Growing Up Riparian: a Columbia River Boyhood

ri-par-ian--relating to or located on the bank of a natural watercourse [as a river] If a boy is lucky, he will grow up sharing his youth with a river. Add a river to a childhood and every boy is a potential Huckleberry Finn. The river beckons adventure and the boy answers. In 1967 the Wells Dam Hydro Electric Project formed the Lake Pateros Reservoir which swallowed up the last wild stretch of the Upper Columbia River in Washington State. A once vibrant stretch of river course became a placid lake fouled by milfoil weed and algae blooms, submerging forever beneath forty feet of glacial-blue water a magical playground where a boy once lived, roamed, and explored. In his memoir Growing Up Riparian T. M. Johnson recalls the ten years he spent growing up on the banks of the Columbia River when the Columbia was yet Mighty and a boy still young.