The Tidewater Reach

These are images and words captured in hopes of furnishing for you a new kind of aesthetic, imaginative, and factual guide to our shared home:

The Tidewater Reach.

~ Robert Michael Pyle

A DIFFERENT WAY OF SEEING CRR PRESS

Columbia River Reader / May 15, 2020 / 1

SPECIAL SUPPLEMENT TO COLUMBIA RIVER READER

The

Tidewater Reach ...a different species of

FIELD GUIDE to the Lower Columbia River Verse and Vision Poems and Pictures ...a different way of seeing The great naturalist proves himself a natural as “versifier, observer, and celebrant. ” Joseph Govednik

Director, Cowlitz County Historical Museum

NOW AVAILABLE FOR PRE-ORDER IN TWO EDITIONS crreader.com/crrpress Small Craft Advisory Marinas all along the river house small craft, docked overnight, overwinter, or forever, in slips along the patient docks.

You can’t help walking these floating gangways looking for the boat that wants you. Or try to ignore the ones with dim lights aglow — the liveaboards, the overnighters. You have to wonder: what are they getting up to in there?

The sailboats especially, but also tugs, old wooden cruisers, lesser yachts, tiny makeshift houseboats, even the big crass stinkpots. You wonder too, isn’t there something there to envy after all?

And could you live like that? Letting the river make up your mind, where to go, what to do, besides listen to weather radio and plot charts?

Could anything be so cozy — or so dank?

But watch out: it could be catching.

SPECIAL SUPPLEMENT TO COLUMBIA RIVER READER 2 / Columbia River Reader /May 15, 2020

I Cross the Columbia How many times have I crossed this river?

Five hundred? A thousand? First time, 1964, with my mother, bringing me by rail from Colorado to see her beloved Northwest.

It took. So there were many crossings to come on the Portland Rose, the City of Portland, and

The

Tidewater Reach

eventually Amtrak, or sometimes Greyhound, Seattle to Denver and back again. Later, in a dynasty of Volkswagens, it was I-5 and 205, the Bridge of the Gods, Hood River, The Dalles, Biggs, Umatilla, Vernita, and Vantage: for jobs, field trips, family, all the reasons one has for changing states of being. When I moved downstream to a lower trib, crossings shifted to the Lewis & Clark in Longview, the ferry at Westport, in Honda, Toyota, Subaru.

Now I cross the river more than ever before — at Megler, the last bridge before the bar, And gladly so! For when I cross the Columbia now, I am crossing it to you.

Field Guide to the

Lower Columbia River in

Poems and Pictures

Robert Michael Pyle Judy VanderMaten

The Tidewater Reach pairs 44 poems by renowned naturalist and author Robert Michael Pyle — all set where fresh Columbia River water commingles with tidal Pacific saltwater — with revelatory photos by Judy VanderMaten.

The result is an entirely re-imagined Lower Columbia.

Columbia River Reader Press SPECIAL SUPPLEMENT TO Reader COLUMBIA READER Columbia River / MayRIVER 15, 2020 /3

The

Tidewater Reach Signature Edition

• Color and Black & White photos • R.M.Pyle Conversation • Signed by the creators • 184 pages - boxed

MORE PRAISE FOR THE TIDEWATER REACH

The Tidewater Reach extends our idea of what a Field Guide might be and the language we use to characterize and illuminate the natural world.

Trade Paperback

• Black & White photos • R.M.Pyle Conversation • 184 pages

I’ve spent more than one “sunny afternoon on Duffy’s

deck. Bob Pyle captures the essence of our interplay with the natural world.

”

Dean Takko Washington State Senator, Dist.19 Robert and Judy’s love of the Lower “Columbia region is evident in The Tidewater Reach. There is so much around us to enjoy by slowing down and straying off the beaten path.

Michael Perry, CRR Columnist “Dispatch from the Discovery Trail”

”

Field Guide to the

Lower Columbia River in

“

Poems and Pictures

A Field Guide for all the rest of us — the road, the river, and the recliner — and magnificent photographs.

Rex Ziak, Author, In Full View

The

Tidewater Reach

Signature Edition $50 Trade Paperback $25 crreader.com/crrpress

”

Robert Michael Pyle Judy VanderMaten

I love Bob Pyle’s “interweaving of human and natural history, from pioneers to river pubs, ospreys to salmon smolts.

Holly J. Hughes, poet Author of Hold Fast

SUPPLEMENT TO/May COLUMBIA 4SPECIAL / Columbia River Reader 15, 2020RIVER READER

” Columbia River Reader Press