We climbed the slope above the sailboats to find the harbormaster, a jovial man appropriately surnamed Mast. We could indeed, he said, run a course through the backwaters, using the islands as shields, but even with our hull, to minimize shoals and deadheads we should do it on a flood tide. For that day we had missed it. “Tomorrow at seven-fifteen,” he said, “you’ll have water and light.” “And no wind?” said Pilotis. “I guarantee tides and sunrises—air I don’t do.”
We walked into the village, essentially two streets, Main and the other one, population 500, and only three or four fewer espresso bars than in all of Pittsburgh and St. Louis together. No Mormon town this. We found breakfast, then went to the old hotel, about halfway through renovation, including installation of an espresso bar in the lobby, and took second-floor rooms connected in pairs to a central bath. I turned on my Northwest-coast air conditioner, that is, I opened the window, propped it up with a Gideons Bible, and thought how holy writ was now wafting along Main and maybe working on those dismal, caffeine-blighted souls below. I was happy to see across the street the Cathlamet weather channel—a large flag on the courthouse lawn; already it was lifting into the wind, and I knew the next morning that banner would tell me whether or not we would sail into our last day.
If you like good coffee, exploring Cathlamet can take longer than you might expect, but even then, not so long as to preclude an afternoon snoozing or, given the espresso, an afternoon tossing. An hour before sunset we walked down to a rickety tavern, the River Rat Tap, sitting on tired and uncertain pilings at the edge of the water, reputedly the oldest bar—after the Bar—on all the Columbia. We looked around the place for any remaining ninety-degree angles, but tides had so long danced with pilings as to bend and soften walls, floor, and ceiling into flexibility if not limpness, a sagging Raggedy Ann room. Even the pool table was chocked and propped to give its slate top an approximation of levelness, although before we picked up cues, an old fellow with a bit of sag in himself advised us to play for a strong lie toward the north rail on the incoming tide and toward the south on the ebb. He said, “Check your watch before you shoot.” Having spent so many recent weeks atop water, the creak and sway of the place seemed steady enough to me, and I reckoned table angles like a naviga tor, my sextant of an eye giving me the best stick of my life, which still failed to beat anyone.
For most of the last light of day, I sat mellow against the weary wall and watched through the west window as if, across the river and through the forest, I might see our final mile and the Bar and even beyond to the whither-thou-goest my life was about to become. Pilotis put down a cue and asked where I was, and I said, In this area the Indians buried—if that’s the word—their dead in canoes placed in cottonwood trees, prows pointed west, ready for the flood tide to the next life. My friend seemed to turn the image mentally, then spoke Tennyson:
For tho’ from out our bourne of Time and Place
The flood may bear me far,
I hope to see my Pilot face to face
When I have crost the bar.
I said, Tomorrow, whatever else we see, I hope it’s not any Great Pilot’s face—your visage will be quite sufficient.
Salt to Salt, Tide to Tide
I WOKE AT DAWN with equal measures of expectation and apprehension, and rose to look out at the courthouse flag. While it didn’t lie against the pole, it was far from garnering enough air to reveal all fifty stars, and we could move into a morning that might lead us to destination. The rush of water in the shower brought the others to their feet and soon down onto Main for the walk to the dock. The weather was good for that place—that is, depending on direction, skies of gray, grayer, and ominous, but all rainless. As the flood tide rose to its peak, I started the engines, synchronized them, Pilotis pulled in our lines, and we set off down the slough of black water and dark trees in a boat bright with hope of entering the Graveyard of the Pacific. It was August the second.
Pilotis took up a snag watch, the Reporter tried to interpret the chart we’d heard was unreliable, the Los Angeles Times writer made notations for me, and we entered Clifton Channel to find a Columbia of moderate waves, the shores wooded and quiet. Nikawa pottered past an occasional settlement, some of them once wooden fishing outposts, one a ruined salmon cannery, and the route became a maze of crooked channels, inlets, shoals, and marshes—a strange realm at the end of a big river rather than what you might expect to lie so near the largest ocean on earth. As the sky lightened, the wind picked up just enough to throw wrinkles over the places where backwaters opened to the main river, rucks that disguised the shallows so that gulls seemed to walk the surface. Said someone, “Jesus birds.”
