CounterPunch Exclusives

CounterPunch Exclusives

War and Geology at the Coyote Wall

Sick of watching, reading and writing about yet another war, Lola and I took off  for one of my favorite retreats in the Pacific Northwest, variously called the Maze, the Syncline, or the Labyrinth, depending on who you first heard about it from. For me, it will always be known as the Coyote Wall, getting that name from my late friend Chuck Williams, who said the weird geology could only have been designed by the Great Trickster.

The Coyote Wall is situated near the exact point where the Columbia Gorge almost instantly transitions from temperate rainforest to high desert; as such, the landscape was a “power spot”, as Chuck put it, for the Columbia River tribes. (Chuck was a descendant of Chief Tumulth of the Cascades (Watlala) tribe.) There are vision pits and pictographs and petroglyphs all over this unique,........

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