Astoria Riverwalk (Trolley Trail)

Author's Comments

The Columbia is wide here. Wider than you expect if you have only seen it on a map, and at blue hour in early autumn it goes the color of slate that has been left out in the rain. The bridge stretches across to Washington in a long, low arc that takes a moment to read as a single structure. From the 14th Street pier you can hold the whole span in a frame, and if the tide is right and the air is still, you get the doubled version below. I like this trail best in the hour before sunrise, when the cannery pilings stand in fog and the working boats have not yet left the docks. The sea lions are loud somewhere off to the east. A cargo ship moves through the channel with the patience of something that knows it cannot be hurried. The trolley does not run this early, which is part of why I come at this hour - the bell is charming in the afternoon and intrusive at five in the morning. The restored piers reward a longer lens. The peeling paint, the rust on the cleats, the way the old cannery roofs sag toward the river. There is a version of Astoria that is purely picturesque and a version that is honest about what this town used to do for a living, and the second version makes the better photograph. Long exposures work well here once the light begins to lift. Thirty seconds will smooth the river into something almost ceremonial, and the bridge will hold its line against a sky that is still deciding what color to be.

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