There is an old saying that goes: "Once the last tree is cut down and the land poisoned, you will find that you cannot eat your money." Before travelling to Oregon, the significance of the statement had never really been brought home to me.
Tree-hugging has never really been the greatest of my concerns, but people in this part of the US express their fears for the environment liberally and with some unease. It goes without saying then that President Bush is not the most popular man in these parts.
Even in Oregon's largest city, Portland (in the top five of "most livable cities in the US"), there is a progressive political culture and a civic pride that, I'm informed, isn't found on the east coast. Portlanders care as much for their city as they do for the spectacular countryside surrounding it. Height restrictions have been set on buildings downtown and views of the surrounding peaks are always visible, always there for the sports enthusiasts, walkers and, of course, tree-huggers. The pace of life seems casual yet defined, work and leisure distinctly separate. In one of the largest bookstores in the world, Powell's, coffee-drinking bookworms can be found at all hours of the day and night.
The laid-back, welcoming, liberal attitude was summed up by a comedian here: "Yeah, Portland. You can't throw a rock in that place without hitting a hippy or a strip bar."
The demand for strip bars has waned in the sleepy little town of Astoria, perched right on the mouth of the Columbia River as it heaves out into the Pacific. With its lovingly restored and precipitously poised 19th-century wooden homes up on the hills, the town is like San Francisco in miniature, or something from the pages of Jack London.
Yet there is also an air of better days. Along the waterfront, decaying wooden stilts that once supported busy canneries protrude from the water like bones, adding a decadent beauty to the charm of the town. They also serve as a constant reminder that the salmon no longer run here in droves, and the thriving communities of Chinese and Scandinavians who harvested the salmon and frequented those busy strip bars have moved on. The sight of the logging trucks coming down from the hills and the smell of timber mills on the road are signs that, unless something is done, the time when the last tree is cut down may not be all that far away.
The Oregonians' obsession with their environment, affectionately referred to as "she", is coupled with a related obsession: Lewis and Clark, the men who made this end of the American dream possible. Every few miles along the roadside, there are signs that depict two pioneers pointing out into the wilderness. Anyone you talk to is guaranteed to know the in-depth tale of these men who opened up the west.
When President Jefferson took the oath of office in 1801, his intentions may appear to have been the polar opposite of the current president. At the time, the nation had more than five million people within its boundaries, stretching from the Atlantic in the east to the Mississippi in the west, and from the Great Lakes in the north to near the Gulf of Mexico in the south. However, the US could only have become the powerful nation it is now by extending westward and winning the race against the British, Russians and French to discover an overland route by river to the Pacific. The French problem was dealt with by the US's "purchase" of New Orleans and the entire Louisiana territory for the paltry sum of $15 million (three cents an acre). As for the other territories, the race was on.
Despite Jefferson's extensive library and passionate enlightenment, , he shared the idea of the "Wild West" as a terra incognita dominated by woolly mammoths, Peruvian llamas, mountains of salt and even Welsh-speaking Indians among the tribes.
The daunting task of charting the territory and discovering the river route was assigned to Jefferson's protΘgΘ and personal secretary, the 27-year-old Capt Meriwether Lewis, who, although an avid pioneer, had no previous experience in cartography, Indian languages or botany. Lewis in turn sought the companionship of his close friend, Lieut William Clark and, with an entourage of 40, they set out in 1803 from St Louis, Missouri, covering some 8,000 miles before fetching up at a tiny cove directly opposite the present town of Astoria in the harsh November of 1805.
The mood communicated by the Lewis and Clark journals at this point of their travels is one of abject misery rather than elation at the completion of their journey. Pinned down for more than a week in the same cove by raging storms, erratic tides and incessant rain, and with their clothes rotting on their bodies, the "Corps of Discovery", as they came to be called, were saved by the Clatsop Indians, who came across the estuary with apparent ease, bringing roots and fish.
The previous few months had seen the Corps conquer the Rockies, live off horse and dog meat, trade almost everything they possessed to the natives for food or horses, and endure the ravages of fleas, dysentery and syphilis. The real blow, however, was the discovery that no all-water route existed, nor anything remotely like it. With winter at its cruellest, the decision was made to build a camp among the Clatsop Indians and, hopefully, meet a passing ship that would take the pioneers home.
No ship came, and the Corps, having survived on a diet of roots and fish for the most part (dogs and elk when they were lucky), had to make the gruelling return journey over land. The only worthwhile commodity they could bring back from the Pacific was salt. That, and the claim to the west, which was now fully mapped.
Nowadays, modern guides look almost on the brink of tears as they follow some of the that Lewis and Clark were on. This is where they camped on such and such a date, we are told. We're pretty sure that Clark stood right here when he saw the Pacific for the first time, they say. This is where they found the beached whale and that memorial there is close to the spot where they made the salt. Some folk here can even point to plants and flowers and tell you that this is the one that cured Lewis's bowel problems. Then there are the recreations.
In the heart of the forest in Clatsop, for example, stands a fort that has been carefully crafted to the exact design of the one the Corps spent the winter in. Each year, visitors flock to the spot and watch devotees dressed in traditional pioneer clothing make candles, cook, prepare "jerky" and all the other activities Lewis and Clark were involved in over that terrible winter.
With the bicentenary now approaching, there are hundreds building canoes and boats to attempt the same journey up the Missouri, over the Rockies and on to the Columbia River mouth. Some people will even have dogs named Lewis and Clark hanging out of the sides of their boats. And while these enthusiasts may get a feel for the difficulty of the terrain the Corps had to deal with, it's doubtful whether they'll be attacked by bears or get a shot at an elk.
That it was the land (with its abundance of herbs, plants and sometimes game) as well as the natives that saved the lives of the Corps is ironic, when so little regard for the virgin beauty they must have witnessed is now evident - at least on the part of the current administration.
"You have to imagine how this all looked when Lewis and Clark got here," is the most oft-repeated line, a request loaded as much with anger as with adoration for the splendour that remains. In the areas that are still relatively unspoilt, you don't need to rely on the imagination to conjure up the past. Being woken in Astoria at dawn by the barking of sea-lions has an incredibly stirring effect when the din of traffic is your usual wake-up call. And looking into the eyes of a white-tailed deer when it's not behind bars makes you realise how lucky the local inhabitants are.
However, 18 dams now block the Columbia River and the old-growth forest is all but gone. Similarly, the natives exist now simply in name: Clatsop County, the village of Chinook, and the Chinook salmon. Some areas on the river, such as the awe-inspiring Columbia Gorge, are designated national scenic areas and saved for good; others are maybe less secure as national parks.
Whether President Bush has plans to preserve more areas is doubtful, since Bush, as one man put it, "is more concerned with General Motors than general welfare". Little wonder that people here are more fond of hugging their trees than their presidents.