”Connection of sky and basalt”

CLARKSTON – Architect Maya Lin attended a Nez Perce blessing ceremony at Chief Timothy Park over the weekend as she prepares for a series of works along area rivers, following the route of explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark to the Pacific.

Lin, perhaps best known for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., plans to focus on what she calls “The Skybowl” here, a natural amphitheater in the park – an island on the Snake River 6 miles west of Clarkston on U.S. Highway 12.

The piece is one of five by Lin commissioned in Washington state by the Vancouver, Wash.-based Confluence Project to mark the 200th anniversary of the Corps of Discovery. Two Oregon sites are also being considered. The seven works are dispersed across 450 miles – mostly where one river flows into another – and are expected to cost $22 million. So far, about $13.5 million has been raised.

“I see it is as one river, one lifeblood of a system,” Lin said Saturday at a gathering of about 120 people.

“Where is God’s country?” asked Lin, who has made several quiet planning trips to the region. “God’s country is here, in places like this. It’s pretty special.”

Gulls chattered over the sluggish water as Nez Perce spiritual leaders performed their ceremony near the point where Lewis and Clark passed into what is now Washington state in October 1805.

Nez Perce drummers sang blessing songs. Indian women stood on the south side of the skybowl and men stood on the north side. Songbirds and waterfowl piped up during the pauses.

“I haven’t formed what this site will be,” she added. “I actually didn’t want to have too many ideas before the blessing ceremony.”

With a downriver wind whipping her black hair, Lin raised her arms as she took in the view from the skybowl at the island’s highest point. She called it a “connection of sky and basalt.”

The site is one of many “multisided spaces, drawing a story over real time,” said Lin.

Lin, who described herself as a staunch environmentalist, said she sees the Columbia River system as being at a crossroads.

“I could argue that all of my pieces are apolitical, but then again, nothing is apolitical,” she said.

Lewis and Clark and their party – joined by Indian guide and interpreter Sacajawea in what is now North Dakota – were charged by President Thomas Jefferson with finding a waterway west and mapping the country they passed through. While there was flourishing trade and exploration along the Pacific Coast, there had been few forays overland by people of European descent.

Confluence Project officials hope Lin’s interpretive works will underscore the tremendous changes ushered in by their journey.

“The selected sites mark important confluences of rivers and ecosystems as well as Native American and Euro-American cultures,” according to the group’s Web site. Completion of the projects will likely take several years, a Confluence Project spokesman said.

Nez Perce elder Wilfred Scott, who served during the Korean and Vietnam wars, praised Lin for her work on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.

“That memorial may be simple, but that memorial covers the world,” said Scott. “That is the legacy she has left.”

As he and several others walked the island with Lin, they said they heard voices of their ancestors.

“This is a place where you could hear the people,” Scott said.

The Confluence Project is the result of collaboration among the Umatilla Confederated Tribes, the Nez Perce Tribes, Clark County and Friends of Lewis and Clark in Pacific County. Most sites are at confluences of rivers.

The four other Washington sites are:

•Sacajawea State Park near Pasco, confluence of the Columbia and Snake rivers.

•Confluence of the Columbia and the Klickitat Trail.

•Confluence of the Columbia and Willamette rivers at Vancouver.

•Cape Disappointment State Park, where the Columbia meets the Pacific and where Lin plans a basalt replacement for a well-used steel-and-concrete fish-cleaning station.

Two Oregon projects are still under consideration.

•Celilo Falls Park, near The Dalles, Ore.

•Confluence of the Columbia and Oregon’s Sandy River.