Major support for Oregon Field Guide is provided by... [ music playing ] WOMAN: Come on!

There he is, there he is, there he is.

[ exclaims ] Come over here, buddy!

Good boy!

[ laughing ] WOMAN: Whoo, high five!

Yeah!

ED JAHN: Next on Oregon Field Guide: It's a part of Portland that has long been neglected, but look what can be found here.

WOMAN: This land has such a story of resiliency.

And to me, it represents hope.

Then, need something to relax to?

How about a moment along the Umpqua River?

But first, it's a wild geology road trip from eastern Washington to the Oregon coast.

There is some detail in this lava that will tell us something surprising.

I often tease our geology-loving producer Jule Gilfillan when I say, "Rocks are just rocks!"

But she has totally convinced me otherwise with stories like this next one.

In fact, I have a whole new appreciation for what happened here at Yaquina Head because of the geologic mystery that she helped unpack while road-tripping with YouTube rock star Nick Zentner.

[ seagulls calling ] NICK: I keep hearing about Yaquina Head, and this is it, lighthouse and everything else, and there's a fascinating lava story-- I'm not sure I believe it, but I think that there is some detail in this lava that will tell us something surprising.

GILFILLAN: Spend just a few minutes with geologist Nick Zentner and it's clear this man loves rocks.

Unbelievable!

This is so frickin' cool.

I can't believe it.

What Nick's so excited about is this rock.

It's called the Ginkgo flow after some Ginkgo trees that wound up petrified in the molten lava.

So you see some gold things.

What do they look like?

It looks like little coppery gems or something.

NICK: Coppery gems.

I like it.

I was hoping that this Ginkgo flow would look exactly like this with these crystals, but I never dreamed it would be this obvious and this beautiful.

I mean, I'm serious.

Like, this is one of the highlight moments for me in the last 35 years.

That's high praise from someone who teaches geology at Central Washington University, hosts a TV series called "Nick on the Rocks"... And it's more than complicated, it's controversial.

...and whose online lecture series gets hundreds of thousands of views.

I have seen this lava with these crystals in eastern Washington.

And I can show you a spot along the Snake River where there's proof that that's where the eruption was of this lava 300 miles inland, almost to Idaho.

Are you interested in going?

Yeah, let's do it!

Traveling across northern Oregon to eastern Washington takes you through the geologic wonder known as the Columbia River Basalt Group, a series of lava flows that blanketed the Northwest some 16 million years ago.

It makes up what Nick likes to call the German chocolate cake.

NICK: If you think of a German chocolate cake, there's 300 layers in the cake, and the Ginkgo flow is just one of the 300.

Here in eastern Washington, the Snake River cuts right through that cake.

Pretty soon, we're headed off-road to a place Nick's heard about but never actually seen.

I'm hoping when we round this corner, we'll see this obvious kind of fin-like wall.

Let's get the drum roll out.

-I think that's it.

-That's it!

I think that's it.

Wow!

Like, how would you describe that shape of those things?

It looks like a Christmas tree to me, with just the center going up and the branches kind of... [ chuckling ] It kind of does, doesn't it?

So we're looking inside of this German chocolate cake.

All the layers are horizontal, and then here's this thing cutting up through that's called a feeder dike.

And this is the Ginkgo flow.

This is the same one we saw at the Oregon coast.

This is ground zero for that flow.

And to make sure this is the Ginkgo... And I don't even need a hand lens.

GILFILLAN: There's our orange-y crystals.

NICK: These orange crystals.

So, that's our telltale puzzle piece.

NICK: Yeah.

I mean, God, that is...

I've seen photos of this for like 30 years.

It is kind of a thrill to be here, I've got to say.

So, if we're here 16.1 million years ago, Jule, this is the crack that opens up, Superman-style.

Here comes this Ginkgo magma with the orange crystals inside, but it gets more interesting than that.

It's not just one point of fire fountaining, but this crack is tens of miles long across eastern Washington, so to have this curtain of fire.

You've got this hot syrup that's now starting to flow.

Why is it just basically heading west, what do you think?

Uh, slope?

Yes!

Oh!

I think we can just say-- See, most of this isn't rocket science.

-It's rock science.

-[ both laugh ] NICK: It's going to try to follow a valley.

The Snake River's right here.

Was the Snake River the thing to follow all the way to the coast?

It's like we're detectives out here.

This is fun, but we have a spot where our friend is flowing directly on top of river sand, and there's details in that sand to tell us which river it was.

[ music playing ] From this remote spot along the Snake River, we make our way down through the Palouse Hills.

A couple hours later, we enter the rocky uplands near Pleasant Valley, Washington, about five miles north of the Oregon border.

Inside this deep canyon, tiny Rock Creek is all but hidden and gives no hint of the powerful river that once flowed here.

NICK: Let's go find the bottom of this flow.

The beautiful part about this is the fact that the Columbia River used to be right through here as opposed to over there.

Wait, the Columbia River ran through here?

-Columbia.

Columbia River.

-What?

NICK: Well, let's look for evidence.

Can you put your finger on the cliff that's the very bottom of the Ginkgo lava flow and also what is lying below it?

