Richard Manning's Missoula and the Blackfoot River.
brianlux
Posts: 41,687
While in Missoula for that EXCELLENT PJ show, it was by no coincidence that I began reading a book by a resident Missoula author, Richard Manning: One Round River (Henry Holt, 1997). The central theme of the book is Manning's argument against a proposed gold mine operation at the head of the Blackfoot River-- the same river made famous by Norman Maclean's A River Runs Through It and the river that runs into the Clark Fork River which runs through Manning's home town, Missoula, MT. The book led to halting of the proposed mine which would have taken a mountain of oar and spread it into layers to be leached with a cyanide solution to extract gold dust- a process that would have wrecked havoc on the river's ecosystem and done much the same downstream.
Manning's book also provides an excellent and superbly well written history of Missoula and the upper Bitterroot Valley. The show those of us attended in Missoula took place in what was once a huge lake. Here's Manning's description of that lake:
It is named glacial Lake Missoula and once was as large as Lake Ontario. More than once, actually. The lake formed toward the end of the last glaciation, the end of the Ice Age, by an ice dam in what is now northern Idaho. Miles thick, the dam pooled an enormous body of water throughout what are now the river valleys of the region. The glaciers melted slowly in fits and starts, and periodically the dam would melt enough to float, draining this massive inland sea in a matter of a day. The lake flushed as many as forty times during the course of about 3,000 years, the first time as early as 16,000 years ago. The spectacular geology of the Columbia Basin [home to another well know Pearl Jam venue- The Gorge!], everything between the Blackfoot and the Pacific , is largely evidence of Lake Missoula, so much so that the existence of the lake was deduced from observances in Washington State. A high-school biology teacher, J. Harlan Bretz, spent his spare time wandering the Columbia Plateau scablands, until he finally figured out that the landscape had to have been the result of a great flood. He formally offered that controversial hypothesis in 1923. He was right, and it was quite a flood. It roared toward Washington at speeds up to fifty-eight miles an hour, it's front lip a wall of water and ice 1,000 feet high. At one point it gouged a pothole 164 feet deep. (page 14)
Rock and roll!
Manning's book also provides an excellent and superbly well written history of Missoula and the upper Bitterroot Valley. The show those of us attended in Missoula took place in what was once a huge lake. Here's Manning's description of that lake:
It is named glacial Lake Missoula and once was as large as Lake Ontario. More than once, actually. The lake formed toward the end of the last glaciation, the end of the Ice Age, by an ice dam in what is now northern Idaho. Miles thick, the dam pooled an enormous body of water throughout what are now the river valleys of the region. The glaciers melted slowly in fits and starts, and periodically the dam would melt enough to float, draining this massive inland sea in a matter of a day. The lake flushed as many as forty times during the course of about 3,000 years, the first time as early as 16,000 years ago. The spectacular geology of the Columbia Basin [home to another well know Pearl Jam venue- The Gorge!], everything between the Blackfoot and the Pacific , is largely evidence of Lake Missoula, so much so that the existence of the lake was deduced from observances in Washington State. A high-school biology teacher, J. Harlan Bretz, spent his spare time wandering the Columbia Plateau scablands, until he finally figured out that the landscape had to have been the result of a great flood. He formally offered that controversial hypothesis in 1923. He was right, and it was quite a flood. It roared toward Washington at speeds up to fifty-eight miles an hour, it's front lip a wall of water and ice 1,000 feet high. At one point it gouged a pothole 164 feet deep. (page 14)
Rock and roll!
“The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man [or woman] who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.”
Variously credited to Mark Twain or Edward Abbey.
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The closest thing I can image to that much power and force is watching Pearl Jam perform. They did not disappoint!