There were snags aplenty, but Nikawa avoided them as if she’d been there before. Over almost twenty miles we wended through the dark-water narrows, a riverland so quietly lovely it seemed enchanted, and all the way we hid from the wind like a field mouse from the fox. Then at last the islands thinned and fell away, and we came into a bight, and from there on we could hide no longer. But the river was only harder and not a bludgeoning. After four miles we reached the bluff at Tongue Point, the name reminding me to taste the Columbia to discover whether we’d yet reached the salt line. Not yet.
Then we rounded the point, and for the first time since the Atlantic, straight ahead through the parted headlands lay nothing but a perfectly level horizon of water, a flat gray line uninterrupted by shore. I spoke the sentence William Clark jotted in his notebook at about that same place: “Ocian in view! O! the joy.” We too felt joy, a deep one, though we knew a prospect of arrival is hardly the same as arrival, and for us arrival meant the far side of the Graveyard.
Harbor seals rose to break the water and peer at Nikawa, and we passed a big freighter taking aboard a Bar pilot, one of only a few people licensed to direct ships through the collision of river and ocean ahead. We would have no pilot other than me, although I had asked the Photographer, who had gone before us, to check on conditions at the mouth and try to find a fully reliable chart. Of the several concerns I had, not least was being tricked by the size of the lower estuary into believing we’d reached the Pacific when we hadn’t. Pilotis: “That would be like hitting a Series-winning grand slam and being called out for missing home plate.”
On the Oregon shore, Astoria occupies a peninsula where the Columbia bends ten miles northwest before curving back to run due west into the sea through an opening four miles wide. The town lies against the hills of the Clatsop State Forest, and when sunlight falls over the Victorian homes and waterside buildings, Astoria has a fine look to it from the river, but otherwise it can be a place of hard coastal weathers, as Lewis and Clark found out on their arrival in the stormy November of 1805. Across the estuary, toward the Olympic Mountains, the annual rainfall is a hundred inches and the Yellow Pages runs a heading for “Moss Rid.” Our luck that day was better. The dark sky began lifting, even though still without sun, and we thought Astoria a good haven to pause in before striking out for the ocean.
We passed under the three-and-a-half-mile-long bridge over the Columbia, and for us it seemed a gateway to our destination, a balance to the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge at the virtual mouth of the Hudson River. Pilotis said, “To go from Gravesend Bay through the Graveyard of the Great Lakes and on to the Graveyard of the Pacific, that’s, well, a grave undertaking.”
Just beyond the southern pier of the bridge we pulled into the West End docks where we’d agreed to meet the Photographer. When we stepped off Nikawa, I hooted and did a little jig because at last I could smell the western ocean and had no words to match my feelings. Watching my joy, Pilotis said, “You know, it would make sense to call this journey’s end.” Not a chance, I said, our voyage is sea to sea, salt to salt, tide to tide.
The Photographer found us and gave his report: “I talked to the Coast Guard Auxiliary, told them what you’re doing. They said if we’ll wait an hour they’ll accompany us out to the Bar.” I asked for the weather forecast, and he paused. “
This is the calmest day in some weeks.” Another pause, longer. “But the swells are still eleven to twelve feet.” That was almost twice what hit us on Lake Erie. The words were a dirk in the heart. The Photographer: “They said if you’re going to try it, today’s the day to do it.” Twelve feet? Twelve goddamn feet? “They said Nikawa could probably make it.” I remembered the Photographer’s weather report before we went out onto Lake Wallula, and I said, Twelve feet building to what? “Eleven to twelve feet is all I heard.”
I paced around on the dock. Three other people would be out there with me, three friends trusting in me. Should I go alone? Should I go at all? I said, Let’s get some breakfast. While we ate, I mulled figures for the Graveyard: two thousand vessels sunk, seven hundred people drowned. And that damnable story about Captain Jonathan Thorn of the Tonquin in 1810, ordering seaman John Fox into a longboat with four inexperienced crewmen to seek out a channel across the thundering Bar. When the sailor protested, Thorn rebuked him, “Mister Fox, if you’re afraid of water you should have remained in Boston.” As the boat was being lowered, Fox told a fur clerk, Alexander Ross, that an uncle had drowned there not many years before and said, “Now I’m going to lay my bones with his.” The longboat went into the breakers, and only a hundred yards away it disappeared, never to be seen again.
