THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST IN LIVING COLOUR

Go west, they cried. Road-tripping the USA’s northwestern states of Washington and Oregon reveals cities, islands and histories moulded and shaped by the wilderness that is forever knocking at their door…

Words Gareth Clark

“Push with your toes,” coached my guide, Austin of Wanderlust Tours, from further back in the tunnel. Lying on my belly, I huffed with the effort, scattering clouds of ash and dust into the stale air, wondering just how cramped this narrow opening would get. “Don’t worry,” he soothed, sensing my unease, “I can always drag you back by your feet…”

It’s a strange feeling to be wriggling down a 50cm-high, pitch-black shaft knowing full well a dead end is nearing. As my fingers clawed at the powder-fine ash on the cave floor, I pictured the eruptions that had reshaped this part of central Oregon 80,000 years ago, threading it with lava tubes like this one, near Bend. Dirt had blown in through cracks furred with the hair-like roots of sagebrush and ponderosa pine, but there was no breeze here now. The only movement came from the cosmos of particles detonating in my torchlight with every tiny movement.

By now, the crawlspace was the width of my shoulders. As the lava had surged, its surface cooled and crusted over, forming a tunnel that sharpened to a pencil point. It was here, after half a kilometre, that it finally slowed. As I jerked my body around the last bend, my headtorch flashed on an ancient moment, captured in rock. I freed an arm to press my hand on the basalt. It felt cool and ordinary. This was the kind of history you don’t normally see, let alone touch; a kind of anti-history: the point at which everything stopped.

“It’s incredible to think that all that violence and power could create a moment like this,” Austin confessed later as we sat in a larger cavern with our torches off, trying to hear the wind whistling through the passages. “Geologically, the Pacific Northwest is the youngest part of North America,” he whispered, “formed barely 200 million years ago.” I replied that it felt sooner. Driving Washington and Oregon had revealed misty volcanoes that lingered like dark thoughts on the edge of towns. And everywhere I went, people talked loudly of an overdue quake known as ‘the Big One’. It adds a certain drollness to the local humour.

I flicked my headlight on and spied a piece of white-encrusted rock, poking it with curiosity. “That’s definitely someone’s pee,” Austin deadpanned. And back we went.

I had come to the USA’s Pacific Northwest to explore a region where wilderness creaks at the city gates. I had found urban centres wrapped by glacial waters and walked among rainbow-streaked hills and rainforests where moss draped from the branches like primeval washing. But as I travelled, what was just as exciting was how its cities, islands, histories and people had been shaped by them. Beginning in Washington, I didn’t have to look hard to find examples.

Second Time Lucky

“Are you inside or outside?” asked Terri, the inquisitive guide for Seattle’s Beneath the Streets tour. It’s a simple enough question – childlike even.Yet, as I gazed at the walls to either side, noting the ‘basement’ ceiling overhead, I paused.

Washington’s Seattle is a city where you can spy volcanoes and skyscrapers in one glance, yet, bizarrely, what lies beneath your feet is just as fascinating. In the late 1800s this was all a low-rise sprawl stretched across tidal flats. Sewage dumped in Puget Sound gurgled back into muddy streets and it took the Great Seattle Fire of 1889 to cleanse them. A new city – the one you see today – was built atop the ⊲

The land of rock (clockwise from left) Smith Rock State Park was formed by lava flows entering its canyon half a million years ago and is now best known for its climbing, though it also found fame in the 1970s as the filming location for the John Wayne movie Rooster Cogburn; ‘The Traveler’ sculpture sits on the corner of Wall Street in the former logging town of Bend, though its hard-up impression is rather ironic these days given how affluent the city has become, building a reputation as Oregon’s take on Jackson Hole; the Astoria–Megler Bridge spans 6.55km across the mouth of the Columbia River, connecting Washington and Oregon states; Austin, of Wanderlust Tours (no relation), takes it easy in ‘The Chair’, one of many weird rock formations found in the lava tunnels outside Bend, which have been known to be occasionally invaded by teens setting up impromptu raves

All that glitters (this page; top)

The riches of Cerro Rico were discovered entirely by accident. The herder Diego Huallpa was said to have started a fire on the mountain to keep warm, but then spotted a trickle of molten silver emerge from beneath the flames