Blue Hole Canoe

Maryhill Museum of Art displays Native American photography, art from the ...

GOLDENDALE, Wash. -- Maryhill Museum of Art may be waiting, but it's not standing still.

While construction gathers force on an ambitious $9.5 million addition expected to open in May 2012, this unlikely house of treasures on a high bluff above the Columbia River Gorge is as busy as ever, blending new temporary exhibitions with its grab-bag of permanent attractions that range from Auguste Rodin sculptures to Eastern Orthodox icons, 19th-century realist paintings, Native American art and a killer collection of international chess sets.

The biggest attraction of the museum's compact and appealing new temporary exhibit, "Beside the Big River: Images and Art of the Mid-Columbia Indians," is that it, too, refuses to stand still.

The action of living is at the show's heart: Through artifacts but mostly through a collection of vividly captured photographic scenes, it helps reinvigorate a sense of the rich culture that thrived along the river in the very near past.

Far below the construction site, which at one point cantilevers out 20 feet over a Columbia gorge cliffside, lies the Columbia River and what looks from this vantage to be an erector set bridge leading from the Washington shore to Biggs Junction on the Oregon side. Above to the north, the white spinning towers of a windmill farm slice into the brilliant blue of a dominating sky. The $9.5 million project -- the museum still has $500,000 to raise, Executive Director Colleen Schafroth said -- will add 25,000 square feet, much in a grand plaza that will also serve as the roof over extended indoor space dug out of the side of the hill. It will provide badly needed collections storage, a new education center, expanded cafe space (with killer views from an attached patio), a small amphitheater and outdoor interpretive spaces. The expansion will be built of steel, concrete and broad swaths of glass, and was designed by architect Gene W. Callan of Portland's GBD Architects to sweep out flat from the base of the 1918 building so it doesn't compete visually with the beaux-art style original building or obstruct its sightlines. It will ease crowding in the original building, provide for new office space and even add some display areas. The project also will provide some overdue modernization of the mechanical systems in the 1918 building. And the addition will be thoroughly modern in its energy efficiency.

Lost in a blue hole | davidlansing.com

I usually hate the rain, but it’s different here on Vanuatu. It’s warm and it’s comforting and there’s something about it that just connects me to the earth in a primitive way. It’s like the way my sense of smell is aroused by a smoky campfire or my taste buds ignited by bacon sizzling up on a cast-iron skillet outdoors. There is some DNA is our bodies that connects with the smell of fire, the taste of food cooked outdoors, and the feel of tropical rain.

Yesterday we were supposed to go on a day-long bush walk along a narrow jungle path across creeks and cascades and over a bamboo bridge to the Millennium Cave on Espiritu Santo, but in the morning, Frederick looked up at the rather gloomy sky and announced that the hike was off. “It is going to rain—hard,” he said, “and you’ll be up to your hips in mud.”

Instead, he suggested that if we timed it properly, we might be able to get in a canoe trip up an estuary on nearby Malo Island to a blue hole that, he said, was quite beautiful. Now, usually when I think of blue holes I think of the great vertical submarine caves off the coast of Belize or Dean’s Blue Hole in the Bahamas which were formed back in the Ice Ages when the ocean was 300 to 400 feet lower than it is now and these limestone depressions were formed from rain and chemical reactions and then, eventually, filled by the ocean.

That’s not what the Malo Blue Hole is. It’s simply a swimming hole far back in the jungle where a freshwater underground spring meets the ocean. The result is that the water is a brilliant cerulean. Thus the blue hole moniker.

So late in the afternoon, after we’d gotten one of those long, warm tropical showers that lasted for no more than twenty minutes before the skies cleared, we hoped into one of the resort’s motorboats and Amos took us over to Malo where several canoes were pulled up on the sand where the estuary empties out into the ocean.

Now, here’s the thing: We had three canoes and seven people plus Amos, our guide, so two of the canoes had three paddlers and one had two. Because I was bringing my camera gear and wanted to shoot photos as we rowed, I wanted to go with Amos and someone who could actually paddle a canoe while I shot pictures. The only problem with that is that it left the other two boats with mostly inexperienced paddlers. Which was a problem almost immediately. One boat, with three women, would either paddle into one of the other boats or, worse yet, straight into the shore.

The Coevolution quarterly

Then, when the fire is dead out, replace the sod. The same technique will work in soft ground without sod. Good new canoe Blue Hole Canoes have added a ...

Southern communities

BLUE HOLE CANOES— THE EARLY YEARS Encouraged by Germanna business professor John Colangelo, Williamson delved deeper into the subject. ...

Canoes & kayaks, a complete buyer's guide

This canoe is not for the "average" paddler but for the advanced racer who will only settle for the best. BLUE HOLE CANOE COMPANY Sunbright, Tennessee 37872 ...

Expedition canoeing, a guide to canoeing wild rivers in North America

You'll find some recommended epoxies in appendix B. Tears Bob Lantz of Blue Hole Canoe recommends the following procedure for mending a tear in Royalex with ...

Administrative management

The Blue Hole Canoe Co., located in the mountains of Sunbright, Tenn. ... In early September, Blue Hole Canoe joined forces with four other canoe companies ...