Oaks Bottom Wildlife Refuge--an Intersection

An osprey’s nest platform sits atop a nearby power tower, fitted between recreational path and the commerce of rail. The heavy twigs of summer haphazardly skewed atop a rigid metal frame sit as evidence that the wild has accepted the work of man to re-establish a berth for it. This nature reserve represents an undertaking many years in the making. It is urban revitalization for the wild; indeed, it is a unique intersection of man and nature and machine, this patch of reclaimed earth and water, paths of wild life and human recreation and commerce crossing with livelihood and everything that that brings to a place.

Starting my exploration from a treed parking lot above, I pass a group of congenial dog walkers engaged in the easy conversation of habit. Dogs sniff and woof, offering an occasional growl with the attendant “Easy!” Their owners chat and gossip with the familiarity of routine. I hear a jay calling and see the bright eye of a varied thrush as it hops near the base of shrubbery, scratching for a meal. Walking down the path from Sellwood Park through the steep sides of ivy-invaded slopes I see some evidence of the homeless and hoodlums that are rumored to occasion the nature reserve—trash, discarded clothes, and a shopping cart. Shiny and akimbo, pushed off the edge of the park above, the cart is as out of place as that noxious climbing invader, ivy. This Sunday afternoon is a dry one for January, and Oaks Bottom Nature Reserve is visited by birders watching quietly, wanderers seeking solitude off-trail in the shelter of trees, and weekend athletes riding and gliding the paved trail of the Springwater Corridor recreation path, looking in their colorful outfits as fine as kites in a breeze.

Comprising 163 acres of wetlands and meadow in Portland’s borough of Sellwood just north of Sellwood Bridge, the reserve abuts the Willamette River with a wooded edge and railroad track running parallel to its west side with palisades to the east below the major thoroughfare of SE McLoughlin Boulevard. Residential streets flank its southeast, adjoining a nearby park which, with its crescent shape, buffers and protects the south of the reserves just north of Sellwood Bridge. The northern boundary is Ross Island Bridge, and sometimes audible is a sand and gravel company extracting building material from the bottom of the river. From the wetlands can be seen the Ferris wheel and skate ring building of an amusement concession known as Oaks Park. This very constriction, the acres bounded by man-made paths, is what inspires that which is best about Oaks Bottom for the urban dweller on a walk: a view of the wild at your feet and overhead with Portland’s downtown city skyline observable in near distance.

In the middle portion of the reserve is open water. It’s not really a small pond or large lake but river water from a channel at the northwest meandering in from the Willamette to feed the wetland area. It is more than a controlled slough. I have read that restoration workers were intercepted in their own dam building by an energetic and pioneering group of beavers. The animals’ work was rebuilt by human hands so that water could be let in and out by our reckoning. Our resetting of a natural calendar is an attempt to mimic the natural flooding that would have accompanied this place long before it became a dumping ground for our refuse, before the city, before the industry, when this place was wild. The drowned forms of willow trees are evidence that this took place after the reserve was reclaimed from its use as a landfill. The dead branches protruding from the land covered with water makes learning to spy the sleek, still form of the heron tricky. In past summer months I have been astounded when a dead branch unfurled its long wings and lifted itself off the water and glided to another place where it shape-changed and disappeared into stick-ness again.

This late winter the residents of the wetlands are mallard ducks and what appear to be widgeons. The abundance of green heron is dependant on time of year; on the occasions I have been here in this season I have always seen one heron, never more. But it is enough. Sitting on a damp log in the wetland zone I hear sounds of a barge working its way downstream in the Willamette while the call of geese and twitter of song sparrows ring and echo nearby. The raised berm of a railroad easement is conjoined with the asphalt recreation path where the calls of walkers, runners, inline skaters, and cyclists can be heard intermittently. In the waterways of the park are found the required ducks and geese, on the streets above are cars and trucks. The sounds of all this wafts in and out through the reserves, noise carried by breeze through varying distances and echoed back by bluffs above.

But it is the bird sounds that catch my attention: the act of flapping ducks rising on water and up on their tails seems to be their version of stretching of backs or one long physical yawn. Their shuffling, webbed feet are mucking, poking, and dabbling; insistent bills work the shallow water under the Mausoleum like a farmer picking beans, head down and intent. I hear the call of a red-winged blackbird unseen; this birdsong is the first one I was able to discern many years ago, in a different state. It makes this place feel like home. I hear the piercing, falling, wistful wail of a northern flicker. This bird, the largest of our area woodpeckers, is a study in evolution. We can witness their drill-bit beak with its long, seeking tongue transform it’s feeding habits from pecking and prodding dead and dying wood and living bark of trees to searching out insects on the ground. I have seen their drillings in the soil of my backyard and first thought the holes to have been from some other creature, perhaps burrowing insects. But last year, from my bedroom window, I saw one of my backyard flickers thrusting at the ground like a fisherman spearing prey in the sea and now know the truth of evidence; he was hunting bugs in my weedy lawn’s soil.

I hear the click-click of a hummingbird at rest, then the whirr of his wings. That sound prompts my eye to follow my ear and find him. There, he settled on that branch, in the sun, bathing in energy. A click and a whir and he is gone again, an Anna’s hummingbird, yearlong resident in the Willamette Valley and said to build nests below the Mausoleum. I hope to see a nest someday. A twenty something man with his girlfriend is also bird-watching. I ask if he knows what bird it is that I can’t identify: it’s a small, singular bird, flitting from branch to branch like a chickadee searching for bugs. Without the dark head-cap I know it is not one of those. The man says it’s a golden crowned kinglet after a quick consultation with his bird book. I cheerfully believe and thank him, wishing I knew the name for myself with that brand of certainty.

I have seen only a dozen of the reported 100 plus species of birds that are said to reside in or visit the reserve and none of its mammals or amphibians. But what I have enjoyed illustrates why this place is a favorite outdoor venture for school programs, the Audubon Society, Metro and is supported by the Friends of Oaks Bottom and Friends of Trees. It’s a place given a second chance. This new life is not like the old one, it is not as it was before. There are scatterings of old car tires and weird rusted metal shapes and odd broken bits of concrete about. The water levels are managed by human hands, there are sampling wells set in places for an un-named purpose and an invasion of blackberry and clematis as well as English ivy. But in those brambles song sparrows make a habitat, and in the tufted wisps of last year’s clematis flower are the fixings for a bird’s nest, perhaps that of a bushtit whose hanging pendulum sock is home and are said to grace trees here in the summer. I’ll have to come back and take a look.

Close to thirty-five years ago citizens of Portland questioned the city fathers’ vision of creating a recreational use area in what is now Oaks Bottom Wildlife Refuge. Rather than turning an old landfill and dump into softball fields and museums, local interest in green space was invigorated and reinforced by the changing tides of park philosophy at the city. This eventually led to the area being re-created and adopted as a natural place in 1988. It was the first such urban wildlife area founded by the city and is today still considered a jewel of the city’s Parks and Recreation program. Rather than a commercial recreation setting it has become a reclaimed landscape from which lessons of natural science can be taught, learned, and appreciated by the citizens of an urban landscape.