A Late Fall Scene

[AlanLichty]

When Lewis and Clark first came through the area that is now Portland and Vancouver was a vast wetland floodplain. In their diaries they complained about not being able to sleep because of all the racket of the millions of birds that covered the place. By the end of the 1800's large portions of the wetlands had been diked off and drained to be used as farmland. The scene below shows a view of those former wetlands including the northern end of Vancouver Lake. From the bottom of the small hill just past the barn and all the way to the distant trees at the top of the frame about 7 miles away used to be part of the Columbia River wetlands.

Shot in late November as fall colors were starting to fade. Single frame at 166mm.

C&C always welcome.

 

[Douglas Sherman]

Neat mage and history lesson with the beautiful red barn, Alan.

 

[AlanLichty]

Neat mage and history lesson with the beautiful red barn, Alan.

Thanks Doug - the barn and the fall colors were the primary attraction for my lens on this occasion.

 

[JimFox]

It's amazing how we as humans can affect the terrain in such a way.

Can you imagine birds so loud that you couldn't sleep? Short of being at a wildlife preserve when you have 10 million geese there, I can't imagine the sound.

A great shot showing those fall colors and I really like the barn anchoring the scene.

 

[Jameel Hyder]

Nice fall colors To go with the interesting shape of water body. And yes that barn too.

 

[AlanLichty]

It's amazing how we as humans can affect the terrain in such a way.

Can you imagine birds so loud that you couldn't sleep? Short of being at a wildlife preserve when you have 10 million geese there, I can't imagine the sound.

A great shot showing those fall colors and I really like the barn anchoring the scene.

Thanks Jim - since I used to make my living studying all the ways h.saps altered the landscape not much surprises me anymore beyond the speed we change it now. Just north of Vancouver in the area around Ridgefield there is a National Wildlife Refuge and it can be a really noisy place with all of the ducks, geese, swans, etc. The current refuge is a tiny fraction of the original wetlands surrounding the Columbia so I don't find it hard to imagine the noise at all. What is notable about the fields in this scene is that most of the whole reclaimed area is less than 5' above sea level and will be susceptible to rising sea levels. We do have tides on the Columbia almost all the way up to Bonneville Dam.

That barn has been on my radar for a nice shot like this for a while.

 

[AlanLichty]

Nice fall colors To go with the interesting shape of water body. And yes that barn too.

Thanks Jameel - the lake itself is quite shallow and for the parts of it in the scene is less than 5' deep. The lake outlet is just beyond the barn and is a manmade channel that goes all the way up to Ridgefield. The barn is part of an older property dating back to when this part of the Vancouver area was mostly farms. Just below the bottom of the frame are modern suburbs.