Columbia River Valley

Somewhere outside of Lyle, Washington, we made our first stop after leaving Portland. The landscape was like that of another planet, especially after coming from the west side of the Cascades with moss growing underneath our armpits for the past 10 months or so. Off the old highway on the north side of the Columbia River, we found the type of place you would expect to be ambushed by Indians if you were living in a western. Otherworldly rocks, deceptive dips in the landscape, and Ponderosa pines sprawled out as far as the eye could see with the Columbia River behind us. Across the river, Mount Hood stuck out, a huge pyramidical column, a gigantic mountain cone of snow standing over 11,000 feet. 

There are 2 sides of Cascadia, one on the left and one on the right, and whenever I’m out on the east side of the Cascades, I feel like I’m on the right side, at least for me. Finally, at this little stop along the Columbia River, I felt secure and sound, knowing that I was in the type of geography in which I feel at home. 

It’s true. There are 2 kinds of people. Those with claustrophobia and those with agoraphobia. I feel claustrophobic on the west side of the Cascades, and this little stop was the perfect anecdote to my sense of feeling like I am in a Sno Globe made of drizzle. Of course the agoraphobics would have been terrified with so much sun and wide-open country.

The Columbia River Valley and its surroundings is like a whole ecosystem in itself, a perfect place for farming and making perfect wines. The Columbia River basin and its strange rock formations and buttes that dominate its landscape are the result of the breaking of the ice dam that blocked ancient Lake Missoula at the end of the last ice age. We see the results of the resulting vast floods that carved the landscape making it defined, beautiful, and with a true sense of self.