• Skip to main content
  • Skip to footer

Eileen Delehanty Pearkes

Writer, Speaker, Researcher

  • Home
  • About
  • Books
  • Upper Columbia River
    • Sinixt Advocacy through the years
    • Updating the Columbia River Treaty
    • Notebooks
    • Maps
  • Other Work
    • Articles
    • A 6,000 Mile Search for Beauty
  • Contact
  • Blog

Water

From Sea to Source

February 27, 2019 by Eileen Delehanty Pearkes Leave a Comment

Yesterday found me speaking at the Columbia River Maritime Museum in Astoria, Oregon. It was a fulfilling moment – sharing the story of the impact of Columbia River Treaty storage dams located in the headwaters region, with people who live at its mouth. After my talk, I drove out to the edge of the continent, […]

Filed Under: Home page, Landscapes, Travel, Uncategorized, Water

Water in a dry land

December 30, 2018 by Eileen Delehanty Pearkes Leave a Comment

I leave Topanga Canyon at dawn. When I pull over and step from the car, the call of birds litters the dimly lit scrub forest. Lights from the densely populated LA Basin twinkle in the distance. On the cusp of day and night; metropolis and canyon, nature is alive. I head north on I-5, climbing […]

Filed Under: Home page, Landscapes, Travel, Water

Full Flowering and the Columbia River Treaty

June 10, 2018 by Eileen Delehanty Pearkes Leave a Comment

The last time my life was as busy as it has been this spring was the year my second son came into the world. That sunny, damp day in mid-March 26 years ago set off a whirl of caregiving for family that only began to abate in 2002, when my first book emerged in the […]

Filed Under: Home page, Landscapes, Upper Columbia River Region, Water Tagged With: A River Captured, Columbia River Treaty

An Eagle’s Eye

April 3, 2018 by Eileen Delehanty Pearkes

Last week, I travelled south of the international boundary, to Kettle Falls, Washington. Standing on a bluff overlooking the Columbia River, I watched the reservoir pool around a land mass exposed by low water. The indigenous word for this place is ksunkw, “island.” Sinixt and Skoyelpi fishermen, their families and the Salmon Chief once spent […]

Filed Under: Land, Landscapes, Upper Columbia River Region, Water

Planting Seeds

September 26, 2017 by Eileen Delehanty Pearkes

Redfish Creek flows into the West Arm of Kootenay Lake, close to where I live. This aptly named creek has long been a spawning grounds for the region’s kokanee, a sockeye species identical to the ocean version, except that it adapted to live in freshwater only when it was stranded here long ago by melting […]

Filed Under: Landscapes, Uncategorized, Water

Finding the headwaters

March 31, 2016 by Eileen Delehanty Pearkes Leave a Comment

I cross into Montana and head west, drawn by the allure of Headwaters State Park, about 30 miles west of Bozeman, Montana. The second-longest river in North America begins here, tucked into a wetland east of the Rocky Mountain divide. Every river begins differently. The Missouri’s alpha is actually the confluence of two rivers, the […]

Filed Under: Home page, Uncategorized, Water

  • « Go to Previous Page
  • Go to page 1
  • Go to page 2
  • Go to page 3
  • Go to Next Page »

Footer

About Eileen

Eileen Delehanty Pearkes explores landscape, history and the human imagination in writing, maps and visual notebooks.

Recent Posts

  • Challenging conversations: a unique Stanford symposium on the Columbia River
  • 600-Strong: whoever would have thought?
  • Hockey and gravity
  • Salmon and Columbia River Treaty flood control
  • Flexible Concrete and the Imagined Valve

Subscribe to new posts

Check your inbox or spam folder to confirm your subscription.

Copyright © 2025 · Author Pro on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in