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Where the Great River Bends: A Natural and Human History of the Columbia at Wallula by Robert J. Carson Donald Snow

2010; Oregon Historical Society; Volume: 111; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/ohq.2010.0068

2329-3780

Donna Sinclair,

American History and Culture

 Reviews Kim Stafford and William Stafford, and many others. Interspersed in the book as an admonishment to complacent Oregon lovers is a brief narrative of the history of the Oregon Ku Klux Klan, a blessedly brief spasm of homophobia in the form of an initiative sponsored by the Oregon Citizen’s Alliance, a press release on the subject of the return of ashes to relatives by the Oregon Department of Human Services, a racy excerpt from Senator Bob Packwood’s diary, and a selection from F.B.I. file #145-2961 on the purportedly obscene lyrics of “Louie Louie,” the song recorded by the Kingsmen in downtown Portland in 1963, that shows that Oregon is not completely independent of national foolishness. LovedeclaresthathewishedtomakeanOregon compilation in a “maverick literary form” and declares the collection a “mix tape” that one might give to someone else. His disclaimer is that this anthology “doesn’t include some of Oregon’s Top Forty hits as such,nor cover every ethnicgroup’sstory,offerreportsfromallof the state’s geographic regions, nor describe all the naturalcataclysms”(p.3).ThetitlecametoLove from Ken Kesey,who remarked that“Oregon is the Citadel of the Spirit.”These writings occupy themselves with Oregon but also pertain to the notion that the state is a bastion somewhat threatened by change.The editor’s requirement that all contributors live in Oregon suggests that historical definitions of Oregon,ones Love would defend and that are encapsulated in his personal interpretation of the message of the Oregon trail to America as a kind of statue of Liberty, are not entirely secure. For Love, the Oregon invitation involves nature and personal transformation, but not empire. Taken together,the essays reflect the politics of progressive Oregon and defend through argument or sheer description what most right-thinking folks in the state would find worth defending. One can pick at details — the first tree sitter in the state might well have climbed a tree in Collins Park in the 1970s rather than a tree in the Willamette State Forest in the 1980s — but the more meaningful provocation the anthology offers concerns its manner of constructing the Oregon it defends as a Citadel, which goes to the heart of Oregon identity and a notable tendency toward neoromantic territoriality among its lovers of mountains and beaches. Samuel Boardman’s memoir in the volume casts the Columbia Gorge as a “Valkyrian setting for a Wagnerian technique of this day”(p. 35). Kesey’s apparent belief in Oregon as a citadel invokes an Arthurian struggle against evil. Thus it was not on the coast — not even Nestucca Spit,favored by the editor and defended by the legendary Bob Straub — but on Mount Adams,nearly within the confines of the state but just a little bit beyond its periphery,in the company of alpine meadows, distant avalanches, and waterfalls, that the title,leavened by the humor contained in the book, finally did seem fitting for this sesquicentennial anthology. John Trombold Spokane, Washington Where the Great River Bends: A natural and human history of the Columbia at Wallula by Robert J. Carson foreword by Donald Snow Keokee Co. Publishing, Sandpoint, Idaho, 2009. Photographs, maps, tables, index. 240 pages. $35.00 paper. Where the Great River Bends begins with an exhortation by Donald Snow to slow down and imagine a different place and time along the Columbia River, to view the waterway at pedestrian speed. “Inside the climatecontrolled chamber of a Toyota or a Buick, it’s easy to overlook the fact that landscape is as much an event as it is a portrait,”reminds Snow (p. viii). It is the missing dimensions of terrain one often finds in this book’s ambling journey,  OHQ vol. 111, no. 1 as geologist Robert Carson, Snow, and four other authors provide detailed depictions of a single marvelous stretch of the Columbia. Located just south of the confluence of the Walla Walla and Columbia rivers, Wallula Gap isoneof seventeenNationalNaturalLandmarks in Washington State. There, the river narrows and thousand-foot cliffs rise as the Columbia arrives from its journey out of Canada to cut through the majestic Horse Heaven Hills and wend its way to the Pacific. Two rock towers, the Twin Sisters...