August 20, 1999

A Maui Day on the Columbia

Nancy the art teacher would like to own a sailboat. She likes to sail, and on Tuesdays she does, with a buddy from Portland. The sailboat of her dreams disappeared, or drifted further into her future, after a week's kayaking with an outfitter in the San Juans. Seduced by paddling, she found a terrific deal on a 10-year-old Arluk III in Portland. That was in July.

Since then, she and her partner (who also bought a yak) have been hitting the water regularly around here, doing the backwaters and sloughs on the Columbia River. She and I crossed paths last week in a coffee shop, and set yesterday for a day paddle out of Aldrich Point, on the OR side of the Columbia River. Her friend Debbie came along for the yuks. Nancy used to hit the beaches on the islands midriver, years ago with her kids, when it was legal to camp on the islands.

A late morning start, and we plop into the warm water as a threesome, jabbering away and drifting down with the current below Woody Island, home to a dozen float homes, crude jewels studding the edge of the channel. Around the point and onto Nancy's old beach. She searches out where her kids played in the sand when they were little. Now they are driving cars and dealing with teenage sexuality and angst. The old tent site is thick with head-high willows. Debbie trudges along dutifully and plays the foil. It is noon -- hot, calm, and beautiful. We decide we must be on Maui, somehow,

Off the beach and across the shipping channel, pausing so Debbie can natter to a colleague who is piloting a freighter down the River. The captain is a friend, also, and taken aback at a call from a Columbia River Bar pilot on his port hand, from her sea kayak! The freighter's wake is the biggest ripple to pass under our hulls today as we zip across the channel and power over the eddyline below Jim Crow Point, hitting the sand and digging out lunch. Yakisoba noodles? Man! These ladies know how to tempt a hungry guy! My week-old PB and J seems pedestrian, but I trade hard candies for a bite of the Yakisoba/tofu combo.

Debbie and I admire the softening of this beach, a haven in May for an impromptu gathering of loosely-associated Astorians. The sand is warm, and the sun softens us, too. I am impatient to go, to show them the shore above here. We punch out across the eddyline, and I circle around to do it again, as they follow. Taking a slip of smooth water inside the main current, I slide along the cliff, within two feet of the rock wall. What's this? A pair of close-set eyes on a stalk of a neck? Arthur the river otter, just a baby, pops out of his shoreside nook and smoothly enters the water five feet off my bow. Did not know there were otters in Maui!

More strokes against the gentle current, past old rotting piles, once home for the gillnet fleet, past an abandoned rock crusher site next to a quarry, and up to Three Tree Point and another eddyline. Finally, the wind begins, two hours late, and Maui on the Columbia disappears. Edging across the channel again, no freighters in sight, pumping rhythmically for a mile. Dave misjudges the tide, and we skirt a mud flat -- chart says there should be water here! Too bad the chart lies!

Another half hour and we hit the launch beach, somebody else's kids bouncing and laughing in a game of "King of the Innertube" as Dad watches and smokes from the comfort of his pickup's cab. For us, the endorphins are our drug, and we three agree to paddle the Bone in a week. George, you missed a good one!

Who needs Maui anyway?
---
Dave Kruger
Astoria, OR

Copyright 1999 by Dave Kruger.
May not be reproduced or redistributed without author's permission.
Originally posted on Paddlewise mailing list on 8/20/1999.
Republished here with permission.