Crossing America by car with camera
Cannon Beach to Missoula, Montana...
The foaming spray of the surf splashes my face as I stand bent over my camera on the rocky Pacific shore, trying to capture the roaring wildness before me. My tripod is partially submerged, and the rays of the rising sun are reflected by the clouds onto the rocks on the beach. Waves roll in incessantly, break on the shore, and plunge back into the sea with a loud, rattling sound from the shifting rocks. Ecola State Park, in the far north of Oregon near the fashionable resort town of Cannon Beach, is one of the most beautiful state parks on the coast. This morning, I’m almost alone. Only my travel companions, fellow photographers, and my wife are milling about somewhere on the beach. Besides Regula, there are six people accompanying me on my grand US coast-to-coast tour. We have two vehicles: my large Chevy Suburban and the Subaru Outback driven by our friend Sandro. I’m taking a 30-second exposure at f/18 and hoping for the best. When the image appears on the monitor, I’m satisfied. The water is softly blurred, yet has texture. You can practically feel the sea moving. The water is alive. The rocks are rendered sharply, and in the distance, you can see a stone arch, just like the ones standing out in the ocean.
From Portland, Oregon, to our destination, Portland, Maine, it’s over 5,000 kilometers. Cannon Beach is even a bit further west, but we wanted to travel from the Pacific to the Atlantic. From Sea to Shining Sea, just like Lewis and Clark, who established their winter quarters at Fort Clatsop not far from here in 1802. A reconstruction of the fort can be visited today. The expedition, sent out by President Thomas Jefferson and led by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, explored parts of the American Northwest that no European had ever seen before. Lewis and Clark went down in history as great explorers and are now found in every school textbook in the USA. The areas they discovered had of course long been settled by Native Americans and were therefore not pure wilderness. Indeed, the expedition owed its survival to the peaceful Native American tribes along the route.
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We’re in luck at the Lazy Susan Café. They have a free table, which is a rarity around here. This tiny restaurant, in my opinion, offers the best breakfast in Cannon Beach, but it’s cash only and the space is cramped. Lewis and Clark survived their journey across the Rocky Mountains mostly by eating dogs they bought from the Shoshone. If you tell an American that today, they’ll probably call it fake news or make a horrified face. I enjoy my poached eggs with new potatoes and vegetables. I also have a perfectly made cappuccino, and I see no reason to live up to my reputation as a grumpy traveler. I even manage something like a smile to our gray-haired, assertive waitress and will give her a generous tip.
Two bald eagles sit on the beach, as if enjoying a seaside vacation. Occasionally, you can also spot large Roosevelt elk. What drew me to America were the Native Americans, the vast landscapes, and the wildlife. Now, exactly forty years after our first major trip to America, I want to see if the country still impresses me as much as it did back in 1986. Cannon Beach is a good starting point for the journey, and my friends all look content. Sandro is enjoying his pancake, and Bob orders another coffee. I am looking forward to heading east. I watch the two eagles as they take flight and fly away until they are just tiny specks against the vast sky.
Between Portland and Cannon Beach lies Astoria, the historic city near the mouth of the Columbia River where it meets the Pacific Ocean. It’s named after Johann Jacob Astor, a German-born speculator and one of the super-rich investors of the Gilded Age. Astor, who became immensely wealthy through the fur trade, sent out two expeditions to establish a colony in what is now Oregon. One group traveled by ship and reached the mouth of the Columbia River via Cape Horn. The second group, led by Wilson P. Hunt, made a grueling and misfortune-ridden journey from St. Louis to Astoria. Peter Stark’s book “Astoria” vividly recounts all of this. Marie Dorion, a Native American woman who accompanied the expedition, endured the entire arduous journey, gave birth to a child in a winter storm, and made it on foot to what is now the Willamette Valley, where she established one of the early pioneer farms. John Day, a male member of the expedition from Virginia, got lost several times and was rescued by local Native Americans. In Oregon, the John Day River and the town of John Day are named after him, a typical example of our paternalistic society.
