Went for a beautiful hike yesterday in the Gorge: Wahkeena Falls. I haven’t been up there in a few years, and yesterday was the perfect time to visit as the temps got up to around 80 degrees and the falls were full blast with all the snowmelt. Carmie, Gavin, Rachel and I got there about noon and hiked around five miles up to the springs and back. It was glorious.
One thing that struck me hard during this hike was the keen sense of Lancaster and Hill’s presence every step of the path. Their vision of the future is one that acknowledges growing interest in experiencing the Gorge and the inevitable damage to the terrain that comes without a coherent plan allowing such visits. This is indeed a progressive view, one usually associated with liberal tree huggers today, but Lancaster was no liberal in the current sense of the word, or pejorative, as it may be. He has evangelical Christian roots, which intrigues me. How hIs world view embraces a John Muir conservationism alongside a religiosity that includes a very literal apocalypse intrigues me. How is he able to reconcile the two perspectives; one of a sustainable future, the other of a not only inevitable but welcome cataclysm?
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