Reflections on the Eagle Creek Fire from ‘Gorge Getaways’ author Laura Foster

Eagle Creek in 2015.
(Photo by Debbie Asakawa)

Laura O. Foster is author of Portland Hill Walks and Columbia Gorge Getaways. She lives in the west hills above Highway 30 north of Sauvie Island. Last summer Foster shared tips on riding the ‘Trail of the Gods’ from Stevenson (WA) to Cascade Locks.

The Columbia Gorge. Three Days Ago. Today.

1:00 a.m. today: The smell of burning forest punched through an already-uneasy sleep. I stepped outside, sniffing, looking through the dark for flames, afraid our land was on fire.

But it wasn’t this forest’s turn. This fire is ravaging the Columbia Gorge. A teenage boy, or two boys, throwing fireworks off a cliff, started this Eagle Creek Fire, named for a place so magnificent it was chosen for the first-in-the-nation Forest Service campground, 101 years ago.

Three days ago these bits of ash on my porch could have been bark on an old-growth Douglas fir.
(Photo: Laura Foster)

A hike into its green canyon is a memory to marvel over, a sanctuary to introduce to ones we love. It’s part of us, our story, our pride as stewards of this Pacific Northwest we are lucky enough to live in. We take our guests there. See? Isn’t it magnificent?

Those boys. Their rationale and lack of foresight are hard for a middle-aged woman to fathom. But they could not have guessed this expanding conflagration, this destruction, fear, sadness, death, disruption, grief. Do they even know about the east wind?

I feel sorry for them, and for their parents.

That wind keeps bringing me bits of our beautiful gorge. Through the screens come tiny black shards that lived, three days ago, as old growth Douglas fir bark. On the porch floor is grey ash. Three days ago, it was a branch woven into a bald eagle’s nest, or the dried grass in a mouse’s burrow, or the insect-laden trunk of a snag. The pileated woodpecker who mined that tree is somewhere safe, I hope. The insects… they’re atomized, small victims of human stupidity.

A friend reported seeing red-tailed hawks yesterday, circling near the burning woods. My heart cracked a bit with that news. Those confident predators, confused now, not yet able to leave what they had to leave.

The land will recover. In a few hundred years it will be back to where it was, three days ago.

The Columbia Gorge is beloved by Portlanders for its beauty and recreation it offers us. But it’s home to small communities and bigger towns, to businesses, schools, churches and first responders. Those responders — the people who rescued 153 hikers caught by the fire—are today working to contain the fire. They are the ones who everyday are ready to fix the problems people bring: the falls, the fires, the accidents. Consider making a contribution, via Friends of the Columbia Gorge, to Hood River County Search and Rescue, one of the local emergency responders helping people impacted by the Eagle Creek fire. And after the fire, go have a meal in Cascade Locks and help the healing begin.

— Laura O. Foster

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