Cuyahoga

This is where we walked, swam, hunted, danced, sang.
Take a picture here
Take a souvenir.

The R.E.M. song "Cuyahoga" is about the famously flammable Cuyahoga river, and to a lesser extent about the Native Americans in that same area and across the United States.

In the Pacific Northwest, the above words seem even more apt, perhaps because in many areas one can still imagine the Chinook and others coming down to the mighty Columbia, hunting deer in the forest, heading out to the slough to gather clams and oysters, or onto canoes to pursue fish and whale.

Considering it that way, though, requires setting aside the much more cynical perception of the original area: A place where people lived their lives, a world of beauty deserving of photographs and souvenirs for anyone fortunate enough to see it. At least until it became so polluted that it could catch on fire, at which point pictures and souvenirs are very much beside the point. And quickly thoughts return to the mouth of the Columbia, thousands of miles away, whence Lewis and Clark came, reaching across a continent.

It's almost insane that President Jefferson would send them from the shore of the Atlantic to seek out the Pacific. Perhaps no more insane, though, than placing other Americans atop rockets to send them to the moon (And Our Rockets Always Blow Up). It may merely take that never-say-die, We Can Do It attitude.(Although it probably helps if it's spread among enough people to keep it going when the temptation to stop is strong.) Maybe at some point there will be people trying to justify using Cuyahoga as a perfect tribute to those first lunar pioneers.