Almost every daily dog walk takes us to Clear Creek. One hundred feet out the front door, down our gravel road, across paved Lolo Pass Road, and along another gravel road, both sides of which were clearcut a decade ago, way before we moved here. Walking through the clearing, about ten acres in total, alders and maples still stand taller than the Christmas tree-size Douglas-firs planted after the loggers left. In spring, invasive Scotch broom blooms bright yellow, ferns unfurl, and the chaos of leafing and flowering makes me sneeze.
On a clear day, before leaving the road for the path to the creek, whose gentle white rush I can already hear and see one hundred feet ahead, I like to follow the bend in the road, then turn around to face east, and let my eyes rest on the brilliant white glaciers and triangular peak of Mt. Hood eight miles away.
The stubborn female dog, Yuki, pulls her hardest toward the creek path each time. She’s a water dog, and the creek is her paradise. Her brother, who we call Bozo, is the opposite, but he likes the creek because the grass grows fresh and tasty down there.
A foot-wide dirt trail gently slopes between centennial Doug-firs on the left, part of a historic cabin property, and the large stumps and raucous undergrowth of the clearcut on the right. Green leaves of all sorts — tall grasses, tiny white flowers, salmonberry — crowd the way, but the dogs speed right through it while I look at what’s new, which plants are taking over as spring leads into summer.
Watercolor by Lori LaBissoniere O’Neil
Toward the bottom, forest shelters us on both sides thanks to a mandatory creekside logging buffer. Healthy cedars grow here where a spring emerges from the earth, making a muck of the footpath. I step on rocks fringed with sorel, an oversized three leaf clover, or step in mud, and pop out of the trees and onto the rounded rocks of the creek bed. A ribbon of gin-clear water ripples past, about twenty-five feet across, its level and intensity determined by the date and amount of the last rains.
From this spot I can see a few hundred feet upstream, to a boulder as tall and wide as me with arms outstretched. The creek can’t move it, so it goes around on one side, but wraps the boulder on both sides after a storm. Gentle rapids liven this whole stretch of creek, water flowing and tumbling over rocks, making perpendicular lines of white and a sound that pauses the day, the sound of infinity. On the opposite side of the creek, trees and bushes grow right to the water’s edge, and a big leaf maple sprawls over a small pool where fish might lurk. A house sits perched on the steep bank above, mostly hidden behind the curtain of green.
Looking downstream, where the creek smacks into boulders held in place by a few hemlocks and cedars, another pool forms, this one riled with current as the water abruptly doglegs to the right — from here, another half mile to the Sandy River, then another sixty miles to the Columbia, and finally one hundred twenty miles to the Pacific, without a single dam in the way. Prime salmon habitat, you might think, but no, not any more. That aspect of this land has been removed, channeled, logged, drained.
Manmade objects obstruct the otherwise idyllic view. A ten-inch pipe, verdigris with time, crosses the creek above the dogleg. A rusted steel suspension cable holds it in place, like a mid-twentieth century aqueduct. It carries our drinking water from Minikahda Creek which cascades down the forested slope in the far distance. Power lines droop overhead here, too, feeding the house across the creek, although behind that house run the stately high-tension lines which connect The Dalles Dam with Portland, and which buzz eerily when wet with rain or snow. Above the creek’s dogleg turn the historic Steiner cabin presides. Its rustic style and dark cedar shingle siding help it blend into the picture, minus the round hot tub that might one day crash into the creek. No one lives here, making the creek feel somewhat natural.
I like to wash my face in the creek, stand by it watching and listening, imagining what it looked like before the loggers, beaver trappers, and developers arrived. At this spot and at others downstream where we sometimes go, I often look across the water, into the thicket of leaves and mottled tree trunks, hoping to sight a black bear or cougar, because I know they exist over there, way, way behind the creek. But the only animal I’ve seen along the creek, besides fish fry, is a small black water ouzel which flitters from rock to rock, sometimes chirping, and our two little dogs.
We didn’t know about Clear Creek when we bought this house. The previous owners told us it was Still Creek, but that’s a few miles up the mountain. Other Clear Creeks exist in the area, including one that flows into Clear Lake on the south side of Mt. Hood. Our area is rich in rivers and creeks, including the Sandy River on the other side of our property, likewise less than a thousand feet away. But private property blocks our path to the Sandy, so we’ve made Clear Creek ours. We’ve taken our year-old daughter to the creek since she was a week old, dipped her pink little hands in the cool water, to her fascination. If we were salmon, it’s where we would return to, no doubt.
[A few days ago, Lori walked our daughter Alix and the dogs to the creek, a found branches and shrubs cut and scattered every which way. Someone had chainsawed the vegetation that grew between the creek and its storm channel. What was a gravel island with salmonberry, small alders, and other bushes is now a mini-clearcut. I haven’t even gone to see it, my allergies bad enough to keep me away in the first place. This is exactly the sort of abuse this creek has sustained since the white man arrived in the 19th century. What excellent stewards of this land generations of fellow neighbors have proven themselves to be, even today. At least this instance of idiocy won’t affect the fish.]