Read The Good Rain: Across Time & Terrain in the Pacific Northwest for Free Online

autopilotand sonar and fathometers which warn of approaching shallow water; they come with fax machines printing out the latest from weather satellites above, and video channel charts. A lot of their captains don’t want to use some old-fart bar pilot in an orange coat, approaching them in an orange ship that looks like a pipe. But the high-tech stuff—it doesn’t mean shit here, says McAvoy.
    “This river is like a snake,” he says. “You gotta know when to turn and when to jump. All the gadgetry behind the wheel won’t help you decipher local currents. We’re talking a quarter-million-odd cubic feet a second out there, a ten-knot current, sometimes. I’ve seen floating lighthouses go down.”
    Does McAvoy feel like he’s part of a dying profession, the last of a breed. “Dying?” he says, lighting a new cigarette with his old one. “What d’ya mean by that?”
    “The trends don’t look good. Ever thought of opening a tanning salon?”
    “Hell—everybody’s dying.”
    Early the next morning, still no sign of the low clouds that permanently park themselves over these parts in winter. I go up to the top of Coxcomb Hill, the highest point in Astoria, where a faded column frieze commemorates the two centuries of white history here. Firmly anchored to the north slope of the hill, Astoria could’ve been San Francisco but for the abusive storms of the dark season. Astoria is crafted to the peculiarities of this hill, washed by the rain and sculpted by the Pacific wind. The town seems a place of brooding resignation, where hope and commerce peaked long ago. The population, stalled at ten thousand for half a century, still makes Astoria one of the most populous towns on the Pacific Coast north of San Francisco.
    In many parts of the American West, anything older than a mobile home is sometimes considered historic. Not so for Astoria, which seems built up beyond its purpose, like an accountant with bulging forearms and a tattoo on his ass. The British took it during the War of 1812, the Confederacy roamed offshore in the Civil War, and the Japanese fired a few rounds from a submarine during World War II. This was to be the “New York of the West,” capital of a fur empire founded by John Jacob Astor of Manhattan. He never saw the city named for him; the owners of most Resource Towns seldom got out among the muck that brought them all their money. The New York monicker, and similar names transplanted from the East, have been dropped on locations all over the Northwest,as if they could bestow some instant sophistication on the stumpland settlements. Seattle’s first name was New York-Alki, the last word a bit of Chinook jargon meaning “eventually.” When the city expanded north across Lake Union, David Denny named the new part of town Brooklyn. Farther up Puget Sound the city of Everett, in a moment of profound sycophancy, was named for the toddler son of a New York Resource Baron who was supposed to build an empire on the mudflats of Port Gardner; its first name was Lowell, after the Massachusetts town. Trying to flatter the New York capitalist at a dinner in Manhattan, the Northwesterners offered the name of his boy, who was crawling around at their feet. Oregon has Albany, but most of the state’s cities are named for Bay State locations—Salem, Medford, Springfield. Boston lost out to Portland in a coin toss.
    Up the 164 steps of the Astoria Column’s circular stairway I go. Atop the promontory, the wind is fierce, the sky scrubbed clean and salty. The big river snakes the last few miles and then empties into the horizon. I look in every direction, but I’m drawn to the kicking bar.
    Lieutenant Monteith’s face is grim. The killer breakers are about three hundred yards away, off a tongue of sand called Peacock Spit. He tells me to hold on tight to the rail of our boat while a smaller ship, a thirty-foot wave-slicer, pulls up. This other boat is faster, a bullet used to get in and out of Peacock in a