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Pieces
of a life
Peter Huhtala’s memoir
recounts growing up in
Astoria, the battle over LNG
By MARGARET MINNICK
FOR COAST WEEKEND
‘I
t was absolutely precious to grow
up in Astoria,” Peter Huhtala said.
“The unique isolation that Astoria
had going for it was really neat, and it still
is … I felt that the ocean had my back and
that the forests went on and on.”
Huhtala’s new memoir, “Whispered
Echoes: Who speaks for those without a
say?,” is a collection of stories from vari-
ous periods of his life, spanning from his
childhood in Astoria, to his hitchhiking
travels in the late 1970s, to his time as a
Clatsop County Commissioner.
The memories came to him every
morning during three months last fall,
Huhtala said, and he wrote them down
each day. They are pieces of his life that he
wanted to share, both to entertain and to
inspire others to share their own stories.
The grandson of Finnish immigrants,
Huhtala grew up on Astoria’s South Slope
in two houses that his father built. As a
child, he explored the woods surrounding
Tapiola Creek and went fi shing with his
grandfather on the Columbia River.
One of the stories in his memoir
recounts a fi shing trip to a Columbia
River island near Westport. While fi sh-
ing for spring Chinook from the island’s
beach, young Huhtala gets a 30-pounder
on his line. The neighboring group of fi sh-
ers doesn’t reel in their gear — a breach of
beach-fi shing etiquette — and Huhtala’s
grandfather confronts the group, who soon
comply. The fi sh is landed after a more-
than-20-minute struggle.
In another story, young Huhtala fash-
ions a raft from logs and planks that
washed ashore at Youngs Bay near Smith
Peter Huhtala, an Astoria native and Reiki practitionary who recently published a
memoir, ‘Whispered Echoes.’
Point. When the raft is fi nally big enough,
he sets out on it with a long stick for nav-
igating. He quickly realizes he can’t con-
trol the raft, and the current is moving
it swiftly toward the middle of the river
where it’ll surely be carried out to the
ocean. He jumps off and swims to shore as
his raft heads toward Warrenton.
My friend, the river
After growing up fi shing and boating
on the Columbia River, Huhtala felt the
river was “my friend, and in my heart.”
These feelings were at the center of
his environmental activism and career —
as part of the Columbia River ship chan-
nel deepening opposition group; as direc-
tor of Governmental Affairs for the Pacifi c
Marine Conservation Council; as a mem-
ber of the Oregon SeaGrant Advisory
Board; and as an activist in the
effort to prevent the construc-
tion of liquefi ed natural gas
(LNG) import terminals on the
Skipanon Peninsula in Warren-
ton and upriver at Bradwood.
“When (the river) was
threatened like that, I had
to come back and do what I
could,” he said. He believed
the LNG terminals posed
unacceptable risks to the river’s ecology
and to the people of Astoria, Warrenton
and neighboring communities.
The LNG effort led Huhtala to run for
County Commissioner in 2010. Shortly
after he and other anti-LNG commission-
ers were elected, the Bradwood project
was abandoned. And in 2016, after a long
fi ght, the Warrenton project was aban-
Peter
Huhtala
The
cover
of Peter
Huhtala’s
memior
‘Whisered
Echoes.’
doned as well.
Other than the LNG
projects, Huhtala’s work as a commis-
sioner focused on land use planning, envi-
ronmental issues and economic devel-
opment — particularly sustainable
development that works with the
See Memoir, Page 13