JULE: Oh, yeah, right in here.

NICK: And that is our friend, the Ginkgo flow.

Wow.

We've got a moment in time right here where this flow filled up the Columbia Valley and sent the river someplace else.

What?

Wait, the Ginkgo flow came through here and changed the flow of the river?

NICK: Yes, if you fill the entire valley with lava, the river's forced to flow elsewhere.

JULE: But it's going to find its way to the coast somehow, huh?

-It's going to find its way.

-Yeah.

NICK: Let's see if we can find some orange crystals.

JULE: Proof's in the pudding.

NICK: Right.

I better come through now.

[ Jule laughs ] Oh... JULE: There it is.

Wow, so it's for sure Ginkgo.

-NICK: It's for sure Ginkgo.

-Super cool.

Having traced the Ginkgo through the valley that once held the ancient Columbia, we head into the mighty river's modern course and a state park called Crawford Oaks, near Maryhill.

NICK: And, yes, we're standing on top of our friend, the Ginkgo flow.

If the Ginkgo makes it to the ocean, where would you assume the Ginkgo's going to get to?

-Astoria.

-Astoria.

The mouth of the Columbia.

That would be the logical thought.

But then a branch of this flow is going to get to Yaquina Head.

And which direction is Yaquina?

NICK: Well, let's get up in the air.

Yaquina Head and the Newport, Oregon, area is essentially, as the crow flies, that way, where Mount Hood is today.

JULE: Um, you might have to explain why Mount Hood's sitting there.

[ Nick laughs ] Well, Mount Hood is a giant, beautiful mountain, but it's a baby.

It's less than 1 million years old.

And remember, this is a 16 million-year-old lava flow, so it just happens to be that today, Mount Hood is this cherry on top of this old, buried, fossilized Columbia River Valley.

-Isn't that cool?

-That's amazing.

NICK: And there's a place in the Willamette Valley where there is Ginkgo flow and a major waterfall coming over it at a secret spot.

[ Jule laughs ] Out of the rocky and dramatic Columbia River Gorge, we drive southwest into the verdant green of the Willamette Valley.

JULE: Wow, look at all this snow!

Mm, sort of.

This is North Falls at Silver Falls State Park near Silverton.

Here, flows of Columbia River basalt form sturdy cliffs for a series of thrilling waterfalls.

It's another spot where the Ginkgo likely flowed right into the course of an ancient river.

Maybe we have to go back behind the waterfall to see it.

So, the question is, is this the sandstone?

I think it is.

-JULE: Wow.

-I think it is.

JULE: Oh, look at that.

That's sandy.

Yeah, it's the sand now.

So, we've got this resistant Ginkgo flow that's making this ledge above us.

Oh, God, this is amazing.

So, if this is Columbia River sand, great.

If it's not Columbia River sand and it's a different river that was cross-cutting through south of Portland, that's fine, too.

It doesn't matter.

What matters is that this is our same Ginkgo flow.

And as much as I'd like to break this thing open and look for orange crystals, I know we're in a state park.

It's probably not a good move, right?

But this is the Ginkgo flow.

With that, we drive the last hundred miles to Newport and the place we started, Yaquina Head.

-Pretty nice.

-Whew!

This time, we're topside.

So the Ginkgo flow ends here.

Yes, but it's kind of only the beginning, believe it or not, because there's evidence that when it was liquid, it dug into the ocean sand and re-erupted a little bit further.

So, we've got Ginkgo flow part two potentially.

-There we go.

I like that.

-The underwater edition.

-The underwater edition.

-[ laughs ] Now you're thinking.

Yeah, I like that.

JULE: You're leaving us with a cliffhanger.

-NICK: Yeah, totally.

-[ Jule laughs ] [ gulls cawing ] [ music playing ] If you've ever been to North Portland out by the airport, you've probably seen the Columbia Slough.

From most places, at least by the road, it just doesn't look like much.

But producer Ian McCluskey did a little exploring.

What he found was a world of water, wildlife, and good people working hard to preserve an urban oasis.

WOMAN: For me, it feels wonderful to paddle the Columbia Slough.

When I was a child, it was impossible.

A lot of it looked like a garbage dump.

You didn't see anything alive here.

Maybe a sewer rat.

MCCLUSKEY: This waterway was once a dumping ground in the industrial north of Portland, the Columbia Slough.

Anyone who's flown in or out of the PDX International Airport has looked down and seen the Columbia Slough.

But no doubt most folks had no idea that they were looking at Oregon's most industrialized watershed.

The Columbia Slough is a 19-mile-long slackwater corridor.

From Fairview Lake, it meanders westward, weaving between warehouses, sliding silently past the airport, a sewage plant, a race track, under two interstates, until it eventually reaches its confluence with the Willamette River near Bybee Lake in Kelley Point Park.

Although this watershed is only about 50 square miles, it holds more than five percent of Oregon's population.

WOMAN: There's tens of thousands of people that work here, but there's over 100,000 people, if not more, that live here and reside in the watershed.

The Columbia Slough Watershed Council wants to get residents onto the water to explore this bastion of nature in their own backyard.

