Going with the flow

Come fly with me for a few minutes on one of my favorite flights. We're headed down the Willamette River on its way north to the Columbia River, 160 miles distant. Since 1850, this river basin has undergone dramatic change. It's now home to Oregon's premier agricultural area and nearly 70 percent of its population. Only about a third of the floodplain forest remains and the southern end of the river, where we are, has lost 60 percent of the channel area and as much or more of the islands. As Oregon State professor extraordinaire Stan Gregory says, "We took what was a complex, braided system and turned it into a pipe." And fortunately for me, as I fly along, that knowledge fails to dampen my wonder at the richly-alive and ever-changing world created by melting snow finding its way to the ocean.  It is, after all, still quite a beautiful pipe.

The Three Sisters on a better hair day

The Three Sisters (North, Middle and South, or more poetically, Faith, Hope and Charity) earlier in the year before their flanks were smothered with smoke from forest fires. Each of these volcanic peaks is over 10,000 feet. In Oregon, only Mount Hood and Mount Jefferson are taller. South Sister erupted most recently -- 20,000 years ago -- and it's shown some signs of life in the last 10 years. A geologist told me that living on the other side of these 3 siblings in nearby Bend was like living with a shotgun pointed at your head. But then, in the immortal words of Roseanne Roseannadanna, "It just goes to show ya, it's always something."