Over the last 15 years, I have explored the Columbia River west as far as the river’s mouth at Astoria, 95 miles away from Portland, and east as far as the Bonneville Dam, about 37 miles away. I’ve also taken her up the Willamette River through downtown Portland as far as the dam at Oregon City. Lately, as my Alzheimer’s disease has slowly progressed, it has become increasingly difficult to safely operate and maintain my beloved Lizzie G. So, with real sadness and sense of loss, I have put her up for sale. In the fall of 2022, my friend John Harland and I took Lizzie G for one more trip to Beacon Rock. September had been hotter than usual, and we struggled a bit hiking to the top in the heat. As always, the view from the top, 850 ft above the river, was spectacular.

The US West has long evoked fantasies of climatological stability: the aridity of the Southwest; the soggy Pacific Northwest’s endless rain; the “humid fallacy” that Mike Davis has argued inaccurately overlaid a Mediterranean climate onto Southern California. Davis' derivation from a uniformitarian geological model is less apposite for the earthquake-prone landscape of Southern California than the dramatic alternations of a catastrophist sensibility. Davis thus points not simply toward a more accurate description of the material conditions of the US West, but to the narrative rhythm of its climate, which unfolds across long stretches whose consistency challenges narrative interest until punctuated by the sudden violence of a shift in weather. Alongside two other central figurations of the US West – the Garden of the World and the Great American Desert – this chapter tracks this rhythm through western American literary history.