Astoria Column

Author's Comments

The column itself is the obvious subject and I have made that photograph many times. The frieze spiraling up, the white tower against whatever the sky happens to be doing that afternoon, the small figures of visitors at the base for scale. It is a fine photograph and not really why I keep driving up Coxcomb Hill. What I come for is the view from the top, and specifically the view in winter. A clear January afternoon will give you something the summer never does. The haze burns off, the air goes thin and honest, and from that narrow observation deck you can pick out Mount St. Helens and Mount Rainier and sometimes Hood, all of them floating above the Coast Range like they have been pasted in. The Columbia widens toward the Pacific and the bar where the river meets the ocean reads as a single long line of broken water. The deck is narrow and the wind moves through it constantly. I have learned to bring a lens cloth and to keep my camera under my jacket between frames. Golden hour is the obvious answer and it is the right one - the light comes in low from the west and the river goes molten and the bridges to Washington stand up in silhouette. But the half hour after sunset, when most people have already started down the stairs, is when the volcanoes hold light longer than anything else in the frame and the town below begins to turn on its lamps. That is the photograph worth the climb.

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