Melting snow cover in high cascades was a predictable nutrient source for the Pacific Northwest. But old patterns are changing.
Trout Lake, Washington — At 8:38 PM, the sun dipped over the shoulder of Mount Adams, causing the temperature around the sacred stone circle to drop rapidly. People reached for jackets and blankets.
Celebrating the mysteries of the summer solstice here, deep in the Cascade Mountains of southwestern Washington, means thinking about more than just the darkness and light of the longest day of the year. The earth, the sky, and the alpine air seem to be united in this moment.
Kirk Thomas, a druid priest, turned his gaze to the top of the volcano as the colors of the night deepened from rosy to purple and the ritual was nearing its end.
he gave his blessing.
“May the snow always remain on the mountains,” he said.
Life, business, community and culture depend on the deep snow of this region of the Pacific Northwest.
Native Americans have built their livelihoods around seasonal harvesting and fishing for barracuda roots and huckleberries. White settlers later made the area a breadbasket for fruit, wheat, and cattle. The water that doesn’t fall from the sky comes from snowmelt and irrigation.
Easing patterns of temperature and precipitation span a network of river valleys that drain from Mount Adams and Mount Hood, separate volcanoes that rise about 50 miles south of the Oregon border. Both are massive, weather-shaping, snow-catching mountains that have fallen into seismic sleep for now.The 11,250-foot Hood was last active about 150 years ago. At 12,280 feet, Mount Adams hasn’t erupted in over 1000 years.
But that predictability has been shattered by climate change. When the snow will hit the plateau, when it will melt to feed the rivers that supply irrigation and drinking water, how much water will fall on the area in storms that torrent for hours, all of this. is more volatile.
“These volcanoes are the water towers of the region,” says Anders E. Carlson, director of the research group, the Oregon Glacier Institute. “Wine drinking from river valleys fed by glacial meltwater, salmon in rivers – all these are closely related to systems in equilibrium,” he added. disrupted that system.”
Last year, millions of locusts hatched during a record heat and drought season. An unusually wet and cool spring this year brought mold and other plant diseases that have plagued wheat and rye fields. The summit glacier had retreated last year, exposing brown spots. Shining white is back this summer.
Some residents believe desperate days lie ahead as climate forecasts point to an unfamiliar future. Some say local traditions of persistence and adaptation will find a way. Around the two volcanoes, people are finding different ways to cope with the new season of uncertainty.
In 1937, President Franklin D. Roosevelt came to the highlands of Portland, Oregon and built Timberline Lodge on 6,000-foot Mount Hood by the Federal Bureau of Labor Progress as an economic stimulus project during the Great Depression.
Massive wooden beams and stone walls tell the story of the work that gave rise to the ski lodge and where the building’s components were cut and carved: moist ancient forests and volcanic lava fields.
Tire chains from work trucks that slid down the pristine road during construction were reused as fireplace screens. They still hang in front of the fireplace.
Hood is famous for its incredible snow. Storms can fill lodges up to the roofline. Old photos show a car parked on top of a snowball with other cars buried in the snow below.
But the seasons are changing, said Jeff Kornstam, president and area operator of Timberline. Spring is especially difficult to predict.
He believes skiing in July and August and the economically significant arrival of competitive teams using the mountains for summer practice will follow in the near future.
But as snowfall patterns become more difficult to predict, other seasonal businesses, such as mountain biking in the summer, become increasingly important. Timberline will also install the first-ever automated snowmaking system to increase snow accumulation.
How we think about the seasons is, in some ways, like a lodge, a structure built with patterns and expectations. , alluded to it in a radio address from the lodge.
“I think we, as a country, are realizing that summer is not the only season for play,” he said.
Shelby Kaiser sat upright in the saddle of a 5-year-old American paint horse named Rosie, watching the cows herd and howl on the ramps as they herded onto the truck.
Rather than the usual 30 miles (30 miles) of horseback from the ranch, the cattle were trucked to the high-altitude pastures.
They were late too. Pastures near the ranch on the eastern slopes of the Cascade Mountains in Centerville, Washington, were overgrown in a wet spring. As the heat of summer intensifies, the risk of fire increases, so cattle were deployed as live lawn mowers to reduce the risk.
Life on the ranch is always a balancing act. How to keep the herd healthy and productive, when and where to commit or withdraw. Grit has been the currency at Kaiser’s place for five generations.
