November 28, 2000

Cheese and Freighters

The old man gestured at the distant shoreline of weeds and willows: "That's Tenasillahee, where I lived as a kid!"

"Ahhh, well that's actually Quinn Island. Tenasillahee is upriver. Can't see it from here. When did you live there?"

"1925 is when I left. We made cheese. Had 400 acres of pasture and three big barns."

"Yeah, I heard there were buildings on Tenasillahee."

"Jones owned it. He put in the locks at Cascade Locks. Lost a lot of money because they were six inches too short and the steamer could not fit inside."

"Then I worked at the Brownsmead store, down on the slough. It is all different now."

"Yeah, the Corps has put a lot of dredge spoils all over the islands. And now Tenasillahee is a wildlife refuge for the white-tailed deer. They run cattle on the island to keep the pastures open for them. Was Tenasillahee diked then?"

"Yeah. But a beaver took out a tide gate and it all flooded once."

The old man was born in 1915, and his son was taking him around to old haunts, one the put in at Aldrich Point, Brownsmead, Oregon. I was the beneficiary of his recollection. There were buildings on Tenasillahee when the National Wildlife Service took it over in the early seventies. Some of my hippie carpenter friends had salvaged the worn lumber, selling it as boutique boards for a good profit.

All an appropriate starter for a winter paddle.

I finished collecting my gear and pushed off, warm feet at last after several years of wet feet from leaky neoprene booties. Love those Chotas! Creaky joints and sore butt, the legacy of almost two months of non-paddling. Only one or two duck boats out here. One resembles a floating dugout, with one open side and the other a collage of reeds, weeds, and camo netting.

Push, push. No breeze, and sunshine. This is winter in Oregon?

Another thirty minutes and Fitzpatrick is under the keel. Most of the island is gone, with only a shred remaining after 20-plus years of erosion of the dredge spoils. Someone has put up nesting boxes. Can't be for wood ducks. Must be Andrew and his damned hooded larks! Cream cheese and bagel, snarf down the juice and the last candy bar. Watch the hawks dodging through the willows, looking for a shrew or a duck to grab.

A Seaspan barge is working its way up the channel, hooting on the VHF now and then, announcing his entry into the turn at Skamokawa. Another barge-encumbered towboat, downriver bound, acknowledges him, and the Captain H.A. Downing, an empty tanker, gets on the downbound barge: "Hey, Cap, what's your speed? Can we go by you on your port side?" "Ahhh, yah! We are making 9 point 3." "I'm doing about 15." "I'll get over to the Washington side."

Later, the downbound towboat asks the freighter to slow, to allow the Seaspan barge past. Them the freighter puts the pedal to the metal and pushes past, all of this a hundred yards off my bow, as I sit just outside the shipping channel.

This spot on the River is tricky for shipping traffic, owing to shoaling and because it is a broad turn, with constantly changing radius. A year ago a River pilot embarrased himself by running his fare aground, wiping out a green buoy which marked the shoal. I wonder if he got to keep the wreckage?

As I gunkhole the WA shore, looking for poison oak clusters through bare branches, another freighter gets on the horn and the towboats respond. I cut across the last towboat's wake, bouncing in his haystacks and pulling for home. Home is a ways off, and I work the flooded shorelines and sneak across weedy shallows, spooking mallards hiding from the hunters. Sun is low, directly in my face, so I can not see ahead, navigating by the hillsides and their position relative to me. Weeds are strewn all over me, the deck, the VHF, and my paddle as I hit the shore.

Calmer, colder, tired, enriched.

The River has turned from pasturage and cheese-making to shipping. Wish the old man could have been with me today to see this. He would have been good company.
---
Dave Kruger
Astoria, OR

Copyright 2000 by Dave Kruger.
May not be reproduced or redistributed without author's permission.
Originally posted on Paddlewise mailing list on 11/28/2000.
Republished here with permission.