At ten o’clock we went back to the dock to meet the Auxiliary, three retired men in a vessel about the size of ours. The leader, Ralph Gilbert, looked at Nikawa and said, “Even a ship can get into trouble out there, but your C-Dory looks like she can take it, at least on a good day like this.” I said, Good is a twelve-foot sea? “It is, but I wouldn’t wait any longer. Things are supposed to get worse.” Rob Pike, whose boat coincidentally lay tied up nearby, happened along. He had made the run the day before. That was all I needed to hear. I turned to Gilbert and said, Just make sure you get us into the Pacific—I don’t want to fall even one inch short.
At half past ten we set out, the Photographer and his wife and two friends aboard the Auxiliary boat leading the way, with Pike and the Shooter nearby. Astoria fell behind, and the great mouth of the Columbia turned from heavy chop-water to banging swells as we passed old Fort Stevens, shelled by a Japanese submarine one night during World War Two, and we moved on beyond a shoal called Desdemona Sands near the Oregon side. Northward rose the rocky headland British Captain John Meares named Cape Disappointment because the Bar so obscured the mouth of the river rumored to be the fabled Northwest Passage, he didn’t believe the Columbia was actually there. That foggiest place on the West Coast began to give us broken shafts of sun as the clouds furled, and when I looked aft, I saw a wing of seven gulls following us. Pilotis said, “The mariner’s number—seven seas, seven continents.”
The angle the river makes kept us from seeing anything except the shoreline of the estuary until we rounded Clatsop Spit, a bulbous sandy hook that is the most northwest corner of Oregon. Then everything opened and before us lay the ocean, the swelling ocean, and we rode up the backs of the broad waves and down, Nikawa disappearing from view of the other boats when she reached the bottom of a trough, then pushing high again to the top of the wide crests. Those were not the short-spaced bangers of Lake Erie that so trounced us but Pacific giants that let us ascend and descend as if we were crossing a great rolling meadow, and the only noise was that of our own engines. Up and down, up and down, and once again my expectation proved wrong: the ocean didn’t beat the tar out of us—it gave us only a merry ride, merry enough to throw the Reporter’s wallet to the deck when he stood to put the binoculars on a sport-fishing boat that had lost power. I said, If we get there, our arrival—arrival!—will be about as close as I’ll ever get to a Columbian experience—Columbian as in Christopher.
At every crest the view ahead was ocean, ocean, ocean, and I said, Should we hold this course for the same distance we’ve come from New York Bay, we’d just about bump against the Great Wall of China. No response. I turned to look at my true hearts: three blanched faces, eyes closed or locked on the horizon. Believe me, I said, these broad swells are a piece of cake—I mean, this is the place where the Coast Guard tests its rescue boats, the ones that can be corked up like a jug so they can take the violence—some of them get completely turned over—the crew sits strapped in. No response until Pilotis pointed north. A second fishing boat lay dead in the water, rolling in the merciless swells, and our radio picked up their distress call to the Coast Guard: “We don’t have any power.” A long break, then a frightened, “We’re not feeling real comfortable out here.” The Guard was on its way. Pilotis said, “Did you hear how he said ‘out here’?”
We proceeded on, slowly getting used to a scarp of sea rising above our pilothouse, until we seemed to be far beyond the jetties supposed to protect the dredged channel through the Bar, but the Auxiliary boat kept pressing westward. At Buoy Eight, the sky opened wider into a benison of light that spangled the blue water into an undulous American union jack, and when we rode up again, the radio crackled and cleared its throat and said, “Nikawa, this is the Pacific.”
A finer sentence I’d never heard, but my own words failed me utterly. All I knew was that we were 5,288 watery miles from the Atlantic and had gained six degrees of latitude and forty-eight of longitude and that the moment had arrived to do what I’d so long dreamed of: I passed the wheel to Pilotis and went aft to the rearing welldeck with the pint of Atlantic Ocean. Holding a rail securely with one hand, I raised the bottle high, sunlight striking through the glass, salt waves rising to it as if thirsty, and I said, We bring this gift from your sister sea—our voyage is done. Then I poured the stream into the Pacific and went back to the wheel of our river horse, and I turned her toward home.