When Kaiser was in high school, her father Nate broke his leg on the first day of the fall roundup. As the truck sluggish up the mountain, Kaiser, 28, said, “It was a really bad deal. He had to have surgery, he had to stick a pin in it. I mean he needed rods and all sorts of things.” It is,” he said. “He told them to put it in their walking boots, and he tied it to the saddle with a jute bag,” she said.
After the cows were unloaded, Kaiser walked over to inspect the bulbous bluegrass, a wild plant that grows on the shoulder of the dirt road. It’s high in protein and I also love cows.
“It’s twice as tall as I’ve ever seen it,” she said, bending down and pulling a stalk of grass. “Last year was the shortest I can remember.”
next year?
she shrugged.
Even if Mount Adams remains shrouded in clouds, winter can bring a blanket of blue skies to the heart of the Trout Lake Valley. Storms sometimes turn and miss the valley. It may also turn around and hit even harder.
The ancient mysteries of earth and sky are still alive and well, said Druid Mr. Thomas.
He moved from Arizona to Washington in 2008 and opened Trout Lake Abbey with partner Cozen Sampson. They split up their former farm, with a Druid pagan practice on one side and a Zen Buddhist practice on the other, led by Mr. Sampson.
Thomas, 70, said he had a spiritual revelation that there is a goddess in the White Salmon River, which flows from Mount Adams at the edge of the monastery, and her name is Samona.
The story of Samona and the river, and how they represent the fragility of the earth, is part of what he tells visitors for his retreats and ceremonies.
“If the river stops flowing, there will be no goddess,” he said.
Pagans believe that the boundary between the everyday world and the deeper spiritual world is a hole, a boundary passage through which gods and goddesses of rivers, weather, and other manifestations of nature may pass. Rituals seek ways to thank the opposing entity and offer gifts so that they can return the favor.
During the summer solstice ceremony, Mr. Thomas slammed his wooden staff against the stone, squeezed his eyes, and searched the borderlands.
“Open the gate!” Mr. Thomas chanted. “Open the gates!”
The sun slid across the sky, illuminating the rest of the visible world.
“Pears for Your Heirs”
Randy Kiyokawa’s parents met and fell in love in 1942 during World War II in Tule Lake, California, where thousands of Japanese Americans were deported.
Chance encounters have helped shape the family’s outlook, he said – even in the midst of calamity, hope and possibility persist.
“You make the most of it,” he said.
Kiyokawa, 61, is a third-generation fruit grower in the Hood River Valley. The forested slopes below Mount Hood are softened by air circulating from the Columbia River. He walked along the orchard’s avenues and chatted casually with the workers.
“Comoestas?” he repeated.
He stopped and touched a leaf that looked like a caress.
Far more than growers of wheat and corn live by a monthly calendar, orchard owners have to look years into the future.
Kiyokawa Family Orchard’s largest crop, pears, can take up to 12 years to reach full production. Every decision forms an as yet unseen world. “A pear for the successor,” says Kiyokawa.
Some short-term seasonal patterns have changed. Herds of elk, due to their altered habitat, can roam far from their former grazing grounds and wreak great destruction on trees and bark.
Hail storms are becoming more severe and frequent. Nets can protect the most valuable crops like apples, but they don’t make economic sense for the orchard as a whole, Kiyokawa said.
“The question every year is, ‘How bad will the hail be?'”
“A place where I can talk to you”
Salmon is at the heart of the Yakama culture, dating back thousands of years to people who arrived around Mount Adams.
“Salmon stood up first and said, ‘I’ll provide it,'” said Kate Valdez, tribal historic preservation officer and member of the Kriquitat Band. That is why salmon is always given an honorable place on the table at any tribal feast.
The tribal commitment had consequences and consequences.
“Thanks largely to them, fish will return to this river,” said G. Thomas Tebb, director of the Columbia River Office at the Washington State Department of Ecology. “Even when the state Fish and Wildlife Service gave up selling salmon, the Yakama didn’t. Thank God they didn’t.”
Focusing on salmon means focusing on the cool waters salmon need in the streams and rivers that begin at Mount Adams on the western edge of the reservation. The tribe became pioneers in thinking about new ways to store water, create wetlands, and prevent erosion.
“It’s a comfort to see that mountain every day, a peaceful place, a place that can speak to you if you’ve lived in the area long enough to understand,” says a resident of the drier eastern slopes. Valdes, 46, said. A mountain that is home to the tribe’s current reservation.
She sees a collision course looming between climate change, with retreating mountain glaciers, and population growth downstream. Even if water supplies are tight, more households will come as farmers are replaced by second homes.
So, as always, keep an eye on what matters and move forward, she said.