METOLIUS RIVER, spring evening & color, Oregon [ click photo for next . . . ]
On the road in the American Northwest.
METOLIUS RIVER, spring evening & color, Oregon [ click photo for next . . . ]
On the road in the American Northwest.
The Metolius River is one
of the largest and most beautiful
spring-fed rivers of North America. [ And what water: at its source,
with a flow rate of 190 m3/min & a constant 8.9 c. ]The river was named by the colonizing Euro-Americans
around 1855 "Myto-ly-as,' which is evidently a transliteration
of a Native American word meaning either "white fish," or
"spawning salmon," of "stinking fish." *The Metolius sports native populations of rainbow trout,
dolly varden, whitefish and kokanee (Kokanee are sockeye
salmon that have become landlocked by downstream dams.)Chinook salmon once spawned in the Metolius. Runs ended
suddenly in 1966 after the completion of the Round Butte
Dam.The Round Butte Dam, further downstream and close to where
the Metolius converges with the Deschutes, is managed jointly
by Portland General Electric (PGE) and the Confederated Tribes of
Warm Springs. It is currently the site of a 60 million dollar
salmon recovery water diversion project.
Whereas the Ponderosa / Larch forests west of the river
seemed to me in very poor health—the ancient oldgrowth
ponderosas I knew and loved from thirty years ago have
all been tragically cut down, leaving signs of an ever-desiccating
trashland behind—east of the river, downstream from Camp
Sherman, it a completely different story. Here one finds some
of the most beautiful Ponderosas, with their accompanying
Larches, Doug Fir and Incense Cedars, to be found anywhere.
And what is more, it is the first virtually weed-free habitat I
have encountered on my journeys through the Northwest.
As I bike, climb and make my poems and photos, the mantra
I repeat to myself and try to teach my students takes the
form of a simple triangle: Love. Study. Protect.
Clearly, the Metolius River deserves:—nay, I would say, demands,
all three.
* source of data is an excellent riverside info board next
to the famous Camp Sherman Post Office & Store,
just east of the first bridge across the Metolius.
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Featured gallery, 100 MINIATURES, a set of 100 black & white photographs. ONE image. ONE idea. ONE new way of looking . . .100 MINIATURES—online gallery
Each miniature is a kind of meditation on one idea & one image;
Each lasts 30 seconds; They play in random order;
The music is my BOREA Mix,
for hand-played ePecussion Orchestra.
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All Photographs & texts by Cliff Crego © 1999 -2016 picture-poems.com
(created: VIII.3.2008)
