…that we confront a natural world that allows great liberty in selecting, emphasizing, and grouping, and that we must therefore compose it in order to appropriately aesthetically experience it – holds out an invitation not simply to find the natural world beautiful, but also to appreciate its true nature.
Allen Carlson
Celilo Reservoir, Wikimedia, Photo Credit: Kabelleger / David Gubler (http://www.bahnbilder.ch)
Without knowing the history of “Lake” Celilo, you might find it to be an aesthetically pleasing, placid lake in the shadow of Mount Hood. Knowledge of the Columbia River’s history provides the context necessary for “appropriate” aesthetic appreciation of this environment. Knowing that this lake is in fact a reservoir and that it buries some of the most culturally significant, powerful falls on the Columbia, Celilo Falls, transforms how it is aesthetically experienced. Celilo Falls means echo of falling water. Celilo Lake holds the echoing memories of a time when the Columbia River was appreciated for its true nature. At Celilo, the echo of falling water has been silenced beneath stilled waters.
Celilo Falls just before The Dalles Dam flooded the falls. Wikimedia, Photo Credit: United States Army Corps of Engineers
Celilo Falls was a gathering place for numerous tribes. 5,000 individuals gathered at once at this site to scoop up abundant salmon with dip nets. Gatherings centering on catching, drying, and thanking enormous Chinook salmon forged social bonds. These mighty fish historically provided some Columbia Basin tribes with 60% of their annual caloric intake. Salmon were, and in spite of relative scarcity remain, a primary source of nourishment for body and spirit in the Columbia Basin.
Knowledge of the Columbia River’s history, its significance to indigenous people, and the remarkable stories and religious practices revolving around the sacred food source provided by the river informs how one thinks about it aesthetically. The politics surrounding rivers are also dependent upon multiple understandings of place and require balancing the natural world’s “true nature” and the trade-offs inherent in molding the environment to meet particular human needs or desires.
The very movement of water in the Columbia Basin is political. Large scale manipulation of the Columbia River began in the late 1800s. The power of the Columbia frustrated early attempts by explorers, traders, miners, and loggers to navigate this wild river, which in William Clark’s words was “swelling, boiling, Whorling, in every direction.” The lava, glaciers, and floods that give shape to much of the basin created jagged river beds giving rise to (now inundated) powerful, unpredictable rapids, currents, and eddies. At locations like Celilo, where the river narrowed, water rushed and plummeted downstream, slowing salmon migration and creating good fishing opportunities.
The river’s wild motion began to be tamed by dredging in its lower reaches for navigability. Dams were built from the 1930s through 1970s (and earlier in some tributaries) to harness the river’s power for electricity, provide for irrigated agriculture, and to control flooding. This stilling of the river’s falls, rapids, and currents benefited shipping, resource extraction, and trade, but threatened (and still threaten) to be a final blow to already over-harvested salmon runs and the cultures that depended on them.
The movement of water in the Columbia Basin, whether natural, historical, or manipulated, is critical to how one views the contemporary Columbia River. Appreciating and understanding what we see requires seeing beyond what is in front of our eyes. As the myth of Echo and Narcissus warns, sometimes we can only hear echoes and see reflections rather than the vital reality of the true nature of place.
Echo and Narcissum, Claude Lorrain - https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/artists/claude, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=50712489
What we see is often a reflection of how we view ourselves and our place in the world. In the above painting, the limits of Narcissus’ understanding of what he sees is a curse. A watery reflection acts as a mirage and maddeningly inaccessible object of his desire. The surrounding natural world is bathed in a golden glow, soft, expansive and lush. He sees none of it, not even Echo, who audaciously reclines before him.
The myth of Echo and Narcissus is a story of the curses of echoes and reflections, the inability to be heard, the inability to recognize what is right in front of our eyes. Echo fell in love with Narcissus and tried to call out to him, but because of a curse that rendered her incapable of speaking her own words she could only repeat the words of others and could not communicate with him.
Narcissus too was cursed for his repeated rejection of admirers. His punishment — falling in love with his own reflection — left him withering of unrequited love before a pool of still water. Unquestioning attachment to the slack water pools lying relatively stilled behind the Columbia Basin’s dams may present its own sentimental dangers.