Flip 13--Vanport

8/2/10  3:30 PM  Monday  
Location: Portland International Raceway and Columbia Slough Trail

The early August sun bakes the top of my head, unfiltered by clouds or leaves.  I walk on the apogee of the dike holding the Columbia Slough back from Portland International Raceway.  On my right, amateur car enthusiasts race Corvettes and Mazdas on the serpentine track:

 

On my left, the green, brackish, still waters of the Columbia Slough, lined with tall grasses, graced by geese and ducks:

 

The bowl in which the racetrack sits was the site of Vanport City in the 1940s, a massive complex built to house shipyard workers during World War II, which was destroyed by a devastating flood in 1948, killing fifteen.  Thousands of residents, many of them African American, were displaced.  (More information here.)

As if to underscore the history here, a homeless camp is visible through the trees on the far south bank of the Slough.

I leave the path and walk down to the Slough's edge, careful not to trip on the steep, uneven bank.  Prickly weeds embedded in the tall grass scratch my bare calves.  Unseen in the vegetation I hear a small animal scurrying around.

The muck at the water's edge is brown and green, and imprinted by goose feet.

I lie down on a flat ledge.  On the other side of the berm the Corvettes still scream around corners, but I can't hear them.  I can't hear the noise from I-5, either, or from the MAX train.  The only thing I can hear is some sort of cooling fan from the industrial overlays plant through the trees on the other side of the water, which paints a white noise that shuts out all but the sharpest sounds.  One sound that sneaks through is a splash, and I turn my head to see concentric ripples spreading apart on the water where a fish used to be.

The tall grass smells sweet in the breeze.

Up on the path I catch a glimpse of a couple walking together.  They don't see me down here, but I see them.  Their dogs run down the bank and splash around in the water, where green algae floats around an old tire.

I clamber back up to the top of the berm and reenter the world of racetrack and freeway noise.  To the north, a 737 climbs westward from PDX.  A freight train whistle sounds.  A MAX train goes by.  Walkers on the path.  People, goods, moving always.

I look at a pair of mature cottonwood trees swaying near the racetrack.  I wonder if they were there during the flood.  They seem to be paired together, as if they were the entrance to something.

In a way, they do serve as an entrance, or a gateway--a corridor through time and between the natural and the developed world.  Beyond them live the ghosts of the city of thousands who lived there, and behind them lies a narrow ribbon of surviving greenery, squeezed ever thinner by our expansive appetite.

 

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As an aside: though this particular spot falls just outside the boundaries of today's coin flip, I did visit the only known physical remnant of Vanport--a sloped concrete slab which served as the floor of the movie theater, now bi- and tri-sected by weeds and grass.