2.1: Going to Stehekin
On Monday, June 15th, I left the Methow Valley and traveled to Stehekin, Washington. Here are early observations and reflections from the first stages of this trip.
The Great River: Columbia
Your power is turning our darkness to dawn
So roll on, Columbia, roll on
Woody Guthrie
On the banks of the Columbia River in North Central Washington, powerlines loom above ordered rows of apple trees and grape vines. Diagonal, vertical, a valley remade by thin lines. The river too becomes a line, a horizon. On the surface the Columbia looks motionless, her flow imperceptible. This languid river straddles the center of the valley, bisecting the tidy tiles of orchardry.
Hydropower and irrigation water are drawn from this great river, all throughout Washington State. This feeds the region’s growth and agriculture. With enough water, this is the ideal climate for apples.
I am looking into the valley where Chelan enters the Columbia. This is the land of the Chelan people. Downstream of here, the river is stoppered behind eight different dams: Bonneville, The Dalles, John Day, McNary, Priest Rapids, Wanapum, Rock Island, Rocky Reach. Upstream and damming the tributaries there are dozens more. Between dams, the river looks motionless. Yet inside the squat concrete dams, the water turns massive turbines and generates enormous amounts of electricity. One current transforms into another, powering lightbulbs, offices, microwaves and apple packing plants.
The scale of the Columbia River watershed and her hydropower generation is massive, nearly incomprehensible. The sheer size of one dam is overwhelming in person. Picturing the system that coordinates each concrete structure and kilowatt hour generates an abstract sense of scale. This view leaves many important small things unspoken. I’m interested in tracing the stories of the tributaries, the individuals and the water sources that feed into the larger story. I’m going to a small fraction of the Columbia River basin—one that is familiar, glacier fed, a bit easier to understand. To begin, I am getting on a boat.
The Long Lake: Tsi-laan
A settler named Ella Clark recorded this creation story from the Chelan nation: when Coyote came to the animal people along the Chelan River, he said to them, “I will send many salmon up your river if you will give me a nice young girl for my wife.” But the Chelan people refused. They thought it was not proper for a young girl to marry anyone as old as Coyote. So Coyote angrily blocked up the Canyon of Chelan River with huge rocks and thus made a waterfall. The water dammed up behind the rock and formed Lake Chelan. The salmon could never get past the waterfall. That is why there are no salmon in Lake Chelan to this day.”
I arrive on the Lake Chelan ferry dock for the 8:30 am boat to Stehekin. This ribbon of deep, cold water is 50 miles long and 1,485 feet deep at its lowest point – nearly 400 feet below sea level. The Lady Express motors northwest, beelining through the widest (2 miles) and narrowest (1/4 mile) sections of the lake. We quickly pass the agricultural communities and enter the reaches of undeveloped lakeshore. I scan the rocky cliffs for bighorn sheep but see none. Uplake, hiking trails and campgrounds dot the shoreline at long intervals.
Since the last ice age, when this lake is thought to have formed, this landscape has been changing. Lake Chelan was raised 21 feet in 1927 with the construction of the Lake Chelan Dam, a Chelan county hydropower project that provides Chelan and nearby communities with power. This area has some of the cheapest electricity rates in the country- residential rates are about 3¢ per kilowatt hour. For comparison, Seattle is around 11¢ per kWh, and New York City is 20¢ per kWh.
The level of the lake fluctuates seasonally as the Chelan County Public Utility District (PUD) makes room for spring runoff and allows water to pass through the turbines, spill into the tailrace, and enter the Columbia. During winter at the Stehekin end, low water levels expose mudflats that become snow covered. Spring warmth melts the snow and ice cradled in the mountains. The runoff raises the lake to its full green depth, making it sailboat-worthy by June. Nearly every summer afternoon a small crew headed by a man named Bob navigate a wooden sailboat called Ipsut around the head of the lake. Rough cliffs and forests loom high above. They tack back and forth, dodging stumps from days when the lake was lower, and tree trunks deposited by the Stehekin River.
The Wild River: Stehekin
Bob and Tammy live on the bank of the Stehekin River where it enters Lake Chelan. Just steps away from their living room, the river sings and flows. Three thousand cubic feet of June snowmelt glide by their house every second, refracting every possible shade of green.
This place becomes a passage for many things, and to live here is to be a listener. At night, rushing water rinses through dreams. During floods, stones knock against each other underwater. Every morning, hoots and chirps fill the air as all kinds of birds take wing above the river, using it as a passageway. Logs and sticks drift by and come to rest in the lake, building a web of wood on the delta. Wind settles down river and rustles the maple leaves. Sediment passes by. You can sense the geologic processes of erosion and deposition taking place, season after season. Bob and Tammy’s house is so close to the water you can close your eyes and hear precarity. In a geologic sense, this is an unlikely structure. So, to live here is to have a stake in the watershed, a willingness to live in the company of torrents, torpedoing logs and transient green water.
Bob and Tammy tell me their story of the October 2003 flood, when days of mountain snowfall and a rainstorm precipitated a 20,000 cfs flood that turned their home into an island and their yard into a kayak pool. As the lake filled up, it backed up towards their house, surrounding them with slow deep water. With three boys at home, they pulled propane tanks from the flood and tried to keep cars from floating away. The family watched as telephone pole height firs were wrenched out of the river and into the forest above their house.
One combination of weather events has the force to completely rearrange a dwelling place. Around Bob and Tammy’s, the 2003 flood stripped the beaches from the river banks and rearranged the rocks in the channel. Once, there was room for a parking lot between the river and their house. Now there is just a six-foot strip of grass and daisies. They know that the next flood could remake it all over again.
