The Columbia River Studies class had many reasons to visit the Umatilla Indian Reservation. The Umatillas are a culturally rich people, whose history and ways of life still have a profound effect on the landscape near Pendleton, Oregon. One of our main interests in visiting the reservation the tribe's recent efforts in stream habitat on the Umatilla River. The tribe, along with Salmon, a part of AmeriCorps, has been working on the river and its tributaries to restore streambanks with native plants, to provide new populations of salmon through its fisheries program, and to manage the river and surrounding landscape with sensitivity to the fisher.
Our visit to the Umatilla Reservation took us to the nursery where a significant native-plant program is underway and to the fish hatchery, where a passionate Mike McCloud took students on a tour of the hatchery, providing valuable information about fish biology and habitat and letting students feed the fish. We were accompanied on the tour by Tom Bailor, who rode the school bus with us and pointed out those places on the landscape where important things had happened.
"The best laid plans..." While visiting the nursery, our bus got stuck in the mud. After a fruitless struggle involving slats of wood, shovels, and many hands on hips in contemplation, we were forced to call a towtruck to come to our rescue. We discovered once again the generosity of people when a benevolent--and anonymous--towtruck operator from a local truck stop pulled us out for no fee.
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