Half-Light, Mitchell Point Tunnel

 

Near sundown, angled rays of light scraped the underside of clouds to the west as I entered the newly reopened Mitchell Point Tunnel. Constructed in 1915 as part of the Columbia River Highway, the engineer, Samuel Lancaster, modeled the windowed tunnel after a Swiss version he had seen while touring Europe. Until 1953 car traffic enjoyed views looking out of the tunnel’s row of huge, elegant windows  towards Washington State across the river. When Highway I-80 was built as a two-lane road around the base of Mitchell Point, it necessitated the closing of the tunnel above. The windows were cemented closed and the tunnel filled with gravel. In the 1960s, the widening of the highway below into becoming the four-lane I-84 highway required blasting away the tunnel’s windows, emptying it of gravel, and leaving its former roadway as a shelf to catch falling rocks from the point above.   

Some time ago, I saw a postcard showing a Model T lit by the large windows as the car passed through the Mitchell Point Tunnel. I was enchanted. Not familiar with the tunnel’s history or its exact whereabouts, I would look for the windows as I drove the Gorge. I was never successful at spotting them until a day in 2023 when I was returning from Portland and looking up was startled to see windows appearing like an apparition of black-drawn holes in the gray basalt rock face. The state of Oregon had garnered funding to reconstruct the tunnel to become a stretch of the Columbia River biking and walking path. 

I texted my friend Bryan who was in the midst of a cancer regime (Waiting for the Results of a Biopsy), sent him a link about the tunnel’s coming reopening, and suggested that when he finished treatment, we’d make a trip to walk it. He passed away five months later, never having left the confines of Seattle. (After Death, The Wake) When the tunnel opened in April of 2025, I visited and took a rock of Bryan’s, one he had gathered from the tiny Canadian island he had owned. The smooth black rock—Puget Sound tumbled—was hand-sized; Bryan's spirit held in its pleasing heft. 

Chosing a day of partial sun and partial clouds, I envisioned taking photos out of the tunnel’s grand openings. None of the photos I eventually took and kept looked out the windows. The haunting light and the mostly inky black walls held my attention. Although the tunnel windows are monstrous, the northern light enters them gently. Each opening—rough cast with imprecise edges—lets in a half-light.

When you first enter the black maw of the western entrance, you walk in darkness a few moments before a curve in the tunnel reveals the first light. As you stroll through the tunnel, the echo of children entering behind you—the shouts of their initial trepidation followed by their laughter—announce their delight. I walked the tunnel back and forth a number of times and returned the next morning. Something about that sound of the children nagged at me until I remembered the name of a chapter titled “The Generation of the Half-Light” in When We Grow Up by Bahíyyih Nakhjavání. It was a Bahá’í-inspired book that influenced me as I raised my daughter.

Half-light. That was it. The shape of the light in one of my photos resembled a cartoon’s conversational bubble. If I had to fit the meaning (as it is defined in the book) of “half-light”  into the bubble’s confines, I suppose I would describe it as: “Half-light is the dawning illumination of a spiritual dispensation.”  The generation of children growing up in that light have one foot on earth and one stepping towards the realm of the beckoning enlightenment. Betwixt and between. As one walks the tunnel you pass through a repetition of darkness and light, darkness and light. The experience is like wandering into and between the worlds’ spiritual dispensations. Each dispensation, each prophet a light followed by darkness.

Stepping from the gloom into the light of each window, I— like the children—was delighted. The darkness a necessity to appreciate the light. We are walking through a dark time in the world right now. One in which a portion of humanity is bound as if blindfolded to their own capacity to become a beacon of love and kindness, to step out of a darkness of their own making. They spread chaos while stumbling blind. Exiting the Mitchell Point Tunnel, the fullness of the light seemed almost too much. And yet, I left with an exhilaration. Bryan’s rock in my hand, conscious of his good spirit in its weight. Buoyed by the illumination of the “half-lights.” 

