A Different Way of Seeing THE TIDEWATER REACH

Poem by Robert Michael Pyle

Photograph by Judy VanderMaten

River Pubs: Desdemona Club ~ A Gray Day on Gray’s Bay

Or it would be, if you could see it. There’s no river view from the Dirty D, in spite of its famous portholes. There’s also no well Scotch for Happy Hour. Only bourbon, American whiskey. The only Scotch at all is Johnny Black, at six-fifty per. This, in a town founded by Scots! But the shuffleboard in the back is free, Nirvana’s on the air, and I am almost alone on a Monday afternoon in March. One or two at the bar to keep the pink-haired barmaid company, a couple more clinging to the video poker.

But if you could see out, and through the shot-streaming rain, and if you happened to look north, across the river, it would be a very gray day on Gray’s Bay. Put out into that murk, turn left like a bar pilot, and with luck you’ll come to the bridge. Beyond lie the Desdemona Sands where as many ill-starred seamen have come to grief as have belly-up to the bar in the Dirty D, this dive also named for the unlucky chick in Othello, here at the dark end of town.

Just think: had it been a gray day on Gray’s Bay on May 11, 1792, when Robert Gray crossed the Bar in the Columbia Redeviva, there would be no Gray’s Bay. The Columbia might be named Vancouver’s River. And the well whiskey at the Dirty D? It would be Canadian.

Field Note by Hal Calbom

Roiling Waters

Controversies have consistently marked the historic development of the Columbia River. Often these involve divisions of ownership and responsibility across its vast historical and geographic footprint. From the loss of traditional Indian fishing grounds to federal investment in huge reclamation and power projects; from international treaty relationships with Canada to squabbles among economic, recreational, and conservation interests, the Columbia is host to man-made political, social and economic turbulence every bit as mighty as its natural power.

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.