Traveling Light

by Bill Barich

  An air of muted panic had set in at City Light. The strategy its planners had devised to carry Seattle into the future had been a failure of some magnitude, because it banked everything on the mighty atom. The Hydro-Thermal Program, it was called. It involved the construction of a network of nuclear power plants—state of the art, as big as any in existence—but it never got off the ground. Almost from its inception, the program was poorly managed, plagued by safety problems, steadily rising interest rates, and resistance from the public. By the time it was finally scrapped, it had cost the utility $25 billion without producing a single unit of electricity.

  II

  Some forty-odd years after J. D. Ross’s death, I got an invitation to join a special tour of the Skagit project and see for myself what the master builder had wrought. The invitation came from an admirer of Ross’s, Bob Royer, who is one of Seattle’s two deputy mayors. Royer is an old friend of mine. He’d been appointed to his position by his older brother, Charles, whose campaign for Mayor of Seattle he had successfully managed. Now Bob was the administration’s expert in energy matters. It was part of his job to act as liaison between the Mayor and City Light. He’d visited the upper Skagit many times during the past few months, talking to City Light employees about a new plan the utility had to solve its problem. The plan had nothing to do with atoms or breeder reactors. Instead, it would exploit the very margins of Ross’s vision. City Light wanted to put yet another dam on the river. The proposed dam, known as Copper Creek, would blockade the Skagit about ten miles south of Gorge Dam. It had several drawbacks, Royer said—in his unique vocabulary, it was “negatory”—all of which would become apparent to me once we were on the road.

  We drove north from Seattle on a wet, gray winter afternoon. Gradually, the city and its suburbs dropped away behind us, and the landscape began to change. There were truck farms and dairies, acres of open space. Royer loosened his tie, trying to relax. He was in what he described as a “stressed condition”—tired from long hours at the office and suffering from an exacerbated case of premarital heebie-jeebies. He was about to marry Jennifer James, a cultural anthropologist who conducts a popular radio call-in show in Seattle, and he wasn’t looking forward to the ceremonial aspects of the undertaking—Anglican retainers, aunts and uncles from dusty corners of the globe, and the inevitable through-the-keyhole reporting of the local press. In order to calm him down, I suggested we stop for drinks at Jo-D’s, a loggers’ tavern in the middle of nowhere. The place was packed with raw, bearded faces blooming from flannel shirts. Royer hammered the pinball machine, extracting a minimal number of points, and admired an oversized Rainier beer bottle-cap mounted like a hunting trophy on a tavern wall. “That’s a nice little facility,” he said outside, lighting a Tiparillo. The car filled with stag-party fumes. We set off again, climbing toward the Cascades. Thick stands of Douglas fir appeared in the distance, green spires against a darkening sky.

  Near Concrete, a hundred miles from Seattle, Royer grabbed a pair of binoculars from the backseat and fiddled with the focusing mechanism. He scanned the horizon, looking for bald eagles. The birds winter on the river in great numbers. The Skagit was visible off to the right. It was low and emerald-colored, because the weather had been mild, with no major storms since December.

  I asked Royer if anybody was fishing. He shook his head. I’d figured as much. The water was too clear. Anglers know that salmon and steelhead are more likely to be fooled by bait or lures if there’s a slight camouflage of silt in the water. The Skagit holds five kinds of salmon in season—pink, chum, coho, sockeye, and Chinook. The chum have the most bearing on the lives of the bald eagles. Silvery and with rather distinct markings, chum range in size from eight to eighteen pounds. They begin their Skagit spawning run in late fall. After spawning, they die, and their carcasses drift downstream and wash up on gravel bars in shallow water. That’s what attracts the eagles. They consume all the dead fish and then proceed to their breeding territories, probably on the Olympic Peninsula and in the San Juan Islands, Canada, and Alaska. The eagles tend to concentrate in a twenty-seven-mile stretch east of Concrete, between Rock-port and Newhalem, because it offers them superior habitat—lots of gravel bars and also good perch sites.