 

"Salmon Weather"

 

March/April

It is “salmon weather” in the canyon. Cold nights, an occasional snow or sleet—the breath of winter lasting longer. A slight annoyance to those of us done with winter. During a brief warming period in early March, when we thought spring was here, the river was running high. It was tempting to begin planning what to put in my planting barrels. The river soon dropped enough to reveal new gravel beds where salmon might spawn in the coming summer. But for now, the return of wintry precipitation is making the water rise once again, sending its chilling effect towards deeper waters pooling downstream. The salmon will be happy with this infusion of cold water. They will need to traverse those pools during their upriver summer trek. Hot water kills salmon. 

                                   

This year one of my measures of “salmon weather” was a spigot of water arching off a rock wall in a wooded area down from my cabin. On some mornings, the spigot’s flow has been edged with ice, but dangling in its funnel were green filaments and the carapace of a caterpillar, evidence of last summer’s largesse and this summer’s bounty to come. I was puzzled at how water could spout from solid rock, but the mystery was solved a few days later when a sheet of moss peeled off the wall and the spigot disappeared. Water coursing down the rock face had been hitting a protrusion of moss. Now the bare rock glints with water.

Just down from where the spigot was located is a little waterfall flowing out from under a skirting of tree roots. Both the water flowing down the rock face and the waterfall's width were a barometer of the erratic weather.

Underfoot by the waterfall's splashing, the earth is spongy. And under that, beyond what I can see and feel, more water seeps through dirt and around stones—water which will eventually carry its “salmon weather” chill into the nearby river in time for those fall upriver salmon runs. In the meantime, the wet weather is brightening the moss all around the canyon, itself a habitat for snails, red mites, and at least one purple caterpillar riding on the back of a snail.

When I feel disgruntled at the return of cold weather, I remind myself once again of the spigot, the mite, the moss, and the salmon. I can set aside my petty human annoyance.

Maelstrom: situation in which there is great confusion, violence, and destruction

 

When I step into a stream to look for icicles, I come prepared with my insulated Salmon Sisters boots and a walking stick. My favorite stream tumbles down a narrow canyon across from my cabin. I tie my dog Chester to a tree and step into the near freezing water. Although I’ve come for the icicles, the maelstrom of bubbles at the foot of each small fall inevitably distracts me.

The bubbles rise and fall with a fury at the foot of each small rock shelf and sometimes construct creatures whose existence will be fleeting. I won’t see that exact same formation again. 

The water follows the rules of physics. It flows downward, accumulating more water from the sloping Blue Mountain hillsides until it empties into Mill Creek, the Columbia River, and then flows onward to the Pacific Ocean. Flotillas of bubbles appear below each drop-off in the stream. In the heat of late summer, the flow will be reduced to a trickle and the pools of chaos dissipate. I visit in the winter when over a few days the temperature has dropped below freezing and icicles will form along the stream’s edges. Some icicles appear very ordinary and others fantastical.

This winter the apparition of a screaming soul briefly appeared in the water’s movement and I caught it with my cellphone camera. 

It’s visage reminded me of how humans across the world are engulfed in maelstroms—whirling pools of hate and destruction, causing welters of pain, grief, and displacement. One might wish or even actively put a foot into these whirls like a boot in the stream and try to turn the tide into something more worthy of humanity. When I step into the stream with my Salmon Sister boots, I am looking for beauty in the ice and in the bubbles, but I know my presence is fleeting to the stream. I can’t change its molecules or its destiny. Likewise, even with the best of my intentions and heart, it is unlikely that I can deter almost any of the destruction fomented in the world today, but my Faith asks of me to do something different, something hopeful, something indubitably wise. 

The Bahá’í Faith is the world’s newest world religion. It is a young one-hundred and eighty-years-old prophecy. It is also the world’s second most widespread religion, accomplished without paid clergy. I mention this fact because each individual Bahá’í is responsible for their own spiritual development. We are guided by the writings of the twin prophets, the Bab and Bahá'u'lláh, and an administrative order that includes The Universal House of Justice, but we each are responsible to endeavor to see that the laws of spiritual destiny follow their course.  

