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throughout the Northwest, people are beginning to experiment, removing
dikes and fill, allowing the tides to reclaim the lowlands And, here and there,
it appears, detritus accumulates once again - the native plants, the native
animals gradually return. These dynamic wet lands have the potential to heal
Which is fortunate. For generations, we have underestimated their ecological
importance, misunderstood their vital role as habitat, viewed them more as a
damp nuisance than as valuable resources unto themselves. Maybe, just
maybe, by their very resilience, these environments will give us a second
chance.
I Mat
A good, basic plant identification guide to the Northwest's wetland
plants is Fred Weinmann et al., 1984, Wetland Plants of the Pacific
Northwest, Seattle: U S. Army Corps of Engineers. I have several things
in-press on the Native American management of wetlands - two of these
will appear in P. Hirt and D. Goble (eds.) Northwest Lands and Peoples:
An Environmental History Anthology and D. Deur and N.J. Turner (eds.)
Keeping it Living: Traditional Plant Cultivation and Management on the
Northwest Coast, both to be published, barring disasters, by the
University of Washington Press. The South Slough National Estuarine
Reserve, in Charleston, Oregon, is actively researching the effects of
salt marsh restoration efforts on the Oregon coast.
Winter again. I hunker back down into the damp season. Short gray
days give way to long black nights while south winds rattle,
unrelenting, at the door. (Here at the door: water will find its way
through every unsealed seam, every last caulk-less crevice.) Wild surf
yanks up kelp, the snaking Nereocystis, bullwhip with bulbous tip, and
hurls it high on the beach amidst clots of yellow-white foam. Overhead,
east-facing seagulls zip northward in an involuntary, tumbling
migration AND THERE IS THE RAIN. Pounding, drizzling, or
intermittent. Showering, driving, pouring. Drenching. Stinging the
face as it is blown hard and horizontal. (After a few generations on
this wet west coast, locals have generated many words for the rain. Good,
functional terms, metaphorical and meteorological, categorizing
the force and frequency of each rain, the size, velocity, and
variability of each drop. Like Eskimo words for snow. It's
"hammering." It's "spitting." It's "misting." Best put on a proper
coat.)
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And by all means, wear some waterproof shoes. Mother wasn't kidding.
A remarkably big chunk of this town sits on soggy spruce bogs, seasonal
wetlands that have been filled and drained to make way for roads, shops,
and shingled, faux-rustic micro-mansions. Not only do we live in a very
wet land - we also live in wetlands. This time of year the water table
pokes up above the surface to remind us. Puddles and impromptu creeks;
backyards ponded up so deep you could stock them with largemouth bass.
The tourists can fish there for a fee until things dry out. Sometime
next June, maybe.
In their natural condition, though, wetlands are something to behold.
Each wetland is a little different from the next, but they all share
some distinctive characteristics.
It should come as no surprise that
they are, by most technical definitions, wet; they are covered with
urface water for several days or weeks, cumulatively, out of the year.
Plants are different there - long periods of inundation would kill most
terrestrial plants, but wetland plants are specially adapted, each
species capable of being submerged for days, weeks, even months. Soils,
too, are perpetually soggy; while ordinary forests soils are deep and
rusty orange, wetland soils are often "anaerobic" with so little oxygen
that organic debris rots very slowly, clays accumulate, and soil colors
turn gray or black. (Perhaps this sounds familiar?)
Some of the most impressive wetlands in our region are found at the
ouths of rivers and streams. Here, the daily rising and falling of the tides
creates a unique assortment of wetland communities, well
suited to the daily movements of tidal waters. Down by the mouth, where
salt water mixes with fresh, there are green and grassy tidal fiats,
"salt marshes," lining the shoreline. Upstream, incoming tides back-up
downstream flow, twice daily, creating one of those textbook Oddities of
Nature: the freshwater tidal wetland. In all of these tidal wetlands we
find a complex circuitry of meandering channels, a tangle of still
waters tucked between rushing streams and churning sea.
These Northwestern coastal marshes are among the most productive lands
on the face of the Earth, lush green intertidal meadows, producing more
organic carbon per year, per square foot, than do our forests, farms, or
fields. And at the root of this pronounced productivity we find vast
piles of rotting gunk. Yes indeed: organic debris is key, carried there
by water, tumbling down streams, or churned up and tossed there by ocean
waves. Leaves, seaweed, dead organisms of all descriptions, algae -
diverse and decomposing things are carried to the slow, calm waters at
the river's mouth. There, stalled in backwater stillness, this stuff
accumulates into rotting masses, termed "detritus" by in-the-know
enthusiasts of rotting debris. Roughly a quarter of the organic
material that enters the slow tidal backwaters is carried to the high
tide mark in the form of detritus, producing long winding lines of
high-tide junk. There, consumed by an assortment of "decomposers" -
bacteria, insects, a host of wiggling invertebrate critters - this
material serves as the foundation of a mighty food chain, feeding fish
and birds, indirectly feeding those creatures by whom birds and fish are
eaten. No doubt about it, salt marshes are essential to the salmon.
