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I apologize for not posting anything much since spring. I had an accident involving complex damage to my left arm and spent a total of almost three months in hospitals. A brilliant surgeon repaired the damages that now permits me to reach above my head = These ops were at Swedish Hospital in Seattle, a Dr. Besemania.

This past summer has seen a surge of new interest in  the Columbia River and its tributaries.This fascinating waterway of more than 1240 miles in Canada and Washington State deserves all the attention it can receive about its waterway to the ocean.. I drove to a meeting this summer and enjoyed remembering the adventures of the pioneers and immigrants-- mine, too,  during my research to the entire length of the Columbia..

The salmon still ascend the river and its branch streams to spawn, a very unusual way to procreate  that literally is a story of the parent fish substituting their lives for their tiny offspring.  The magnificent and romantic waterway also has been a highway from east to west before pioneers were there.

Please note that 2013 saw the publication by Caxton Press, who purchased the rights to publish from Fulcrum revised version of  parts of The Columbia River. Most of the river is history that cannot change, of course, but about 60 pp of the 2013 version are updated to inform you where to see special events and places, spend our vacation times at parks and lodges, and where to learn more history.  The original 1991 Centennial Columbia River book occasionally has been listed as "out of print," a confusing matter for data bases.  The delightful story of the river is available in its update of 2013 in national and international bookstores and gift shops as before.  I am receiving letters and emails about lucky boat owners who have run the river all the way during vacation periods and at least one retiree "John", who just this summer has begun the adventure. has traversed the river from its Canadian roots almost to the .U.S. border this year, and will continue the trip in spring's more favorable weather period.

Greeting to you all, and I hope not to repeat my nasty, injurious fall of the past summer, a fall in my own home's bedroom where I hit and broke my humerus and other parts of my arm by hitting my four poster bed!!!   Author JoAnn Roe.  Please see www.joannroe.com  17 books and estimated 600 magazine articles. One book was selected for the nation's most prestigious honor.

THE COLORFUL WEST

In the back country places of he Northwest USA one finds individuals that reflect their solitary world. In my book, North Cascades Highway, lived a capable construction worker whose very anatomy cried out that he was capable, familiar with the rough forest, opinionated, and yet appealing.  Wxxxx was built like a forest lookout tower -- tall, angular, sparse, with a quizzical expression on his long face, his head topped by a Stetson. It was easy to believe one of his stories about his mule that fell into a mudhole so deep that it left him standing up.  He loped, not walked, on those long legs, and his language in and out of the mountains could blister a pine tree. But he was a master guide, conscientious, and eminently capable. One of his clients had been the Governor of Washington State.

The children of the remote mountain country grew up on horseback and their animals were part of their families, they believed. One family adopted an abandoned sandhill crane, boss of the farmyard ." so totally that he was dubbed "Nero."  When the family hitched up a team to a wagon, bound for a village to buy farm supplies, Nero went, too.  With a wing spread of seven feet he walked beside he wagon, flapping his giant wings to keep up. More than one terrorized oncoming team viewed with horror such an apparition and ran away in fright, wagon and all. 

It is this other world of the West that  lends color to early journalists' works, hopefully including my own.

San Juan Logging

January, 2017.:

In my book, San Juan Islands: Into the 21st Century, I mentioned  that the islands were more noted for marvelous fishing rather than having large future forests like the size of the one pictured near Bellingham, Washington, on the mainland. The islands basically were long gone mountain tops, not so hospitable for tree roots. Yet original settlers found an old Lummi Indian longhouse (a dwelling) that housed three generations of residents in a 100x20' structure made from old cedar trees.  A few sawmills existed, especially one at Thatcher Bay on the southwest side of Blakely Island that was considered the largest north of Seattle in the 1890s

The key assets of the Spencer Mill were the commercial workboats in the islands that made possible transportation of the lumber to markets and, even more, the lively streams that fed two natural lakes of the island and  provided adequate overflow into the Sound to create water power. A small village grew up around the resultant waterfall and mill that included a tiny, picturesque post office.  On January 30, 1965, on a dark and stormy night passing ferry passengers on the Sound cried, "Look at the huge waves of water coming at us, with trees and debris swirling in it!." 

The small dam on the lake above Thatcher Bay had broken from heavy rain, sending a torrent of water down the steep stream bed into the Bay. Gone were a few waterside structures, especially the destruction  of the post office into a twisted mess, plus one of the main old mill buildings. For a few years, the  waterfall continued to attract residents like my own family for impromptu showers after wading a shallow lake of sandy bottom.  The dam itself had been patched up adequately and still exists. An old photo from the Seattle newspaper hangs in my own cabin today.