One of the most interesting things any of us have done during this trip is just to interact with all the different people and environments in Portland and Oregon. What we’ve found has sometimes been jarring and has changed our paradigms on certain issues. Mark had an extraordinary opportunity to travel to Eastern Oregon for an entire week as part of his internship at the Freshwater Trust. His long awaited blog post follows.
Two weeks ago, I traveled with a co-worker to eastern Oregon. The purpose of the trip was to meet with land owners and convince them to do various things to conserve water by making their practices more efficient, or possibly just stop irrigating a few weeks earlier in the year, to give wild fish more water to swim and spawn in.
This can be difficult.
If you’re a rancher, water is everything. Without it, crops won’t grow and livestock will die. Even worse, in Oregon, the water rights system is designed in such a way that if you don’t use all the water that you have rights to, you lose it forever.
However, there was a huge victory for rivers and fish recently. Oregon officially recognized ‘leaving water in the stream for ecological reasons’ as a beneficial use of water, meaning that you can be green without losing your right to water in future years. Now all that remains is to spread the good word, and find funding to reimburse farmers for the hay they won’t be growing without irrigation water.
That’s where we came in.
Actually, where we came in was to my co-worker’s cabin in the mountains, after a 6 hour drive in a gas guzzling monster of an SUV. We needed four wheel drive, and Enterprise rent-a-car had a Chevy Tahoe. Oh well, sometimes you have to break a few eggs to make an omelette.
The cabin was fairly bare-bones, which is fortunately an aesthetic that I can really appreciate, especially miles from any paved surfaces, surrounded by millions of stars and so little light pollution that the moon is as bright as a streetlight.
I won’t explain all of the itinerary of the trip here, it would go on forever, but to summarize the awe-inspiring-splendor-of-nature’s-bounty portion of the experience, I saw my first elk, plenty of deer, antelope, fish, and some of the most beautiful scenery that I have experienced to date.
Now on to the fun part.
Meeting with land owners was an interesting experience. Many of my stereotypes and expectations were shattered, and many were solidly confirmed, but everywhere we went, I met people who were open minded to new methods and loved the land. Be they a Rancher or an Investment Banker, no businessman is going to take a step that will strip away profit; but everyone was very eager to listen to ways that they could improve their financial bottom line and help out the earth at the same time.
The other important lesson of the trip was this: Portland is not Oregon. Portland is part of Oregon, but the overall ecological condition of the state is not represented by the area west of the Cascade Mountains. Eastern Oregon is dry, frequently covered with desert and sagebrush, and water is a precious resource. It’s precious enough to cause very serious disputes when things go badly.
Portland is blessed with a magnificent source of water, but don’t be fooled by the myriad fountains that lend so much beauty to the city. Most of Oregon is not overflowing with clear cold water, much to the chagrin of salmon everywhere.
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…We Know the Worth of Water. (From Benjamin Franklin and on Polly’s shiny new water bottle.)
