The Furious Spinner

Sunday we drove to Catherine Creek, a small park on the east side of White Salmon in the Gorge. We followed the curves of the highway around the basalt cliffs and the Columbia River to Rowland Lake, where we turned left. I looked up at the blue sky and saw two bald eagles tumbling on the thermals above the lake and cliffs.

We stopped the car and watched. I don't ever want to live in a place without eagles. I never get tired of seeing them. I am always in awe. They are unmistakable. Their white heads and tails set them apart from the turkey vultures which often glide through our skies. The juveniles and subadults don't have the white tail and head yet, but they are still very large, which sets them apart from other raptors.

When we lived in Skamania, ten miles or so from where we live now, I sometimes awakened to the sounds of eagles screaming. It was a wonderful alarm clock. I would stumble out of bed and out onto the deck to watch the eagles soaring, tumbling, fishing. Seeing eagles always fills me with hope. DDT and other toxins nearly wiped them out, but they've come back strong. Every time I see an eagle, I think, yes, survival is possible. We can come back. We can heal.

I'm sure I've told you I dreamed I was an eagle once, stuck in a car. I'm sure I told you a bald eagle dropped down from a tree I was standing next to once and pulled a fish out of the pond a few feet away. She did this noiselessly, without creating a ripple in the water. Her feet were golden. I fell down on the ground in awe.

Bald eagles return to the Columbia River Gorge area in February. These are the first we've seen this season. I don't know if our eagles migrate, although I suspect they join their buds in Alaska, but we don't see them all winter. Usually the swans leave in February, and the eagles return.

We watched the eagles over Rowland Lake until we could no longer see them. Then we continued up the hill toward Catherine Creek. I looked up again. This time two red-tailed hawks flew above the basalt cliffs. I waved at the smaller raptors floating in circles.

We parked up at the entrance to Catherine Creek. The wind rocked the car. Often we can see Mount Hood in the southwest, but today clouds covered it. We bundled up and walked up the hill. Catherine Creek is one of the best places in the Gorge to see wildflowers. Sometimes if the weather is nice, they will start emerging in February. We doubted we would see anything today.

Mario and I usually come here late winter and early spring. By late May or early June, we're done with the place. The wildflowers are gone, the Creek is nearly dried up, and the ticks and poison oak are in "full bloom." Today, the sound of water permeated everything. It was all I heard as it drowned out even the noise of the Gorge winds. Mario and I walked hand in hand down the gravel path.

We have been here many times over the last decade and a half, and the place feels familiar. Although the books all call this area pine-oak woodland, we call it the beginning of high desert. Past here going east, few trees grow. Grass and rattlesnakes mingle with ticks and meadowlarks. As we walked today, we passed by an old corral and the rock arch—at least everyone calls it an arch. It's really just a place on the cliff wall where the stone has given way. Of course, maybe that is what causes the creation of every stone arch.

We went by the old barn. A few years ago I had taken photograph after photograph of that barn. I was fascinated by it. Now I barely glanced at it. I looked up the hill. Someday I'm going to find a trail that is flat and never goes up. I said this outloud apparently, because Mario laughed. We walked up and up. The sound of Catherine Creek grew more distant. I remembered the year the creek flooded: the year all of the Northwest seemed to flood.

In the early part of March 1996, when temperatures rose rapidly and mountain snow melted even more quickly, Catherine Creek surged over her bed, full of herSelf and the vigor of cascading snow melt until she came to the drainage pipe in the earth beneath the the road near where we parked our car today. This tiny little pipe could not contain the now roaring river-sized creek. She slammed into the earthen bridge again and again until she punched out a hole, taking out the pipe, the bridge, and everything else in her way. With a holler of the dee-light of freedom, she plunged down the hill toward the Columbia River. She knocked out the train tracks just before she poured herself into the Big River and the two streams of water merged, like bubbly champagne flowing into deep dark burgundy wine.

They didn’t repair the road for a year or more. During that time, Mario and I often drove here just to walk to the crooked broken edge of the pavement to gaze down into the chasm at the creek—and giggle. Here was proof positive of a slogan I once saw on the wall of a lawyer who specialized in environmental law: Nature bats last.

Thinking about that got me up the hill. We walked carefully over the chunks of lava that made up the path. It would be easy to fall here, easy to break something. At the top of the hill, back up where the nuclear winds tugged at me, pushed me toward the edge, we saw one purple flower huddled up against the ground: the season's first grass widow, part of the Iris family. We watched it shiver and shimmy in the cold wind, then we decided it was time to get ourselves warm. We hurried to the end of the trail and back to our car.

I checked for ticks—it's a little early, but I didn't want to take any chances. And then we drove away. I think we keep coming back to this place because of the memory of the flood. Something about it was so wild, dangerous, and wonderful. We hope to see it again one day.

But for today we were content to see our first wildflower and first bald eagle of the season. Not a bad day out and about.


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All photographs and written material copyright © 2003-2008 by Kim Antieau unless otherwise indicated. May not be used without permission.