  In Marblemount, about midway between Rockport and Newhalem, Royer shouted, “Hey, pull over! Pull over!” Before I could shut off the ignition, he’d bolted from his seat and dashed across the road, oblivious of traffic. He stood on a bluff above the Skagit with the binocs glued to his eyes. “There’s an eagle in that tree,” he said, nodding toward a lightning-blasted fir.

  I doubted it. Royer had broken his glasses a few months earlier and had still not replaced them. He operated more or less on automatic pilot. I took the binocs from him and checked the tree. “I think it’s a crow, Bob,” I said.

  Royer shrugged. “You could be right,” he said.

  The bird flew off, cawing, into deeper woods.

  …

  Royer’s mistake didn’t surprise me. It was exactly the sort that I’d come to expect from him—an enthusiastic mistake, a mistake of the heart. He is a passionate, opinionated man, blessed with a sense of humor about himself. At the moment, though, he looked beat. His job was draining him dry. He had several major administrative headaches, and Copper Creek was one of them. The dam was very controversial. If it was built, it would imperil the survival of the Skagit’s eagles by flooding a stretch of river in which thousands and thousands of salmon spawn: above the site, the perpetually high water could prevent any carcasses from washing up on gravel bars; the eagles’ food supply would be severely cut. The birds are highly mobile, but it’s questionable whether they could find new habitat on the Skagit or any other river of the Pacific Northwest. There just isn’t enough food for them. Furthermore, a diminished food supply has a demonstrable effect on breeding—hungry eagles lay fewer eggs. The average eagle’s nest contains only two or three delicate specimens, with shells thinned by DDT, so even the most minuscule change in the environment can jeopardize the future of the species.

  I stopped at a market on the outskirts of Marblemount so we could stretch our legs. It was the kind of market that gets so little business in winter that the owner would rather talk to you than sell you something, and he was crestfallen when we just bought a couple of Budweisers and left. We sat on a bench in the parking lot—the drizzle that had accompanied us all the way from Seattle had let up—and watched the Skagit roll by.

  Royer took the opportunity to tell me about another serious objection to Copper Creek—more serious, in fact, than any environmental objections. It had to do with Indian fishing rights. According to an old document (the Point Elliot Treaty), three tribes (the Swinomish, the Upper Skagit, and the Sauk-Suiattle) are entitled to fish at their accustomed grounds on the Skagit, taking salmon and steelhead for subsistence and for commercial gain. Their right was affirmed in 1974, in a controversial federal court decision known as Boldt I, United States v. Washington. Judge Boldt stated in his decision that a treaty phrase—“in common”—should be interpreted to mean that fishery resources in Washington are to be shared equally between Indians and others. If City Light went ahead with its Copper Creek plan, thereby eliminating part of the annual salmon and steelhead runs, the Point Elliot tribes would almost certainly sue for reparations. The reparations would be costly.

  I wanted to know how much difference Copper Creek would make in City Light’s hydro capacity.

  “Three and a half per cent,” Royer said glumly. “And that’s not until they get the bastard finished.”

  “When would that be?”

  “Maybe 1990, if nothing goes wrong.”

  In Royer’s opinion, the plan should have been canned long ago, but it wasn’t up to him to decide such things. It was up to the Mayor and the Seattle City Council, much as it had been in Ross’s day.

  “If the plan’s so full of holes,” I asked, “why all the fuss with the drift trip?”

  “Politics,” Royer said. “
If Charlie does decide to flood out those birds, at least he’ll know what they look like up close.”

  …

  Around dusk, still without sighting a bald eagle, we reached Newhalem. I recognized it from photos I’d seen of the original construction camp. It hadn’t changed very much. It resembled every other company town I’ve ever been to—rather bland and ordinary—except for its setting, right on the river, and plumb against the base of the Cascades. The mountains lend a sense of fragility to the town. It seems about to be crushed. Several modest frame houses are lined up in barracks formation along the Skagit. Near them, there’s a large neon SHERIFF sign, which struck me as incongruous. I thought you’d have to try very hard to pull off a crime in Newhalem. The absolute historical weight of the place mitigated against the possibility of outrage. It’s the sort of town where the tiniest infidelity gets poured like cream into the morning coffee.

