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Show Go Love/219 28. Barely home, we head west When the highway runs into the Pacific Ocean, we find ourselves in Astoria, Oregon, at the mouth of the Columbia River the Gorge-the Mississippi of the Northwest. Windsurfers carve blue waters thahbewildered explorers half a millennium-the sought after northern passage seeming to possess the gift of making itself invisible. Cape Disappointment the place is called, where we begin the second week of July, 2002, a little less than a month after my mother has drowned and been buried in the ground where a stone with her name on it will be set in fall. By the time we hit the coastal bridges-these architectural works of art in steel and stone-I've run out of dry earth to run away on. Rivers named Klaskanine, Lewis and Clark, Nehatem, and Sixes pass through fishing villages with blue-painted doors and where you can walk right down to a boat and pay five dollars for a red-fleshed king salmon that saw the sun rise that very day. Natives here worship the fish as a god-the fish totems appear in a curve of highway that looks out on rocky islands where seals and sea lions flounce and holler. The air is honest with salt and chill. Someone has told Renee that this place is good medicine, that peace can be made here. My daughter's learned how to write the |
