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 […]
Water
Planting Seeds
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 […]
Finding the headwaters
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 […]
Missouri River Marshlands
The name Van Meter State Park in northwestern Missouri predicts nothing about the park’s remarkable gifts. I approached it on state road 122, rolling La Tortue through undulating farm fields that were broken only by occasional brush and trees gathered in wet draws. Mostly, this was engineered habitat for soybeans and corn. We had our […]
Dry Canyon, Wet Rock
The walk up Grapevine Canyon in Lake Mead Reservoir recreation area begins on a dry river-bed pocked with drought-toughened shrubs. “Lake” Mead is one of several reservoirs on the Colorado River, formed by dams that redirect its water to agriculture and urban use. Every drop of water in the Colorado basin is allocated, so much […]
Pockets of Agates
The El Nino storms hit Klamath, California hard on Thursday. La Tortue trembled in the force of the wind. Rain pounded on the roof, waking me in the dead of the night. Miraculously, I lay warm and dry. (Thank goodness I am getting too old for tent camping.) For the next several days, I watched […]