A Different Way of Seeing ~ The Tidewater Reach

Poem by Robert Michael Pyle • Photograph by Judy VanderMaten • Field Notes by Hal Calbom

‘... another moon cruised the ceiling of the fog ...’

A Moon I Didn’t See

Was it low and red, that moon you saw above the river mouth? The color of a dull ache long after a fall, when it rose?

I didn’t see it, so I don’t know; but I’ve seen moons that ached like that before.

Last night another moon cruised the ceiling of the fog, glanced off the tin-roofed bridge like a discus thrown the old way, skidding to a stop in the river’s moonglade.

I’d like to think of every moon as mine despite my absent eyes. Maybe it’s the moons you never see that burn the deepest.

RIVER BUOYS

Robert Michael Pyle and Judy VanderMaten

Field Guide

to the Lower Columbia River in Poems and Pictures River buoys aid ship navigation and are maintained by the United States Coast Guard. Solid green buoys are odd-numbered; solid red even-numbered. Buoys are moored to the river bottom and their numbers increase sequentially from the sea upriver. They denote key navigation features, not river miles.

RobeRt Michael Pyle Judy VandeRMaten 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 The Tidewater Reach in 2020, presenting “a different way of seeing” our beloved Columbia River. For information on ordering specific editions, as well as our partner bookshops and galleries, see pages 2 and 35.