A Different Way of Seeing ~ The Tidewater Reach

THE TIDEWATER REACH

Poem by Robert Michael Pyle Photograph by Judy VanderMaten Field Note by Hal Calbom

RIVER VILLAGE: CATHLAMET

Cathlamet remains the only incorporated town in Wahkiakum, the smallest of Washington’s counties, and is the site of one of the region’s oldest Native American villages. The name “Cathlamet” (Kathlamet) is said to come from the local Chinookan language referring to the area as a “rocky shore.” Cathlamet became the Wahkiakum County seat in 1854 and was officially incorporated in 1907. The old waterfront still hosts tugboat operations, boat building, and other commercial businesses.

Pencil Shavings

I love the brown butterflies that fly among canyon walls, where the scent is juniper, that flit above San Luis Valley’s floor — Nabokov’s satyrs, Alamosa wood nymphs — flecks of fawn and otter on the wing. How their papery vanes make hope from nothing but nectar and dust.

Yesterday in Astoria, a world away from San Luis, I moved my desk. Discovered in a disused drawer a small paper bag: pencil shavings I’d somehow kept. How could I throw them in the trash now, having saved them all this time? The open window winked. Without a thought, I cast the cedar chips out the window. onto the crabshell breeze.

Pale brown butterflies flickered past the wall, all down to the valley pavement of the street — and for a moment, the scent was juniper.

Field Guide

to the Lower Columbia River

in Poems and Pictures

RobeRt Michael Pyle Judy VandeRMaten

For information on ordering, as well as our partner bookshops and galleries, see pages 2 and 43. 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. 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.