A Different Way of Seeing
THE TIDEWATER REACH Poem by Robert Michael Pyle • Photograph by Judy VanderMaten • Field Notes by Hal Calbom
‘... half - forgotten crafts and vagabond on a winter’s night ...’ I Cover the Waterfront
(Ilwaco, December, 2018: For Karla)
Sometimes it seems the hopes of all mankind lie on display in a small-town bookstore, against all odds still open on a bleak December dock in a time when so much else is going, going, gone. After the reading I spill out the back door onto the wet green waterfront. Walk up and down in the dripping dusk. The slips still have boats, though the fleet is tiny now. Still, a good seafood grill, a pub, and Jessie’s Fish Market at the end of the pier, persist. I remember charters by the dozen, the cafe at the end of the spit, Doupe’s Hardware as a going concern. But now it’s mostly a matter of the riverfront, where the Columbia brushes Baker Bay before dying, or being born anew, into the Ocean itself. And what moves me is not what’s gone, but what somehow remains:
HISTORIC FOG
the boats, the oysters, the books shiny in the light
The recent history of the Lower Columbia is particularly scant and mutable. The two states bordering the river are half the age of their eastern peers. The rugged topography has impacted navigation, settlement, and precise historiography. Even the particulars of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, the legendary Voyage of Discovery, grew hazy as the Corps approached the mouth of the Columbia, and have been subject to debate and revision.
through the wet window. They speak to the possibility of all things, even in these times, waterfronts do. As long as little seaside towns live on, giving harbor to half-forgotten craft and vagabonds on a winter’s night, I will continue to cover the waterfront, seeking something not likely to be found, anywhere else.
On this page we excerpt poems, pictures and field notes from our own “Field Guide to the Lower Columbia River in Poems and Pictures,” The Tidewater Reach, by Gray’s River resident and renowned naturalist Robert Michael Pyle, and Cathlamet photographer Judy VanderMaten. Field
The two dreamed for years of a collaborative project, finally realized when Columbia River Reader Press published color and black and white editions of The Tidewater Reach in 2020, and a third, hybrid edition in 2021, all presenting “a different way of seeing” our beloved Columbia River.
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For information on ordering, as well as our partner bookshops and galleries, see pages 2 and 39. Robert Michael Pyle and Judy VanderMaten Columbia River Reader / January 15, 2022 / 11
