Back in my Jacksonville days, I used to play poker with a rookie reporter named Brad Schmidt. He was the smartest player in our group, although, for some reason, that rarely translated into victory. Funny how games of chance work. (He also played for the Times-Union Freebirds, a spirited but outmanned rec-league hoops team, and I seem to recall him hitting a baseline jumper or two.) Anyway, Brad’s at the Oregonian now, and I think he’s beginning to hit his stride. Check out this piece:
CASCADE LOCKS — Along the most traveled hiking path in the Columbia River Gorge, there is a cliff, formed more than 10 million years ago from lava and mud, that was home to one big rock.
The slab of rock was perhaps 6 feet wide, 3 feet deep and 13 feet high. It weighed some 17 tons and was part of a ledge directly overhanging Eagle Creek Trail.
Nature has challenged it time and again. Flooding. Freezing. Rain. Wind.
This fall, Nature brought landslides, knocking down the big rock’s neighbors and exposing a 4-inch crack.
Still the big rock remained. Shaken, perhaps, but intact.
Enter Man, with his contraptions to move otherwise immovable objects.
Man — in the form of officials from the U.S. Forest Service — worried that the rock could fall on unsuspecting hikers.
Rather than wait for the rock to fall when it would, forest personnel began working to bring it down.
But the big rock was stubborn.
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