I Grew Up On The Metolius - Celia Smith Walker, Fort Collins, Colorado

[Sent to the members of the Senate Rules Committee:]

I write to ask for your careful consideration of Oregon Senate Bill 30, and for your support for it in its original version. The Metolius Basin is truly a magical area. It deserves protection.

I grew up on the Metolius. I attended the little Black Butte School, ate potluck and danced at the Community Hall, bought penny candy at the Store, hiked the trails, fished the tributaries of the Metolius, learned to swim in creeks and ponds, rode my bicycle along the cinder roads. I spent hours under the ponderosa pine trees and along the Metolius and Spring Creek. I grew up judging the weather coming over Green Ridge and Black Butte, watching deer out in the meadow. This is no place for the concentrated masses of destination resorts.

I now live in Colorado, and have for 30 years. Colorado knows about mega development….and has rarely done it well. Aspen, Breckenridge, and Vail are prime examples, and the pristine beauty of high country Crested Butte will be Colorado’s next example of development gone extreme. The losses are immense for those of us who have seen the wildflowers, the quiet roads, the clear water, smelled the peppery swamp grasses. Large-scale development is simply incompatible with such sites and violates them.

In 1996, following the death of my husband, I sought the Metolius for healing. My writings were intended to be private, but if excerpts of them help convince you of the criticality of protecting this area, then sharing them with you is appropriate:

“The river fills my senses. The first night here it was so quiet. Not just that campers were still, but that nothing seemed to make a noise except the river. The river doesn’t speak with just one voice, but several—or maybe it is one voice, but with much to say. The background is almost a buzz of water crunching into water, but it undulates irregularly. With its rise and fall you can almost visualize the wave caps over rocks. Then there is the galumph of bigger water sloshing into some temporary vacuum. The brighter splash against the rocks. The background’s dull roar must be the slot water upstream, first shallow, then forced into a chute down the middle of the stream. From the transparent crystal shallows where you can see the rocks, to aquamarine and white cascades with champagne bubbles churning up. It sounds like wind in the trees, and although it could be, I think it is the beautiful water of the Metolius, and all that I can hear. It fills me completely and reassures me that the world continues at some basic level.”

There is a value to humankind in preserving the few quiet, special, pristine places remaining. There is honor and respect for those who can do that, such as yourself.

Celia Smith Walker
Fort Collins, Colorado