Trail report: Dry Creek Falls

A very misnamed hike.

It wasn’t raining, and that was good enough for me. The gray sky threatened to change its mind at any moment, but I was willing to take the risk: I stuffed a raincoat in my pack, optimistically right down at the bottom, and started driving toward the Gorge. My destination was an unpromising gravel lot in Cascade Locks, wedged between I-80 and a modest residential neighborhood. West of the trailhead the Columbia Gorge Trail stretched off through a scrubby meadow clogged with Scotch broom; to the south, the Pacific Crest Trail wriggled through a burned clearing full of blackened snags. My optimistic raincoat and I went south.

Two trilliums bloom elegantly together.
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Atkinson Point

lighthouse

I have a confession.

I have never understood the appeal of lighthouses. Apparently they are romantic, or picturesque. Or something. People come from miles inland to look at them, take pictures of them, and buy souvenirs of them. The image of the lonely lighthouse-keeper is, I suppose, evocative of a maritime past in the same way as is a tall-masted ship. The heartbeat-like pulse of light shining through the darkness to guide sailors to safety does have a certain symbolic power. And of course there are those who obsess over lenses and lights the same way others are drawn to engines and trains. For my part, I’ve never been moved by any of these things, so when I caught the bus out to Lighthouse Park to see the Point Atkinson Lighthouse, it was more to look at the forest than the light.

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