THE MOMENT THE REAR WHEEL BROKE through the crust, I knew I was really stuck. Muttering curses, I switched off the engine and surveyed the situation. I had backed up too near a grove of birch trees that surrounded a seeping spring, and one wheel was buried to the hubcap. The slice of blue clay that had enveloped my tire emitted a whiff of indigo perfume, and when I bent to look I caught a glimpse of something long and smooth embedded in the mud. At first I took it for the leg bone of an animal, and struggled to pry it free—I’ve always loved to pick up bones and try to figure out what animal they belonged to—but the fragment proved to be nothing more than a plank from a farmer’s old spring box, warped to a pleasing arc by the preserving goo. Rubbing my fingers over the raised grain of the board, I figured that it must have been only a century or so since the birch spring homesteader had set the board in place.
Now the rut that had dragged down my car was offering a small relic from those days for my perusal. The spring where I was mired lay on an open bench, and I walked out to its edge and looked down on the Columbia River. From the site of my misfortune, the whole country was laid out for me to see—open hillsides of ponderosa pine, new outcrops of colored dolomite, draws filled with darker Douglas firs and yellow-green tamarack. Time marched backward from the homestead spring, to the fur traders who had floated past, riding the initial wave of European contact, to the tribal memories buried beneath the waters. The round peaks to the north still capped with snow in early June hinted at the glaciers that had carved the bench where I stood.
The word relic conjures up a host of connotations, from human remains to a historic souvenir. It can denote a custom from the past, the remnants of an ancient language, or a fragment of a whole. It can represent the last of a dying species, or an indefatigable survivor. During the years I have lived in the Columbia country, I have come to see its vast natural and human archives as a reliquary of its former lives, a reservoir of clues that connect this moment to the distant past, this place to territories far away.
That is where this book begins, with the discovery of such relics. Some of them fit comfortably in a pocket; some are far too large for transport. Certain ones have mesmerized generations of chroniclers and invited intense scientific scrutiny, while others have barely been noticed. Many take the tangible form of rock or bone; others are as ephemeral as the faint whiff of a bloom in spring or the laugh of an auntie poking fun. Some have faded to extinction; others can be found by any kid with a penchant for muddy feet. But whatever form they take, each evokes a facet of the region’s past, reminding us that this place has not always been as we see it now. Their voices call across time, carrying snatches of the big river’s long and larger song.