EXPERIENCING THE ICE AGE FLOODS; PART I

**Few geological events stagger the mind and defy the imagination as much as do the Ice Age Floods of the Pacific Northwest. To say they were large is inadequate by any standard. Words like enormous or gigantic or colossal grossly understate the reality. These several floods toward the end of America’s last ice age, some 15,000 to 20,000 years ago as geologists estimate, may be the most cataclysmic events ever to occur in the drainage of the Columbia River since the fiery formation of the earth’s surface itself. To start with, try to picture a “flash flood” roughly twice the height of the Washington Monument and fed by 500 cubic miles of undammed water.

**During the reoccurring advances of the Cordilleran Ice Sheet which pushed across western Canada and southward, one of the lobes of ice in western Montana repeatedly blocked a huge drainage thus forming and filling a massive lake. Periodically, and for reasons still not completely understood, this great dam of ice failed abruptly and released the impounded waters which immediately began to seek the sea 600 miles away and nearly 4,000 feet lower in elevation. This towering wall of water, at times nearly a thousand feet high and sometimes moving at nearly one hundred miles an hour, took only a few days to empty itself into the Pacific Ocean. As it raced out of Montana, across Idaho, through eastern Washington, and down what is now called the Columbia Gorge, it left chaos and destruction on a scale so wide and massive that it has taken over two hundred years to even recognize and confirm it. This would have been an astounding phenomenon had it happened only once, but in fact, it reoccurred multiple times, perhaps hundreds of times, and along its path the face of the earth was changed in many remarkable ways.

**Churning along with unbelievable power, the floodwaters scoured away surface lands and soils in eastern Washington down to (and into) the bedrock lava, created the channeled scablands, formed several immense temporary lakes, gouged out the gorge, and deposited vast quantities of rock, gravel, and sand not only along its path but also as far as sixty miles out to sea. For over half a century most leading scientists rejected and even ridiculed the theories and specific proofs one rebel geologist, J Harlan Bretz, began to place before them as simply being impossible. It took scores of years, a host of evidences, and some reluctant on-site investigation by many others to even begin confirming the scope and scale of the floods. To top off the list of incomprehensible characteristics of these mighty torrents, remember that each flood lasted but two or three days, perhaps, and in a week or so the waters which passed any given point had quickly reached the Pacific!

**Even today, although scores of individual scientific papers have been published, there are only a few books (and you can count the best of them on one hand!) for the common reader to use in grasping at the magnitude and proportion of what are now recognized as the most enormous single catastrophic events anywhere ever in North America. Some titles are Glacial Lake Missoula, Cataclysms on the Columbia, and Bretz’s Flood, but the best of all is On the Trail of the Ice Age Floods by Bruce Bjornstad, a Senior Research Scientist at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratories in Richland, Washington where my son David also works. As a geologist /hydrogeologist, Bruce has studied every aspect of the Ice Age Floods since 1980 and regularly publishes, lectures, and leads field trips concerning his favorite avocation.

**Soon I will be describing a flight which the three of us shared over some of the most dramatic features of the channeled scablands and coulees between Moses Lake and the Grand Coulee Dam on the Columbia River. David was our pilot; Bruce was our guide and mentor. I was the supercargo and had a marvelous time seeing and realizing the extent, size, and grandeur of these historic flood features. Stay tuned!

CELEBRATING OUR RED, WHITE, AND BLUE

Every fall we do a delicate dance about when to harvest the grapes. We want to get to them before the starlings do, but we would like for them to stay on the vine until as long as possible for the sweetness to develop. Everything timewise has been late this year, and it was too hard to wait until the first frost which finally came this morning.

The red grapes are a variety called Canadace. This is a small champagne grape and it is wonderfully sweet when fully ripe. I like the glow they display when the sun shines through them.

The "white" grape is similiar. A champagne type, seedless, and also sugary sweet. It too is quite small compared to the giant tasteless grapes the markets fly in from South America, but it is bursting with flavor.

Our blue grape is the traditional American favorite, the Concord. Plump and savory, it always gets rendered for the juice which we like to have on hand for a base for dinner beveraages and occasionally for use in communion when traveling or camping. The seeds make this a challenge to eat (unless a spit cup is in hand) so canning is our method of extending the concords.

The harvest often fills up the yard cart a couple of times. Here is some of the yield on the way to the house. Looks like a few asian pears hitched a ride too. Most of the grapes went home with our harvesters (daughter and granddaughters) this year and were shared with friends and even showed up at a church potluck, so we feel the vintage of '08 went to good causes. Maybe you'll be around for '09?

FISHIN' WITH WILEY.

