The normal way of growing up in the Columbia River basin of eastern Washington is to hunt, fish and wander. To listen, as a child, to the creaking of the pickup truck as it undulates over the back roads. To wipe the thick dust from the mouth of your grape soda before tipping it to your lips as a violent jolt of the truck sends the fizz up your nose. To look for arrowheads along the river and carry a snake bite kit.

I had an affinity for wandering. I loved the hawks, geese, coyotes and the thickets near any water where deer would bed. I loved any variation in the landscape that would diverge from being flat and yet, looking back, it was the overwhelming flatness that gave the features such fascination.

After the Columbia River spills from Priest Rapids Dam, heading southeast, it cuts along the volcanic basalt fingers of the Cascade Mountains. Yielding to the rock faces it curves east into the great flat basin. It flows past the old Vernita ferry crossing, now Vernita bridge, then heads northeast as if to position itself for its spectacular arch towards the south, cutting into the chalk sediments of ancient floods.

If you imagine the arc of the river passing the White Bluffs as if it were a great eye, then the pupil of this eye would be Gable Mountain, a two pointed mound in the middle of a great plain to the south of the river. This has been a vision quest site for Native Americans for as long as anyone knows. This was the homelands of the Wanapum prophet Smohalla, who taught the return to the old ways of bonding with the sacred earth.

The Columbia River from Priest Rapids to Richland is the last free-flowing stretch of this river in Washington State. The river from Vernita to Richland, now called the Hanford Reach, has been under the jurisdiction of the federal government since the 1940s. To understand this area you must know that the plutonium for the Nagaski bomb was created here and that this site has been a receptacle of radioactive and chemical waste for 50 years.

Growing up in the Columbia Basin can give one a rich perspective on the impact of our modern industrial culture. I find it humorous that this perspective was nurtured by such a little known place on earth.

When Hanford came Richland was a boom town of young and vital people. We got our milk out on the farms because it was better than the milk in the stores. Years later we found out about the release of radioactivity across the Columbia basin as part of the Department of Energy's tests.

After that, I began to learn more about the people who used to live there. The Palouse who lived east of the Columbia, the Yakimas who lived west of the river and the Wanapums who lived in the basin occupied presently by the Hanford Energy Reservation and the White Bluffs area, called the Hanford Reach.

In the last half of the 1800s there were many native visionaries who spoke of two paths. One path embraces the relationship with the Earth and one severs it. In the Columbia basin this vision was embodied in the Washani religion. Smohalla of the Wanapums, holy man of Washani, was born near the Wallula Gap of the Columbia River. His teachings had widespread influence with many of the inland tribes as they coped with the destruction of the land and their culture. The Washani religion taught reverence for the Earth because it is part of your own body.

There is an overwhelming irony revealed by this little hill in a vast basin overlooking the last natural stretch of a river. The little hill speaks of the two paths. Stop and listen, the two paths are spoken of in every tongue now.

The other irony is that the Hanford Energy Reservation's need for security succeeded in protecting areas of this unique arid river basin ecosystem, the last of its kind in Washington State. Now the federal government wishes to reduce its land holdings, subjecting the river to other public and/or private interests. We are at a crossroads of opportunity. We must assure protection of this incredible ecosystem by giving the river and adjacent lands wild and scenic river status. Legislation to protect the reach is being resubmitted to Congress by Senator Patty Murray of Washington State in the Congressional session of 1997.

This areas is far more than a bend in the river. It is a place that diverges from, and embraces flatness. A place of rich history. A place that is conscious.

Your fluid eye arches north, millennium etched eye lid opening ever wider, pupils of sacred mountains. The prophet Smohalla of the Wanapums walked upon your shores, floated on your tears, sang through your sight.

We drill into you, pouring lethal mixtures to blind you, afraid of what you see, comfort in your blindness, the silence of your voice less disturbing. Wind is only wind. Hawk breaking silence, only a red tail, its voice not spitting arrows with filament thongs pulling ground dwellers to the sky. Coyote tries to sing you back to sanity only to become a target for sighting in a rifle.

You do still see us, drifting in your currents like flies on the lens of a search light, knowing you are earth's eye witnessing creation and despite our blindness we have no choice but to be a part of what you see.

The rhythm of the paddle stirs current of water and of time. Voices and laughter of past people close to the river, joy in your bounty. I imagine a young brave running along the bank, keeping pace with the canoe, he waves. It seems quite natural as time compresses then expands to include the nuclear reactors on your south bank. Hanford siren signals something serious like lunch and the coyotes chant. Time again collapses under wings of geese as they rise

By day's end, September heat robs your appetite. Cozy camp, tolerable wind, too exhausted to cook. I'm glad Chef Mcgregor came all the way from Scotland to be with me on the river. That blend of Scotch whiskeys that fires the appetite, cuts the dust, reloads the film holders and toasts with the deepest respect your performance of twilight, as you gently knot the star in the sky to the star in the river, one by one, and I gently untie them as I bath in your waters.

Early morning obscures the pale chalk bluffs into ribbon shadows of blue. Staring into these shadows is like the closets of your childhood, all the fears of the future can play in these cool, toned shades.

You are the last of your kind a 50-mile sacred eye where the waters still talk. We seek your power, we may have succeeded in making you blink, and when you do, I fear I am lost. We have severed the umbilical and marched away in arrogance, traveling great distances. Yet here, now, looking into your ribbons of blue, I am lost and lonely. Our hands are full of the thousand things obscuring meaning. Wandering in a human landscape, despite our utter neglect, I still feel you there, waiting to welcome us back. Like Dorothy in the Wizard of OZ, I am homesick, wishing I could click my heels or dance a jig on your bank to find that short cut home. Our search for meaning seemed to exist in a continuum with no time limit. I stop at this point in the human journey, my heart seems to bolt, tears well up, foreboding feeling that your eye may close before I can ever find my way back, before it's necessary for coyote to lace the land with our entrails as a final effort of unity, of homecoming. In the flat light of midday there is comfort that the anarchy of entrails will, in the end, tie us back to you, our Mother.

If one yearns for insight through the revelation of the physical, you must wait for sunset to etch into clarity each ridge, each symbol. The setting sunlight slips between opacity of cloud and horizon, raking the land. The freshly written pattern of ridges is repeated by the sky with an ease of conversation, a marriage of meaning, earth, sky, moment, millennium. The white cliffs are not entirely cryptic. We are human seeking connection, made of your soil, water and sky. The metallic yellow sign saying "No trespassing" seems out of place for a moment. Then its command becomes exhausting, saying "find another way back." It becomes another dead end of one of a thousand paths home. When we have no energy left for another diversion, we may, without notice, begin to smell of death. I hear Coyote singing. I hear them drawing near, when they stop we may feel the tugging on our bellies, the coyote pups playfully extending the intestinal filament thongs from our centers...pulling us home.

Then...

may our eyes be wide open

to be a part of what you see.