Waves and Pelts

"It comes in waves," said the ranger at Fort Vancouver National Historic Reserve. "I'm actually from Vermont, and this weather is nothing like the Vermont where I grew up."

Sheets of rain pelted on the window of the visitor center as we entered the theater for the film about the Hudson Bay Company, the hub of an extensive fur trading network that utilized a geographic range from Russian Alaska to Mexican California and from the Rocky Mountains to the Hawaiian Islands. The fort area, on the north bank of the Columbia River in Vancouver, Washington, was the region's first military post. Later it housed Pearson Airfield and still later Kaiser Shipyard.

When we stepped out after the half-hour movie, the sun glittered off the droplets on fence rails and rose petals in the English formal gardens. That hour reprieve gave us enough time to walk the grounds of old Fort Vancouver, built in 1824 to protect the growing fur trade and the settlers who pushed west in waves to seek land and fortune.

A volunteer blacksmith explained how the employees of HBC forged more than 10,000 beaver traps, the major product, and how the town adjoining the fort was a melting pot of 25 American Indian tribes, Irish, French Canadians, English, Americans and Hawaiians. A company town, each group had its own street, but life on this far western frontier was surprisingly cultured.

Then the heavy clouds rolled in, and rain pelted again. "Waves," I told Andy. "That's what the ranger said."

Later in the day we stopped at the Korean Veterans Memorial in Wilsonville, browsed in the stores of the Outlet Mall in Woodburn, and walked through the gardens at the Oregon Capitol Building in downtown Salem. All day waves of clouds rolled by, and alternately we dashed between downpours, regarded rainbows and strolled in the sun.