The Columbia River flows through the Columbia River Gorge, a canyon carved through the Cascade Range, surrounded by the peaks of the Hood, Adams, and St. Helens volcanoes. We are photographing on the Washington side. The Columbia forms the natural border between Oregon and Washington. The contrasts couldn’t be greater. The lush green landscape of the eastern Cascade Range gradually gives way to the dry plateau landscapes of the Great Basin. As is often the case, there are forest fires, and the air is correspondingly hazy. During a short hike to Beacon Rock, a large rock monolith that Lewis and Clark had already recognized as an important landmark, we look out over the river landscape. A herd of Roosevelt elk grazes on an island in the middle of the river. Large sandbars are visible due to the ongoing drought. The river looks so peaceful, and it’s hard to imagine that the Columbia is the most nuclear-contaminated river in America. The industrialized river, tamed by three gigantic, hydroelectric dams, is also a victim of the Cold War. For years, fuel for the Manhattan Project was produced at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, established in 1942. North of the Washington Tri-Cities of Wasco, Kennewick, and Richland, where the river makes a large loop and the Snake River joins it, lies the now-decommissioned nuclear reserve. The landscape is heavily contaminated with plutonium, and it is seeping from the tanks storing radioactive liquid into the river and groundwater. Hanford is the most radioactively contaminated place in the United States.
In the tiny town of Carson, we eat at the Hap Café. They offer an Asian menu, as the small restaurant is run by immigrants. The food is delicious. The US West Coast is economically oriented towards Asia, and this is evident even here. The American couple at the next table eats their meal while both stare incessantly at their cell phones—a habit that will follow us all the way to Boston. Outside the somewhat shabby restaurant, white men drive by in old, smoky pickup trucks. Otherwise, there’s no one to be seen, and the place seems almost deserted.
After the long drives through the arid agricultural landscapes of the Palouse and the deserts of the Great Basin, we drive along Highway 12 in Idaho, over Lolo Pass, into Montana. Everything still looks like it did in 1986: the junk cars overgrown with brambles, the old gas stations, the pine forests, and the people you meet here in Idaho. This also applies to Montana outside the cities, where the houses slumber peacefully, the pickup trucks still rattle, and the small cafés serve the same hamburgers and pancakes with weak filter coffee as they did forty years ago.
It wasn’t until Missoula, Montana, that I learned otherwise. It was Friday night, and the gentrified downtown was buzzing. You’d think we were in Portland’s Pearl District or San Francisco’s North Beach, because the hipsters were ready to party. Regula had reserved a table at Zoo Thai, an ultra-hip restaurant, one of the few that also had vegetarian options on the menu, but my friend Bob grimaced because the music was loud, a thumping bass rolled through the place. “I Know a Girl from Lonely Street,” Debbie Harry sang, barely audible, and a muffled bass rhythm reverberated through the room. An air conditioner blasted ice into the crowd, and our Europeans took a startled step back.
Regula says: “Just close your eyes and get through it. There’s no other choice. It’s loud everywhere, there’s air conditioning everywhere, it’s a miracle we were even able to reserve a table.” The waiter, a student—it’s amazing he understands us over the shouting—takes our order. The Europeans yell: “No water, no ice—but I want water and ice too…” Wildly flailing hands, irritated faces, bewildered faces at our table. All around us, happy Americans shouting in each other’s faces. An old logger with suspenders, a Mennonite family—where did they come from? Lots of hipsters, who could have washed up from any major city on earth, all looking the same, as driftwood. A few daredevil families with children, their faces glued to smartphones and tablets, watching cartoons while ruin their futures, and suddenly the steaming, ridiculously expensive Udon noodles are in front of me, tasting absolutely delicious, and I also have ice water, and my friends have their wine, their… Beers, chewing, and thankfully everyone is satisfied.