  We drove by the company store and continued along a winding, rock-strewn road that led us past Gorge Dam to Diablo Canyon, five miles away. I parked on a promontory, and we got out to take in the view. The air was wet and heavy again—that palpitant skin of mist so common during Northwest winters. The light was a variegated green, drawing sustenance from the firs on the mountainside and from the river below them. When I walked to the edge of the promontory and stared into the canyon, I was filled with wonder. I seemed to acquire the sudden insignificance of the miniature, frock-coated sojourners you find posed on promontories in the canvases of nineteenth-century landscape paintings. The dwarfing effect of big-time nature accounted for part of my awe, but I was just as moved by Diablo Dam—a curved arc of concrete 380 feet high and 1,180 feet long. I’d never been impressed by a dam before. Most of the ones built during my life have been meant to hurry a land grab or provide water for corporate farmers. But there was something pristine about Diablo—a rightness, I guess. The interplay of aesthetic and engineering values was really a marvel. It was hard to believe that Ross had stood where I had stood and had imagined it. Maybe the quality of the American imagination was grander in those days, stoked by a perception of the country as an undiminished, ever-fructifying resource.

  III

  It’s impossible to spend any time in Newhalem without being touched by Ross’s ghost. It hovers over the town, an ectoplasm of no mean proportions. I could feel it when we walked into the Superintendent’s House, a dark old two-story place in which we were to be quartered. I half expected Ross to leap out from an alcove, thrumming his fingers against the buttons of his vest, but it was Charles Royer—known as Charlie to almost everybody—who greeted us. Dressed in a flannel shirt, jeans that somebody had ironed, and polished cowboy boots, Charlie looked like an advertising agency’s idea of a modern range rider.

  I’d met the Mayor before we’d left Seattle. He’s forty-two—four years older than Bob—a handsome man who’s concerned about his appearance. He has none of Bob’s intensity, and only a bit of his boyishness. Charlie’s face has a vaguely Indian cast—dark eyes, dark hair, high cheekbones. When he speaks, he does so softly and with deliberation, causing listeners to lean forward in a posture of intimacy. His background is in television journalism. Before going into politics, he was the news analyst, or commentator, at KING-TV; Bob was there, too, working as an on-camera reporter. Charlie campaigned as an honest, down-to-earth guy, eager to preserve the integrity of Seattle’s diverse neighborhoods. His approach was decidedly liberal, but his administration so far had been more of a middle-of-the-road affair. Still, he remained a popular figure, very active in the Democratic party. Nobody knew exactly how ambitious he was, but there was suspicion in some quarters that he would someday make a strong bid for governor.

  In Seattle, Charlie had been friendly and open, but now he seemed withdrawn and preoccupied, even a little nervous. Bob had told me that his brother wasn’t happy about the trip or Copper Creek in general. The Mayor had inherited a lame-duck superintendent, with whom he’d had disagreements, and his own appointee had not worked out as he had hoped. At present, the job was vacant, and the bureaucrats at the utility were anxious about it. They were used to taking their cues from a leader—any leader, really—and they weren’t certain anymore if they were toeing the party line.

  I ate dinner with the Mayor and his staff at the aptly named Gorge Inn. It had beanery tables and chairs. There was a photo of Ross on one wall. He looked like an owl, with squinty little eyes behind thick spectacles. Ordinarily, the Gorge is only open in summer, to feed fried chicken and canned spaghetti to the tourists who still stream in from the city to witness the Skagit’s miracles, but we were treated to a more elaborate spread. Poached salmon, asparagus hollandaise, apple pies, pitchers of buttermilk—the meal recalled Ross’s unconstricted era. It was designed to knock the stays out of corsets, to keep a logger working for ten hours straight. I saw just one trencherman at the tables who was sizable enough to do justice to the feast. Our bodies had gotten pared down since the 1920s, along with our expectations.