Here, at the fringes of the salt marsh, salmon feed on the
super-abundant populations of decomposers as they migrate, gathering in
the slow-moving and diluted salty water, adjusting to the changing
salinity, fattening themselves for the ocean or river journey ahead.
Go, have a look in-between rain storms, where the detrital crud clings
to the uniquely adapted marsh plants - the fleshy succulent stems of
Salicomia and Seaside Plantain, the purple daisy-like Aster flower and
the yellow disk of "Brass Buttons," the Saltweed with leaves glistening
with extruded salts, the sharp grass blades and dangling spikelets of
Slough and Lyngbei's Sedge. Though Northwest marshes have taken much
abuse in recent years, there are still some fine coastal marshes to be
seen.
The native peoples of this coast knew that these marshes were important
places. On the shores of the lower Columbia, where silts and detritus
amass, freshwater intertidal marshes foster the growth of wapato,
Sagittaria latifolia, with leaves of arrowhead shape, small white
flowers, and tuberous roots. These roots, edible and tasty, were of
tremendous importance to the Chinookan peoples who lived along this
River. Villages were intentionally located near wapato patches and the
harvest of wapato was a major social event. On the ocean coast,
rapidly-growing patches of such plants as the slough (or "basket") sedge,
Carex obnupta were harvested for basket weaving materials. But among all of
the practices that made use of the tidal marsh's awesome productivity, none
was as sophisticated as the cultivation of two marsh plants - the Pacific
silverweed (Potentilla anserina ssp. Pacifica) - a plant with buttercup flower
and symmetrically placed rose-like leaves) and the springbank clover
(Trifolium wormskjioldii) a small clover with purple flowers and long oval
leaves). These two plants grow naturally in the narrow band where detritus
gathers deep, ground-zero in terms of marsh productivity. And both have
edible roots, which don't taste half bad if you know the right recipes or the
right times to harvest. Over the years, the peoples of the Northwest coast,
particularly in British Columbia, learned to enhance the productivity of these
edible plants. They would weed out competing plants, and pile up detritus on
their root grounds. In some cases they would even transplant rootlets and
build "raised beds", rock or log structures that expanded plots of these plants
into the muddy or rocky tidal fiats below. There are still a handful of Native
people alive today who can recall, vaguely, when entire tidal fiats were being
managed in this way. And while such intensive gardening may not have been
widespread on the northern Oregon coast, it is still quite clear that these
hyper-productive plants were of much value to local tribes. They were the
"yetska" roots, so prominent in Tillamook tales. And they were prominent in
the placenames - the Tillamook name for Cannon Beach refers to the tide flats
around the mouth of Ekola Creek The term was Neshyetskawin, "place with
lots of Potentilla." a good place to venture into the wetlands, gather roots, and
eat. Since the arrival of our own peoples on this coast, edible marsh roots
have gone out of style. Not recognizing the potential and productivity of the
natural marsh, settlers were eager to dike, fill, and drain wetlands. The vast
majority of Oregon's ancestral salt marshes are now buried below cow
pastures, parking lots, and buildings (Downtown Cannon Beach, like many
of our coastal towns, is built atop fill, dumped there to carve construction sites
out of the tidal marsh.) The salt marshes that exist today, only 11 square
miles of them in the State, are largely new wetlands, built up atop silts
deposited on old mudflats in the last hundred years, silts swept off of ragged
logged hillslopes and deposited in tidal backwaters downstream. Dig down
below these marshes and you are likely to find - not the archaeological traces
of ancient root grounds - but turn-of-the-century clam fiats, covered in wood
chips, milled lumber, and remnant fragments of rusty old bolts. Old marshes
can return, though, like a phoenix from the swamp. Here and there,
All political parties die at last of swallowing their own lies.
John Arbuthnot
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-1999 Cannon Beach Magazine -
NO W IN
PRODUCTION!
EST, DISTRIBUTION
75,000
LOCALLY
45,000
OUT OF THE AREA
Official Information
Guide & Fulfillment Piece
Cannon Beach
Chamber of Commerce
First come - First served
DISPLAY
ADVERTISING SALES
12/1/98-2/1/98
- F O R S A M P L E & A D R E S E R V A T IO N D E T A IL S -
Coast Graphic Arts • (503) 436-0721
You can fool all of the people all of the time if the advertising
is right and the budget is big enough. Joseph E. Levine
Salinger
Conf,Quei fro « p a y
4
they parted it was not as friends. When asked how
her book was coming she said fine. We didn't press
the subject. She stayed about a month and then
returned to her home and children in California.
Several weeks later an e-mail said she was coming
back. By this time we felt that serious questions
about her writing were allowed, and asked if it was
possible to read parts of it. Writers often let people
do that to get a different perspective on their words.
