My encounters with the unfamiliar terrain of the Western mountains and desert had me reading everything I could find. The public library was a good start.

As I noted:

Rainier, honeycomb mountain, radiating heat under all that ice and snow — so fragile a good explosion could level it all … a new appreciation for “the temple tops” …

Regarding petroglyphs at the Dalles, to the south of us on the Columbia River:

“It seems impossible to decipher these inscriptions satisfactorily as it is not likely anyone except the makers and those living at the time the work was done could tell what was meant by them” — Newcombe, 1907

Also in Beth and Ray Hill’s Indian Petroglyphs of the Pacific Northwest, 1974, University of Washington Press:

“To make my name good” as a Northwest Native’s goal in life …

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My explorations fill a number of poems and much of my novel Nearly Canaan and of Kokopelli in the Secret Side of Jaya. In fact, I’ve considered the place to be a central character in itself.

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One book I found most useful in understanding the social differences in the Far West was Anti-California. Many of the points its author raised regarding the Golden State fit what I was seeing in the Pacific Northwest. For instance, few children grew up within a day’s drive of their grandparents or aunts and uncles. He saw that as extending into social life in general, which tended to be more polarized, using the Roman Catholic church as an example in having both one of the most conservative cardinals in the world as well as an entire order of nuns that broke away. (I could add that Quakers there came in two opposite camps, liberal “unprogrammed” meetings and pastor-led evangelical churches.) You get the idea. The author had been a correspondent for Newsweek magazine and other respectable periodicals. I didn’t recall the 1971 book’s subtitle, “Report from our first parafascist state,” or know anything about the author, Kenneth Lamott, father of novelist Anne Lamott. As I’m now hearing, he was quite a flamboyant character, to put it mildly. I do wonder how I’d see that book now.

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From Spiralbound Cascadia with commentary.

 

The primary attraction had been the mountains. We were in the foothills on the eastern flank of the Cascade Range. I was getting out into the wild probably every week from summer to the start of winter. Here are a few excerpts.

Darling Mountain

One of my first exploration, maybe the first, was on a Tuesday I had off work, when I drove up the Middle Fork from Tampico and then logging roads to Darling Mountain crest. Sheep scats and tracks around the snow and awesome meadows. Old site of forest fire lookout, since torn down. Climbed a dead tree to enhance the view. Mount Hood, above clouds. Adams, thrusting into them, closer. Goat Rocks across the way, and St. Helens’ perfect cone beyond. Straight ahead, following the road, Rainier thicker into the clouds somehow superior to the others. Then, a golden eagle sailing straight toward me, turning off perhaps 30 yards away, soaring off, circling briefly, and disappearing. With my guest status, I gave gratitude.

Deep forests were extraordinary.

I had no idea that this was on the second-highest logging road in the state.

Rainier route

On another trip, on my way to Mount Rainier, saw my first petroglyphs (rock inscriptions) and petrographs (rock paintings) outside of Naches. The paintings looked a little faked — red and white, perhaps with a little blue or red.

 

Our routes to Rainier were progressions through ecosystems that became familiar over repeated exposure as we drove from sagebrush desert into ponderosa pines and reservoirs of future irrigation waters on our way to the high country of the Cascade Crest and the rainforests beyond.

Rainier hikes inspired many poems as well as scenes in my novel Nearly Canaan.

Each day trip was intoxicating.

To the south

John Day Dam in Columbia River: fish ladder and 80-foot drop of locks: air in stomach, at man’s mass of cement: aluminum company by the RR tracks.

Steam locomotive at Maryhill State Park, reflecting Sam Hill’s source of wealth: Maryhill Museum of Fine Arts, his castle above the palisades, green lawn dropping off into clouds. The sculpture studies by Rodin the claim to fame. During the trip, pondering Mount Adams vs Rainier …

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Along the way

Sweet vinegar smell of hay [up to 5 mowings a year in the interior Far West; the hay was grown in the sunny lands east of the Cascades, and much of it was trucked to dairy farms and other livestock operations on the rainy western side of the mountains].

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From Spiralbound Cascadia with commentary.