  A town meeting had been scheduled for that evening, so that the Skagit workers could meet the Mayor and tell him what they thought about Copper Creek. It was held at Currier Hall, right across from the Gorge. Around fifty people live in Newhalem, and thirty more upriver in Diablo, and most of them showed up—there wasn’t much else to do on a Skagit Friday night. The men had ruddy outdoor faces and military haircuts. The women were demure and styleless, and they kept mostly to themselves, chatting about domestic things.

  The lives that Skagit families choose to lead seem odd to an outsider. Newhalemites pride themselves on being able to transcend adversity. They tell stories—or folktales, actually—about particularly rough winters, about blizzards and avalanches that block roads for days on end. Fresh milk becomes a luxury item in such circumstances, and dinners are served up out of the deep freeze. Telephone wires are constantly falling down or shorting out, cutting off contact with civilization. You’d think that in this pioneering atmosphere, families would gather together around the hearth and maybe read aloud to one another, but they don’t. They try to watch TV—”Little House on the Prairie,” reruns of “The Waltons.” Reception is usually terrible, because the town’s primary antenna sits five thousand feet up a mountain and keeps blowing over.

  About eight o’clock, the Mayor walked to the front of the hall and gave a short, unenthusiastic speech. He didn’t mention Copper Creek at all, and so confirmed a suspicion among City Light employees that he was not in favor of the dam. Afterward, I talked to some workers, and they were forthright and unanimous in their complaints. They felt that the Mayor was being dodgy, playing coy, and that their labors would be wasted if Copper Creek got scuttled. They interpreted resistance to the project as an affront to their function in society, which was to build. They longed for a Rossian Eden—a place with no bureaucrats or red tape. As they collared Royer to extol Copper Creek’s virtues, they seemed blind to the complex texture of the enterprise. They were decent, earnest, and exceedingly loyal—marines on the beachhead of energy—but they were helpless when confronted with a situation that could not simply be subdued.

  “Politics,” one man said, heading for the door.

  The tour proper began in the morning. Darci Covington, a young woman from City Light’s community relations department, joined us after we’d eaten a truly monstrous breakfast at the Gorge Inn. She had the tour guide’s implacable efficiency and moved us along at a brisk pace—which was not unwelcome, because it was cold. The temperature hovered near thirty-eight degrees, but an icy wind cutting through the canyon increased the chill factor substantially.

  We drove in a convoy to the Diablo plant. The dam looked even more monumental than it had when I saw it from the promontory. We stopped at the Tour Center Museum, where Ross’s rolltop desk is on exhibit, along with his spectacles, an electric range he sold to City Light customers, and a faded copy of a book he wrote on physics—New Views of Space, Matter, and Time. Then we entered the Diablo powerhouse. It was like walki
ng into a submarine; the natural world dropped away. I was aware of a slight humming noise, like a bee buzzing in a vacuum. Everything was dustless, spit-clean. Men in hard hats padded by, treading softly on crepe-soled shoes, as if they were afraid to disturb the sanctity of the place. The two main generators—cylindrical, flat on top—were in a cavernous white-walled room at the back of the powerhouse. Painted a pastel shade of peach, they had a hi-tech beauty. A little iron plaque was attached to each of them: S. MORGAN SMITH CO. PENNSYLVANIA U.S.A. Here was the Machine Age in apotheosis, a silent homage to invention. In their splendid isolation, the generators seemed so self-contained that it was difficult to remember that they depended on the river for their power—on unpredictable accumulations of rain and snow.

  From the powerhouse, we went to a boat landing nearby and boarded the Cascadian, a diesel-engined ferry that carried us across Diablo Lake, to Ross Dam. The dam extends five hundred and forty feet from river bedrock to the road that runs along its crest. Some of us climbed stairs inside the dam to get to the road. The stairs had been used during the dam’s construction. Workers had carted up bags of cement, loads of lumber, sacks of tools, but we had trouble just willing our bodies forward. Water dripped onto our heads, steady as a pulse. It dripped down the interior walls, too, and had leached calcium deposits from the rock. The deposits glistened, like stalactites in a cave.