pictures.

Our resident photographer philosopher hunter cyclist, Torsten Kjellstrand, is gone from The Oregonian for almost a year. He and his family are living in Sweden thanks to his super smart wife, Jean, who is on a scholarship there. Before he left he finished up an installment of a long term project on Celilo Falls. Not only did Torsten make a wonderful set of pictures, but he also wrote the story and shot video for the first time.

Torsten writes:

Before people, before governments, before treaties, forces collided at Celilo. Monsters, a creation story goes, dammed the river so the salmon couldn’t swim up it. But Coyote fought back. While the Monsters were away, Coyote dug at the dam for five days until the water ran free again and the rhythm of life resumed. The remnants of the dam became Celilo Falls. Coyote turned the Monsters — called the Tah-tah Kleah — into swallows and made the law that the river should not be dammed. He retaught the salmon to swim upstream to spawn. At the falls, the fish stopped, forced to leap to reach upstream. When the Creator later made the mid-Columbia River people, they also stopped at the falls — to fish and trade and celebrate.