Small Escapes...

There is a bit of magic to be found not many miles from home, in the backyard more or less. A new trail, a new tiny historic highway leaving an historic little town and traversing a windy plateau dotted with centuries old barns in rich volcanic farmlands. A viewpoint for Memaloose Island (translated from Chinook as "To Die"in the Columbia River. An Island where the local natives, instead of burying, would leave their dead on platforms and parked canoes exposed to the elements. Sounds a lot less claustrophobic then the now-dominant convention. In the early 1800's when Lewis and Clark rowed past they mentioned bodies piled high on numerous platforms...

ISLE OF DEAD LIES IN COLUMBIA, By Lida Wheeler MacGowan, The Oregonian, Portland, OR., May 31, 1931, magazine section, page 3, 

"Standing in the mid-channel of the Columbia River, a few miles below where the Klickitat pours in from the north is a bare, flat-topped mass of basalt and sand known as Memaloose Island. Fittingly chosen by the sages of the wild tribes that in ages past lived on the great plains of the upper Columbia basin, it was used as a burial place of the dead. This Isle of the Dead was a neutral burying ground used in common by all the tribes inhabiting either side of the river form the Cascades to and beyond the Blue mountains, among then being the Cascades, Klickitats, Snakes, Wascos, Bannocks and Umatillas." 

I've not been, but the Tom McCall Nature Preserve on the Rowena Crest, certainly looked and I imagine felt like a jaunt in the Scottish Highlands. At the edge of the dark clouds with sun slicing through to the east, icy wind and intermittent rain, slipping up a muddy and snow-spotted trail to McCall Point high above the River.

Thankful for the small escapes...