**I’m retelling this old favorite fishin’ tale by request. From time to time fellas like to share their exploits and braggin’ on fishin’ events seems to be a popular and manly sport in its own right. One nice thing about Alaskan fishin’ stories is that they are often true, and this is one of my best. This experience was shared with my friend Wiley who was then a first time visitor to Alaska and very eager to go salmon fishin’. I think he hit up everybody he met looking’ for someone with a boat and a little free time. Before long, he managed to arrange two or three invitations but if memory serves, I was the one with two or three hours available that afternoon and the willingness to haul a stranger out to where he could try his luck. I didn’t mind, and my boat was ready to go.
**After we picked up a package of herring, we launched at Auke Bay. It only took twenty minutes or so to reach the spot I favored at the time - Aaron Island. Wiley was full of questions. From the moment I had picked him up until it was time to rig our poles he had not ceased seeking instruction and hot tips for landing a big fish. He wanted to know everything at once about the fish and the techniques to use and when and how to set the hook. Wiley was just like a ten-year-old kid on his first ever outing, and I, of course, played the part of the “local expert”. We talked about what folk had been catching during the past couple of weeks and the different kinds of fish he might hope to land. He was the most eager guy I had ever guided.
**The plan was to troll slowly along the curve of an underwater ledge at the north tip of the island where bait fish often gathered and where the sport fish liked to feed. I knew the tide was just right and the spot had been hot for a week or so. I put on my smuggest manner and prepared Wiley’s rod and reel and showed him how to rig the terminal tackle. He had expected we would cut the bait into tiny pieces and was surprised when we used an entire herring as a lure. I talked him through the steps of placing the weight and bait in the water and pulling out about thirty long pulls of line from the reel. As he did this, I remember Wiley asked how long it might take to get a strike. I can’t be sure exactly what answer I gave him, but I know I was feeding his eagerness and I did think we could get at least one salmon there that afternoon. In any case Wiley was ready and so keyed up I wasn’t sure what would happen if he did hook a fish..
**Before I could begin to ready my own rod Wiley got a strike! He let out a whoop that could have been heard a mile away and leaped to his feet. That wasn’t a good idea and it took a stern order to get him to sit back down. His fish was on well , and it was strong and determined to head for Skagway. The pole bent double, and Wiley was wild with questions of what to do as his fish zinged left and right. Gradually I talked him along step by step until in less than ten minutes he had a big fish in the boat. Examination revealed he had caught a husky king salmon which turned out to weigh twenty-eight pounds. Wiley was ecstatic! He celebrated with abandon, praising the fish and me and the whole Alaskan experience. He relived every moment and every thought and action and told me over and over again what he had just done and described the fish to me as though I was blind and deaf. I never saw a man so excited at catching a salmon. I was really feeling smug then ‘cause I actually was a super guide in his eyes.
**Things finally settled down and we caught our breath and prepared to fish a little more with the time we had left. I helped him get his gear back in the water and rigged my own pole. Somewhere along the way, while still talking about “The Fish” I pointed out that its flesh was red and the most sought after salmon of all the several kinds. I also told Wiley that I liked king salmon but I preferred to catch white fleshed kings because I thought they turned out better on the Bar-B-Q. At last, with both of our lines in the water and just coming up over the reef again, Wiley said something about it being “my turn” now to catch a fish. I made some remark about this being his trip and said I’d rather watch him catch another. Wiley shot right back that he’d like for me to catch my white king anyway. “We’ll see”, I told him, and within a dozen heartbeats I had a strike.
**Right away I could tell it was a dandy. I even had to head the boat out toward the deep water to play the fish away from the rocks edging the island. As the battle continued, I realized Wiley was loudly telling me how to play and land the fish! He was a powerful encourager too and handled the net so well we soon this fish aboard and lying beside his earlier salmon. They looked like twins! We were both pleased that the fish were absolutely identical in size and appearance and I was as astounded as Wiley when I checked and found the second salmon was a white fleshed king. The final stunning fact was that it also weighed in at twenty-eight pounds. Wiley thought I was some kind of salmon fishing genius, and it was really hard to keep up the smug “it-happens-every-day” role I was playing. Truth is, I was as surprised as Wiley was, but I never did let on to him how little I actually knew.
**On every subsequent visit to Juneau, Wiley wanted us to repeat the success of this fishing trip, and I know he tried with several other fishermen. He sure wanted me to take him out again, and I did a couple of times, but we never again had the success of the day we caught a awesome pair of kings.! A special part of this memory was later in hearing Wiley tell his version of that outing while I silently added "the rest of the story" in my own mind. And ya know what?; he was still excited about catching that special red and white twins that day.

RANDY AND JOHNNIE

**Here is a precious couple who are also among the many friends we have made over the years. Randy and JohnnieLu appeared in our lives when the first Together For Togo event was conceived here in 1994. Mission teams and their individual sponsors arrived from all points of the compass to consider how to best cooperate in planting churches in Togo, West Africa. This pair came and announced their desire to be "special parents" to the entire team, and they did a wonderful job of it. With that simple offer they became friends to folk all over the USA.
**Many times they have provided housing to us or to one of our kids or friends in their mid-west home. Many times they have provided valuable information or contacts or encouragement to various church projects that come along. Many times they have provided financial support or personal manpower as various opportunities have arisen and more than once they have been the key players in providing massive and sometimes amazing special favors in helping move unusual goods to unusual places around the globe. Such friends are often known as angels elsewhere!
**Randy flies big-body aircraft around the world for a major "air package carrier" and is staring retirement in the face when the five year extension the FAA recently granted expires. Johnnie is and all-time champion encourager to her universe of friends. Their plans are pointed forward to settling in a major western state where there is plenty of sky and wide open spaces. To that end a little acreage has been purchased and their thinking now centers around what kind of home/garage/shop buildings to construct. They plan to dwell out where the deer and the antelope play, where never is heard a discouraging word... Well, you get the idea.
**Fun, loving, caring, involved, and widely connected, these are folk to cherish and enjoy at every opportunity. This weekend, they dropped by Vancouver in their motor home after having visited a parent in the Puget Sound area. We would have liked for them to stay a month, but are grateful for even the few days they were able to be here. We wish them safe travels back home and will look forward to our next visit wherever or whenever it will be. May it be soon!