My folks moved to Eastern Washington when I was overseas. So I had never been to or seen any of the gigantic things they were familiar with. While home on leave, they took me on a tour of the area. One place that I still remember and have been back to is a place called Dry Falls. It is a cliff five times as wide as Niagara Falls and three time as high. It sits in the dry basalt sagebrush of Eastern Washington and it is hard to imagine that channel filled with water. But, there was a time not too long ago it was just that.

A few years later when I was taking a class in Geology. My professor and I were talking and agreed that the Pacific Northwest was one of the most dynamic geologic places in the world. The following summer, I found myself sitting high on a mountain at The Bison National Monument in West Central Montana. There on the sides of mountains and hills to the East I could see the shoreline of the ancient lake that was the source of the floods (that's right floods) that etched out those Dry Falls.

The reason that this all comes up now is that over the past few weeks Public Broadcasting has aired a couple of specials covering the Great Missoula Floods. It showed and explained how the scablands of Eastern Washington were formed. Then our local PBS station followed suit, with a segment showing the effect of those floods on Oregon and the Willamette Valley. While I watched those docudramas I was enlightened. I was at the same time disappointed. I was disappointed by the fact that the force was not really communicated. This was a flood of such an unimaginable magnitude that no amount of talk or even computer graphics can really convey the impact. There have been other great floods. However, when compared with the Missoula Flood(s) all of those pale.

At the moment the ice damn in western Montana gave way, a flow of water equal to the discharge of every river IN THE WORLD was released. Whether that moment was a minute or ten minutes or an hour doesn't matter; at that time, that volume of water was unleashed. It came roaring down stream, North through the Rockies and West across the basalt flats of Eastern Washington. It tore through and carved out the Columbia River Gorge to the ocean. It backed up and left a hundred feet and more of silt behind when the flood waters had drained away.

Here in Western Oregon there are signs of those floods. Just a few miles from where I now sit, there is what is called a glacial erratic. It is a boulder the size of a truck, that was "rafted" here in a chunk of ice. Left behind high and dry when iceberg melted. There are other of these erratics up and down the Willamette Valley, along with a hundred feet of silt from those times. The farmland of the Willamette Valley is fertile beyond belief. An area in Southeast Washington called "The Palouse" is some of the richest dryland wheat farming country in the world. All cultivated on the silts left behind by those great floods.

I find the geology of the Pacific Northwest exciting. The knowledge of how this part of our country was formed and shaped is enthralling. The Missoula floods are just some of the most recent events that contribute to the dynamics of this area. There was also the eruption of Newberry Crater, The explosion of Mt Mazama (Crater Lake). The prehistoric eruption of Mt. St. Helens. The Native American story of The Bridge of The Gods. There are many who refer to this area as the left coast. I prefer to think of this as the leading edge of the continent.