I received a poem recently from my friend Jeanine Cardiff which was written in response to the removal of dams on the Elwha River in Washington state in 2012 and 2014. Jeanine lives in Port Angeles, WA. near where the Elwha flows into the sea from the Olympic Mountains. Ten years later salmon have returned and the river’s eco-system is regenerating through natural recovery and, in part, through restoration initiatives. It is not exactly the river it was before but its new eco-system is adjusting and thriving.
The Mighty Elwha by Jeanine Cardiff
I heard a sigh, a great sigh of release.
Breath held for a hundred years let out
In joyous surrender to its birthright.
An ever-flowing river to her sea.
The spirit waters flow again
In the mighty Elwha
From beginning to end,
A heart beat no longer muffled
behind walls that separate.
Behind walls that have silenced
Too many voices.
The walls of arrogance have come down
And the sweet voice of the river
sings her song of life
Reminding us
That a river never forgets who she is;
Reminding us
In this great metaphor of life
That we, too, must never forget
Who we are
’til the walls come a tumbling down.
In 2012, unaware of the Elwha’s liberating fate I make my first research trip to trace my grandfather’s history in the Puget Sound area. On our way back to Canada from Olympia, WA. I want to explore Olympic Peninsula; the fjords of Puget Sound partially separate it from mainland Washington State. I have always imagined it as a wild paradise, bounded by ocean, with dense, forested Olympic National Park at its heart. Instead we drive through ancient and recent clear-cuts and forest tracts marked with lumber company signs. This modern forest industry descends from sawmills my great-great grandfather, Hill Harmon, helped build in the 1870’s near Port Hope on Hood Canal. It has eradicated a complex forest eco-system thousands of years old and replaced it with clear-cutting and mono-culture replanting. I try to imagine what this former paradise must have been like, but I can’t. I have never experienced, even in my wanderings in the Canadian Rockies, far from civilization, the abundance of wildlife, plants, fish and birds which reportedly thrived in North America before colonization.
We come to Aberdeen, a small city on the Pacific Coast, at the south-west corner of Olympic Peninsula. It’s named for Aberdeen, Scotland, which my mother described as a beautiful white granite city which glints in the sun. To my horror this namesake Aberdeen, which was only established in 1884, is a city of mostly derelict, abandoned and decrepit warehouse buildings, relics of the fishing and lumbering industries which once relied solely on sea ports to take their products to market.
The Elwha project was a successful trial. In 2023-24 four massive dams on the Klamath River which flows from Oregon into northern California will be removed allowing that eco-system to regenerate.
Dam Removal on the Klamath River
I fervently hope I will live to see the great Columbia River, which flows from Mt. Columbia in the Canadian Rockies to the ocean west of Astoria, Oregon, free once again, her enormous dams removed. My grandfather photographed Mt. Columbia, headwater of the river, in 1924. He photographed along the Big Bend Highway which followed the original course of Columbia River in Canada before it was dammed in the 1930’s. My father photographed Mt. Columbia and Columbia Icefield from the air in 1974 as part of his aerial photographs of Columbia Icefield in the 1970’s.
I camped with Jeanine and other friends on Dosewallips River on the Olympic Peninsula in 2018. It’s a wild river which lives up to my ideal vision of Olympic Peninsula.
On Dosewallips River
A water bug swims towards me, propelled by thrusts of strong legs on stick body.
Floating
four lobed wings cast flower shadows on smooth pebbled river bottom.
It veers in fits and starts creating parallel ripples in phased waves.
I drop a paper in the water. My swimmer thrusts to investigate,
as blue ink blurs and spreads, veers away.
This backwater creates a perfect mirror of overhanging trees framing circles of light
centred by the swimmer. Now I see their round paddles which are drawn in, then spread.
They swim through rippled surfaces, half aware of other dimensions.
We’re joined in this interlude of water, light, reflection and curious beings sensing one another.
Bumble bee buzzes me, my blue and white polka dot top a strange flower.
O, what a beautiful blue.
If we understood rivers in this way, as spirit flowing...
Thanks for the close reading, I appreciate the detail.