Oregon side of the river, and ruminated on new things, and endings.

It has been the first trip of the warmer season so far, and I think it has been a success.

I love the prospects of anticipation stewing in the springtime. I am starting early, coming home late. I do not yet know the taste of the broccolli sprouting in our garden, the sting of a skinned knee, or a startled bee. I don't yet feel the sunshine and warm breeze and energy--but it's all present, if latent, in springtime, and I'll wait.