Leaburg Dam on the McKenzie River in Oregon
Fishing from the piers in Monterey and up the McKenzie River at the Leaburg Dam are some of my few remaining childhood memories of time spent with my dad. At the dam, we sat on the man-made outcroppings on the Highway 126 side of the reservoir, or on the riverbanks near the picnic areas. We cast our lines into the shadows, where we figured—incorrectly—that fish hide from the sun. Between father and son, it was a great way to waste an afternoon. We caught a few rainbow trout, even a decent-sized one just below the dam. Of course, it was never about the fish as much as the time together.
Now, it looks like there's a 1 in 2 chance that they are going to remove the Leaburg Dam due to issues and expenses with repairing the hydropower system. I'm all for dam removal, but I can't help but have mixed feelings about losing the places where I spent time with my dad. He's gone now—has been for a couple of years. The McKenzie River valley is already almost unrecognizable after the wildfires that came not long before he died.
It's difficult to take all the change in. The place looks barren and sharp. I didn’t realize that I expected these kinds of things would always be around. In reality, there are few things like this left, and none are immune to change or destruction.
A lot of my older memories have started slipping away since I became a parent. Countless first moments and a million comfortable routines with my girls make up the majority of my memory now, as they should. But it seems I’ve safely stored a few of these older memories outside of my mind. They can only be retrieved when I visit the place where they were made—like some sort of afterlife geocache.
Leaburg Dam may be going away soon, and I look forward to the time when a team of industrious beavers replaces it with something much healthier for spawning steelhead. But I will miss the place. I’m hoping that by visiting the dam a few more times with my 4x5 camera, I can transfer a few of those important memories to sheets of film and then onto a nice fiber-based photographic print that I can hold in my hand. Maybe I’ll use one of my mom’s old cameras.
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