-WOMAN: We're going.

-[ woman giggles ] We have canoes, we have kayaks, we have paddles, we have life vests.

You don't have to pay to do it, you just have to show up.

WOMAN: So the two canoes together are called bimarans.

We strap them together.

It's a lot more stable of an experience.

It would be very hard to tip it over.

So, if you don't know how to swim, if you're new to paddling, it feels a lot more secure and stable to be able to paddle and experience the water in that way.

And they don't have to go buy a thousand-dollar canoe and paddles and find someplace to store it.

I mean, so many people live in apartments.

Where are you going to put a canoe?

Nowhere.

There's nowhere to put it.

MAN: Like, I know brothers who actually live in North Portland that have never been to Kelley Point Park, that didn't know Smith and Bybee Lakes was anywhere near there.

Has no clue that Whitaker Ponds is literally in their backyard.

Like, there's a beautiful playground in your backyard.

And they might see me on social media paddling or doing something like this, and they're like, "Oh, my God, that's dope!

Bro, where are you?"

They're thinking, like, I'm out of the country somewhere.

It's like, "No, I'm seven minutes from your house."

The slough was once free-flowing and flooded seasonally with the Columbia River, creating a dynamic wetland and an abundant home for birds and wildlife.

FILMREEL ANNOUNCER: Here is America's answer.

It can be done!

MCCLUSKEY: During World War II, a marshy area of the slough was developed to house the workers of the shipyards.

In 1943, a city of some 40,000 people, called Vanport, sprung up almost overnight.

The shipyards needed labor.

They recruited a lot of people.

And a lot of those people were people of color.

But shortly after the war, in 1948, Vanport was destroyed by flood.

A lot of people like my family, they were going to go back to Chicago.

But all of their things got washed away, so they were stuck living here in Portland, and that's why I'm here today.

It's because of that flood.

In the decades that followed, the city of Portland grew.

Zoning concentrated heavy industry here.

The floodplain became channelized... and the stagnant water was seen as a place to dump garbage and sewage.

The Columbia Slough became one of the most polluted waterways in the state.

And it wasn't until the people that lived near here started really advocating to clean it up that that clean-up started to happen.

Starting in the 1990s, volunteers rallied to clean up Whitaker Ponds, at the center of the slough, transforming a dump site into a public park.

But as recently as a couple of years ago, a local resident, Paul Taylor, found that there was still a great deal of clean-up to do.

I came to the slough because it was close to home, it's a narrow natural corridor, so you see a lot of wildlife.

And I would come out quite a bit, and I would go home and my wife would ask me how the paddle was, and I would say, "Yeah, it was really good except there's, like, so much trash."

It's kind of like, you know, harshing my mellow a little bit."

So, you know, this cycle kind of repeated itself several times until my wife finally said, "You know, you can either ignore the trash or you can do something about the trash, because I am not listening to you complain about the trash anymore."

[ chuckles ] So, I adopted a two-mile stretch of the Columbia Slough.

I've been coming out for the last three years two to five times a week, and I collect the trash in my kayak, and I have a couple depots along the slough where I store it, and then I come around in my car and I pick it up and it gets disposed of.

One tire at a time, you know?

You do one a week, and then, you know, before you know it, you've collected 140 tires.

[ chuckling ] Despite the proximity to freeways and the airport, down at the water's level, folks feel transported to a more natural and wild place.

More than 150 bird species can be spotted along the slough, like eagles, egrets, and great blue heron.

And a variety of other wildlife, like Western painted turtles, beaver, and even coyotes.

-Oh!

-Where?

PAMELA: It is a coyote!

-AMANDA: Look at that.

-Whoa, that's wild.

AMANDA: I've never seen a coyote out here.

[ airplane engine droning overhead ] You'll hear the occasional plane, you'll hear the occasional semi maybe passing, but everything really just slows down, quiets down when you're on the water.

[ cawing ] [ birds chirping ] DARRELL: I look around while I'm paddling the slough, and it feels like I could be anywhere, like I'm transported to a completely different place.

And when you hear, like, a choir of birdsong, it's one of the most relaxing and calming sounds I can think of right now, and immediately I can feel my blood pressure lower.

So this is... this is like heaven for me.

This is heaven on earth.

The Columbia Slough has come a long way, and more people than ever are claiming their connection to it.

But there is still more work to do.

PAMELA: This land has such a story of resiliency, and to me, it represents hope.

DARRELL: We hear so many bleak messages in terms of, like, heh, the future, in terms of, like, climate, and we wonder if there's any hope.

But you can visit Whitaker Ponds and it'll tell you right there that there's definitely hope.

[ music playing ] It's safe to say that a lot of people can enjoy a nice, sunny, summer day along a river.

But it's those rainy, miserable days, that's where photographer Brandon Swanson finds a special kind of beauty.

[ music playing ] [ music playing ] You can now find many Oregon Field Guide stories and episodes online.

And to be part of the conversation about the outdoors and environment here in the Northwest, join us on Facebook.

[ honking ] [ birds chirping ] Major support for Oregon Field Guide is provided by... Additional support provided by... And the following... and contributing members of OPB and viewers like you.