Ms. Maynard said no, we couldn't read it, but she
would be happy to read it to us. So that is how we
ended up in a condo on the ocean listening to a 44
year old woman tell her story of the 18 year old girl
who lived with one of the gods of American
literature. She reads in a rapid matter of fact tone, it
is not theatrical. The words are dramatic in what
they are saying, not how they are said. Ms.
Maynard is slim, with short dark hair, she sits in
front of a computer, barefooted and intense,
wrapping and unwrapping her body around the
chair. Her eyes and mouth work together separately
from the rest of her body and her surroundings. The
words come steadily, as if by gravity, they pour out.
The story is her life, but she knows the reader wants
the Salinger story, and she begins her narrative by
addressing the relationship. It is odd to hear her talk
of Salinger as Jerry. There is so little information
available about Salinger, he hasn't published in
decades, he gives no interviews except to the most
unlikely folks, like a high school newspaper reporter
several years back. So, for any admirer of
Salinger's work, this was a rare moment. As Ms.
Maynard reads the image of the elusive Salinger
clears a bit. He becomes more flesh. You can hear
his voice, you can see the human being. That seems
to be the problem for some people. Salinger has
over the years with his hermit-like life built a mystery
around himself. Now here is someone telling the
world "who done it." Once you know how a
magician performs an illusion, the magic is gone,
just the craft remains. The Catcher in the Rye.
Franny & Zooey. Raise High the Roof Beam
Carpenter and Seymour an Introduction and Nine
Stories invoke in countless readers a magic voice, a
uniquely American voice. Salinger's words also
often bring thoughts of hopelessness, pain,
depression, suicide; but still they compel the reader
on, and bring him back again to re-read and re-read.
It effected Mark David Chapman to such a degree
that when he was sentenced to prison for the murder
of John Lennon, he quoted from The Catcher in the
Rye as a defense of his actions. Mr. Salinger is now
in his late seventies, and has recently granted
permission to a small press to print this first
published work in decades; it is supposed to be
printed this spring, but Amazon.com is already
selling them for almost $30 each.
As Ms. Maynard reads his voice comes out of her,
"Joyce, why are you doing this?" It is a good
question. The cynics will say, "It's the money,
stupid," and yes, anything about Salinger is
guaranteed to sell, and something so intimate will sell
to the masses. The pragmatic will s a y , f o r the
record, it's history, it needs to be told." The
compassionate will say, "She needs to deal with it, it
is her way of healing, bringing closure." What does
Ms. Maynard say? Well, great deal. Her words
seem honest, she doesn't demean or slander, she
doesn't point out in grisly detail the feet of clay of
this literary saint. She tells her story, and she tells it
well. As Salinger noted the woman can write. Her
book will soon find its place on that small shelf that
holds the slim volumes that make up the little we
know about one of our most famous writers, and it
will cause even more controversy than it already has,
by the time it gets there. But the impact it has on
those who read it will never compare to the feelings it
invoked on us as it tumbled out of the mouth of this
fragile woman as we sat alone by the sea, and we
still carry it inside somewhere. When we thought
about writing this, we asked Ms. Maynard her
thoughts. It seemed to pass a cloud of doubt over
her features, but she said, no problem, if you get the
facts right. We wrote a draft, called her and read
what we had. She clarified and gave advice &
criticism, and ask that we send a copy to her
publisher. We said fine. Then came the question,
do we publish it? And why. We had to write it, it
was impossible not to. No doubt it would cause the
hits to go up on our web site, any reference to
Salinger will, but isn't it a bit tabloid-like for the
Upper Left Edge? We were recently praised for
being one of the few "Monica Free Papers" left in
America. Our focus has always tried to be on other
parts of the human dance. Does this story become
exploitation of relationships, Ms. Maynard's intimate
one with Salinger and our social one with Ms.
Maynard? The one compelling thought that seems to
make this a story that belongs here rather than People
magazine, or the Star, is that it is about writers.
Writers write, they write about passion, imagination,
life, but mostly about themselves and their
relationship to their world. And they share their art
with the rest of their world. Just as painters paint
pictures of their lovers, writers write about them, it is
impossible to stop them. It is impossible for them to
stop themselves. The question is: do you publish,
do you share yourself with the rest of the world?
Ms. Maynard's decision was yes. It's her story. All
Mr. Salinger can ask is that she gets the facts right.
And this is our story. We have seen with different
eyes a glimpse of a writer who has had a profound
effect on many people's lives including our own.
We have listened to fresh words from a familiar
voice. It is difficult to keep that to oneself. When a
friend asks "So what ya been doing lately"? Do you
say, "Not much", and let it go? When you publish a
newspaper that is not an acceptable answer. So, if
you are reading this we've obviously made the
decision. The arguments arc many, both ways, and
the decision will be made by your beloved editor
alone. It is written with respect and appreciation for
those who write. If that doesn't count, have your
lawyers call our lawyers.
This piece was written last spring and appeared last
month on our website.
Ms. Maynard’s book is called At Home in the
World, and was published by Picador. It is available
through her website which you can reach through
www.uppcrlcftedge.com.
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