Today’s world havoc was predicted—is predictable.  As the old-world order crumbles, as old-world perceptions no longer function, chaos ensues. Consider one shift. Through science, we now know that all the people of the world are one people, related to each other in varying degrees of distance. We know that skin color has to do with a human’s adaption to the sun, to levels of melatonin in the skin, and has nothing to do with their intelligence, capacity, or spirit. If you were stuck in the old-world paradigm, you might be unable to see a person of color as your equal, as your brother, as your soulmate and therefore treat them accordingly.

Like ice facing ice and not recognizing its similarities.

The Bahai Faith, asks of me to observe the laws of the spiritual destiny of mankind. In my understanding (and this is only my interpretation of the Faith’s writings) it will only be in the transformation of man can there be an end to this world condition of dismay and discord. As a Bahá’í, I am asked to look for the beauty in every soul who crosses my path. To offend no one. Were each of us—worldwide—of every nation, race, occupation, political persuasion, wealth, social standing, or religion to find it within each of our fellow humans our common worth, the world would aright itself and begin abiding by the spiritual law of unity. It’s the joy, the delight, the intentional human connections that will eventually bring wide and lasting settled pools of peace.

Drop by drop, soul by soul it must happen.

Link to more information about the Bahá'í Faith: Bahá'í US

Uncluttering Peace; The Simplicity of Oneness

 

On New Year’s Eve I didn’t stay awake until midnight, but on my way home late evening I exited the year of 2024 by taking a surreal parting snapshot of an old grain shed on Mill Creek Road. The fog-shrouded farm light struggled to illuminate the night, while odd reflections in my car’s side window inserted confusion into the scene. The blur of blue and white rectangles aiming for the barn’s peak looked like an extra-terrestrial neon-inspired attempt at communication. A slashed image of a white barn fence and a road in the upper right-hand corner appeared to be about to fall upon the old shed. The year-end photograph seemed to echo the past year’s shroud of world discontent with its puzzle of chaos and confusion. 

War and war again. Numerous individuals and nations advocated for peace and illuminated the world with insightful, heartfelt, and thoughtful endeavors, but their efforts often seemed muffled as if fog-bound. Thwarted by things out of sight, beyond comprehension. One would think our capacity to communicate—like that illusion of a neon-lit message from outer space—would simply end wars. A phone call, a text, a posting: “Please, end war.”  

                                

Above is the same grain shed as the one pictured in the photo before. In a photographer’s lingo this photo is “uncluttered” with nothing in the image that distracts the eye from the subject. There is a dignity about this old shed now. A strength and a comfort in its stance. Our world aches for such clarity and assurance.

When I catch myself trying to make sense of the ongoing wars, trying to discern degrees of harm or what measures might end them, guidance from my Bahá’í Faith helps me “unclutter” the issues. Consider this: the simplicity of Oneness. My Faith speaks of this era being the age of humanity’s maturity, when mankind has evolved to the point of having the capacity to consider the entire world as one country, as guided by one God (through many prophets with progressive revelations), of men and women of one and the same degree of equality, and of one race—the human race. There would no longer be anything but a rare reason to defend one’s land, one’s faith, one’s equality, or one’s racial dignity. A world uncluttered from old prejudices would be at peace.

You may think this is naïve thinking. But this is the age of maturity. In my thinking, old ones of any age, who never gained the insights they needed, may find themselves in spiritual conundrums of their own making. A Buddhist friend of mine noted that in her faith, this is considered to be a dark time, but one of “quickened karma.” Acts that illicit bad karma will have quicker repercussions and those acts that gather good karma will be rewarded faster. Like adolescents who created chaos before they matured, there’s hope for everyone. 

Peace, goodwill, and one blessing to all, and to all a good year.