A River like Paddling the Lower Columbia Water Trail Story and Photos by Neil Schulman
I
’m dozing when high-pitched screams followed by angry whistling tugs me away from my nap on the warm sand. Through binoculars, I spot three crow-sized birds, taking turns dive-bombing a bald eagle perched in a tree on the nearby point. Each dive-bomber lunges, screaming, at the eagle, only to pull up at the last moment, and fly back up to the heights while its buddy takes a turn. An adult Peregrine falcon is teaching two fledglings how to hunt and asserting territorial rights in the bargain. The eagle, refusing to leave its nest unattended, whistles in anger while
enduring the harassment. The show continues all afternoon while we swim in the warm river, read books on the sand, and watch giant container ships go by. Welcome to another trip on the Lower Columbia River Water Trail.
The Trail That’s a Non-Trail The Columbia is one of North America’s defining rivers, along with the Mississippi, Mackenzie, and Colorado. Its waters have been paddled since time immemorial, first by Native Americans, then fur trappers, explorers, sail-rigged ships, fishing boats,
and now by barges, container ships, kayaks and canoes. The Columbia rises in the icefields of the Canadian Rockies and tumbles into the eastside drylands. After a few hundred miles of being throttled by 14 massive hydropower dams, it finally breaks free at Bonneville Dam, where the Lower Columbia Water Trail begins. This remarkable water trail stretches in a double arc northwest through the Columbia Gorge from Bonneville Dam, 144 miles to the sea. It takes paddlers from giant cliffs carved by the Missoula Floods of the Pleistocene, through the Portland-Vancouver metropolis, past mazes of islands and riv-
Dave Trageser paddling in dense fog near Lord Island
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The heartbeat of Cascadia
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