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

All Fall Down

Along the river shore lies a forest of boards, salmon-red and brown, bobbing on the high gray tide, soaking them a little darker than their faded state, as if the river splintered into kindling to feed the fire, the cold fire of the flotsam with all that’s left

of Altoona Cannery. Waves flap at its wreckage, slapping the remnants of broad floors whose pilings gave way when the land’s loose logs came down. The flood that took this house of salmon

was time.

A wedge of geese flies over Megler Bridge, across the far reach. One more old one down, one more forest to the sea, in a land where the sea is cheap and all the rest is long gone.

LOWER COLUMBIA: CANNERIES

Between 1866 and 1870, 35 canneries on the Lower Columbia packed more than 60,000 cases of salmon yearly, 48 pounds per case. Difficult and labor-intensive businesses, canneries were plagued with contentious issues, including use of immigrant workers and struggles over wages and union representation.

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.

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

Field Guide

to the Lower Columbia River

in Poems and Pictures

RobeRt Michael Pyle Judy VandeRMaten