When it comes to green American cities, “put a bird on it” Portland is likely to be at or near the top of most any list – any list, that is, that doesn’t take into account the health of the large river that bisects it. I mean, of course, not the Columbia, which flows along the city’s northern border, but rather one of its major tributaries: the Willamette.
Even though I’ve lived in the small Oregon town of Scappoose for more than two decades now, I still find myself disoriented. It’s the river. Flowing past the town, the Columbia flows south to north. In Astoria, where I was raised, it flowed – and still continues to flow – east to west. Rivers are like that; they have effects on a person.
For those seeking to explore, or simply learn more about, the many rivers to be found in the state of Oregon, the publication of Tim Palmer’s Field Guide to Oregon Rivers by Oregon State University Press should come as welcome news indeed.
The Passenger Pigeon, Ectopistes migratorius, was so plentiful across early Nineteenth Century North America that passing flocks were said to block out the sun. By 1900 the last one found in the wild was captured and in 1914 the lone surviving member of the species died in a Cincinnati zoo.