A few weeks back we took a drive to the next county where we used to live and noticed
that there was now a raised walking dike in the Skamokawa (sounds like: skaw-moc-aw-way – the Name of the historic Indian Chief
of this region) Game Refuge there. So this morning we decided to go back
and take a walk along the mighty Columbia River. The walking area used to be Hornstra's Dairy Farm before the State stole the land from the farmers in the 1970's and designated it to become a Game Refuge. We didn’t see any animals at all
today, probably because they know that the greedy river is eroding the
shoreline away and creeping in:
This watery area used to be filled with a pretty white ranch-style farmhouse
surrounded by a large dairy farm. Today it is filled with the overflow of the
turbulent Columbia River that rushes by in the fore. And a tug boat plodded
down the river as we leisurely walked upriver …
Tug on the Columbia River
Game Refuge Walk
I have a real phobia of water, so I was not happy to see that the
river seepage was so close at hand:
The River seriously eroded the road away and is creeping in. The school bus used to drive right there.
The county road used to run by the river where water now runs. The
Columbia River ate the road away a few years back, so the Game Refuge cannot be
visited in one long continuous drive anymore …
The road is no longer connected. To get to the road where the car sits, we would have to backtrack back to our 4x and backtrack down the road to the main highway and then drive down the highway another 15 minutes to come in at the other end: a half hour trip to get to where we are now from the other end; I hope that wasn’t too confusing.
After I saw how the river was eating more and more land away, I was nervous the entire walk. The Columbia River is a dangerous
river and it is a greedy river. Today was the only time I will ever walk that
River Walk again. The treacherous river was just too close for my comfort:
On the way back to the pickup, I almost stepped on a fuzzy-wuzzy
caterpillar …
It is kinda hard to determine what its stripes are trying to
convey. Lore has it that if the rusty stripe is wide, winter will be mild; but
if the black is more than the rust, winter will be more severe. To me, it
appears to be pretty much “even-steven”, so I’m
going to hazard a guess that winter will soon end and we can start getting
sufficient sunshine and warmth to chase the gray doldrums away ;-)