THE PACIFIC OCEAN
POURING OUT THE ATLANTIC WATERS
An Afterword of Appreciation
I can’t imagine this book without the generous and often crucial help of Stephen Archer, Molly Barile, Jean-Ellen Jantzen, Edward Richardson, Jack LaZebnik, Eamon Dolan, Larry Cooper, Gail Cohen, Peter Davison, and Lois Wallace.
Along the way, these people assisted the voyage, the research, or the writing: William Abney, Lucinda Baker, Jody Baltessen, David Barton, Richard Blake, M. K. Blakely, Jim Bracken, John Bradley, JoAnn Brown, William Bullock, David Burwell, Scott Chisholm, Elaine Clark, George Clark, Sr., Charles Clifford, Suzanne Cole, Ramona Combs-Stauffer, William Comfort, Harold Cramer, George Cummings, Steve Cunat, Ted Curtis, John Cutten, Rita and Wayne Daniels, Harry Ditty, Ray Eakin, Darl Eck, Connie Fitch, Ellen Fladger, Rod Frick, William Gardner, Kelly Grant, Thomas Grasso, Frank Grizzard, Rod Guthrie, Douglas Helmers, Janet Henderson, Strode Hinds, Jackie Hinshaw, Nancy Horan, Rebecca Howard, David Howes, David Ivey, John Jermano, Dana Jones, Linda Keown, Alan Kesselheim, David Kibbey, Daryl Kleyer, Karl Kruse, Roger Langendorfer, Christopher Layer, Robert LaZebnik, Linny and Larry Livingston, Pauline and Tom Longnecker, Michael Mansur, James Mast, Robert McCaughan, Shirley and Paul McLaughlin, Tom McManus, John Metcalf, Stephen Morehouse, Gary Moulton, Chris Mullen, Matthew Nelson, Bruce Padgett, Patrick Parenteau, Chuck Parrish, Paul Pence, Thomas Prindle, David Pulliam, Larry Purcell, Mary Reynolds, Kelly Riforgiat, Barbara Rollin, Forrest Rose, Alissa Rosenberg, Ruth Rosenberg-Naparsteck, James Ruddy, Cathy and Kit Salter, Roger Saucier, Debra Shampine, Tricia Shaw, Wanda Shields, Diane and Robert Shott, Rhonda Stansberry, Ken Steele, Thomas Stevenson, Terry Strasser, Norm Stucky, Linda Swatfager, Ralph Swift, Wayne Taylor, Vivienne Tellier, William Tilton, Peaco Todd, Mark Toland, Randy Vance, James Voorhees, Chris Walker, James Wallace, Joseph Warner, Kim Weeks, Mark Wellenstein, Jack Wicker, Craig Williams, Andy Wilner, Clyde Wilson, David Wink, Andrew Wolfe, Raymond Wood, Stephen Wunder, Beffa Wyldemoon, Brett Ziercher.
I also thank Apelco, Bass Pro Shops, Boat/U.S., Cabela’s, C-Dory, Garmin, OMC (Grumman), Recreational Equipment International, and Perception (Keowee kayak).
I am indebted to the Minnesota Historical Society for permission to quote from the typescript of The Garrioch Diar
y and to the University of Nebraska Press for The Journals of the Lewis & Clark Expedition, Gary E. Moulton, editor.
If You Want to Help
There are many organizations working to improve or correct certain environmental problems (including historic preservation) that appear in this book. If these issues concern you and you want to act, here are a half-dozen groups (described in their own words) out of many others that have proven their worth over the years.
AMERICAN RIVERS
American Rivers is dedicated to securing a future of healthy rivers supporting diverse species of wildlife, fish, and plants, as well as working to make our rivers safe for human consumption and recreation and able to contribute to sustainable local economies. This nonprofit organization has protected more than 22,000 miles of rivers and 5.5 million acres of riverside lands.
1025 Vermont Avenue NW, Suite 720
Washington, D.C. 20005
877-347-7550
www.americanrivers.org
THE NATIONAL TRUST FOR HISTORIC PRESERVATION
The National Trust for Historic Preservation is a private, nonprofit organization dedicated to protecting the irreplaceable. With more than 270,000 members nationwide, it provides leadership, education, and ad vocacy to save diverse historic environments and to preserve and revitalize communities across America. It has six regional offices, owns twenty historic sites, and works with thousands of local community groups in all states.