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Kodachrome Dreams
Roll on, Old Columbia River Highway
by Joel Gunz
I
When I feel the need to get out of the city or out of my house, or just plain out of my head, I drive about 15 minutes east of Portland into the Columbia River Gorge. Avoiding the asphalt chute of Interstate-84, an Eisenhower-era highway project that blasts along the shore of the river, I drive the Old Columbia River Highway.
Built in 1915, the Old Columbia River Highway runs parallel to I-84, yet follows the natural terrain more faithfully-a road condition that necessitates slower driving and affords more opportunities for contemplation. The Columbia Gorge is one reason why Oregon's license plates once declared the state a Pacific Wonderland. It is a land of mist-enshrouded cliffs plunging into one of the world's great rivers, a land of hidden ravines and dark, dank gorges. An elf could step out from behind a bush and you would not be surprised.
Because my wife and I were separated a few months ago, I have gone up the river about half a dozen times. A recent Sunday seemed like a good day for a return trip. I had no idea where I was headed, exactly. So I decided to wander. We had just had a winter snowstorm-a weather event that left patches of hardened snow in the shadows of the pine trees and great icy mounds built up by snowplows that looked like they could hold out until April. Meanwhile, fresh moss and new grass were already emerging. I've always had a preference for that tail-end time when the winter snows begin to depart reluctantly, like children leaving a party.
II
When I was about 17, I wrote a poem that illustrated the point in a youth's life when he is suspended, as it were, between childhood and adolescence:
TWELVE
Big boys with
imaginary playmates
of the month
tacked to their bedroom walls
and fold-outs of Spiderman.
Under the bed
toy guns
and other hidden clutter.
It seems I've always been fascinated by that period of oscillation when one thing becomes another. The cinematic "dissolve" when one scene fades into another. Winter yielding the right-of-way to spring. A boy playing with toy guns and dangerous ideas.
III
It's not that I'm suicidal or anything, but when your marriage is breaking up, you think a lot of unhealthy thoughts, some of which might involve death. I'd been thinking along these lines myself when I stopped at Shepperd's Dell, a wide spot in the Old Highway that features a short (100 yards, if that) trail. This trail winds along the edge of a recess in the walls of the gorge, ending at a three-tiered waterfall. The cliff that the trail follows would have made a great jumping-off spot, and I contemplated the possibility. But I don't really want to die. I recalled Robert Frost's "Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening"-here I was, in the woods, in the snow, thinking morbid thoughts. It was, however, early afternoon. And I have miles to go before I sleep. Leaving the Old Highway, I crossed over the river at Bridge of the Gods and continued eastward on Washington Highway 14.
IV
About two years ago I discovered-or, perhaps, rediscovered, I'm not sure-the Hotel St. Francis, a small spa and hotel at Carson Hot Springs. It seemed that I had been there before, a long time ago, as a small child. Built in the 1930s, the simple wood frame building hadn't been updated in decades. On my wandering journey, I was headed there next.
As I came around the final bend of the private road that leads to the hotel, something wasn't right. Where there should have been dense forest and undergrowth, there was a new building under construction. The unfinished exterior walls were enshrouded in gaudy Tyvek insulating paper. The original bungalow cabins, one of which Jane Seymour had stayed in while filming a movie in the area, were gone. Described in tourist literature as "Washington's last old-fashioned health spa," the St. Francis was being scraped into the dustbin of history. All that remained were some bits of foundation masonry.
V
Samuel Lancaster, the original highway's chief architect, supplied the lofty aesthetic rationale behind that road-building project. "There is," he wrote, "but one Columbia River Gorge [that] God put into this comparatively short space, [with] so many beautiful waterfalls, canyons, cliffs and mountain domes." Believing that "men from all climes will wonder at its wild grandeur when once it is made accessible by this great highway," he made sure that the highway was, above all, sympathetic to its environment.
Unfortunately, those ideals proved to be untenable in the long run. The cliffside that the road traces is unstable, and in the fall and winter it is frequently buried under landslides. Some parts have had to be demolished out of concern for public safety. Its narrow lanes and switchback curves make it impractical for large trucks. Except for the handful of residents who rely on it as their only connection to the outside world, the Old Highway is given over almost exclusively to tourist traffic. It is a relic.
VI
The previously mentioned Jane Seymour movie came out in 1993. Made for cable, Praying Mantis is about a woman scarred by childhood trauma who grows up to marry a series of men each of whom she then murders on their wedding night. It has a very brief scene that was filmed at the Hotel St. Francis. Although that cabin has been destroyed, the video in which it briefly appears is available for purchase through Amazon.com.
VII
In one of my parents' photo albums there is a snapshot of Grandma, my parents, my sisters and me that was taken when I was about six. It is a sunny summer day, and we are at Crown Point, a spot on the Old Columbia River Highway that affords a breathtaking cliff-top view of the river, upstream and down. The sun is beginning to hang low, edging toward the period late in the day that photographers call the Golden Hour, when colors intensify and shadows deepen and it is almost impossible to take a bad picture. The family is all there, the three generations of us. I remember the dreamy feeling of at-one-ness I felt that day smiling for the camera, smiling on the inside and out, utterly and uncomplicatedly happy.
After my day-trip I told a friend who also frequented the spa at Carson Hot Springs that the old hotel was being torn down and replaced. It saddened him too. We paused for a moment. Then he said, "It couldn't last forever."
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