Sampling Wells

I found two sampling wells at Oaks Bottom. I had been searching for white oaks and madrones, but instead found round metal covers, approximately 15” across, sitting on a slightly larger piece of concrete with “SAMPLING WELL” simply inscribed on them. It was writ in smallish text; nothing in its style implied importance or asked for attention, not like it does when stated by all caps and in quotes and standing up on the printed page.

I had read that part of this nature reserve is actually built over a landfill, that there is 400,000 cubic feet of waste material under the soil. Were these wells installed to allow for testing of that buried debris? What exactly do they test, and how often? Who pulls the sample? In my mind I imagine a long, long handled ladle drawing a draught of some weird brew. Does it smell? What color is it? Is it murky and muddled with bits of refuse? Is it clear or bubbly or thick like a stew? Is it a toxic compost tea that must be drawn out using an oversized glass pipette?


When I was a kid I remember my dad drawing gas out of a pale blue pick-up truck’s tank. He was doing some sort of mechanical work and needed gas for a reason unclear. He kept a piece of old garden hose for just that purpose and would stick it in the Ford’s tank till it hit bottom and then he’d suck on the hose. He’d get his teeth set good on the end of the plastic tube, exhale deep, and then wrap his lips tight around it to set a seal. He’d have to gauge it just right, getting enough pressure to act as a siphon without letting that liquid poison in his mouth. I remember the sputtering and spitting when he didn’t, didn’t get it just right. I asked him if I could try, but he wouldn’t let me, saying it’d make me sick or kill me if I swallowed the gas. I thought he was brave and accomplished.

I think my dad used the gasoline to clean the grease off of parts and pieces of our old car, maybe it was an old carburetor, the kind they had before fuel injectors changed the design. He can’t work on those new carburetors. My dad’s hands are cracked and rough, even more these days than back then. His nails are split and stained, one of them nearly gone from the time an engine block landed on it—he’s lucky to have kept the finger itself. The skin on his fingers cracks and bleeds in the cold weather. The work of tossing freezing chains around logs and fastening them on top a truck without the cover of gloves can do that to hands. He says his fingers can’t feel the metal when he’s wearing gloves, so he can’t get the fastener latched. That’s why he takes them off when he has to chain-up. When he holds my hand, he has a habit of running a rough thumb over the top of my skin. I don’t work as hard as he does and the roughness of that digit is like a wood rasp on soft fabric, it gathers it and chaffs, pulls and chides it. When I was younger it would annoy me and I wouldn’t let him do it; maybe it hurt more because my own skin was softer. But I think I was just more prickly inside. Now I let my hand stay put, grateful for that moment, knowing I will miss it someday.


I believe landfills are supposed to have gas vents, so that the methane doesn’t build up without a place to go except up and out with a mighty explosion. I heard about an old landfill, covered over with science’s best method, and adopted by a city in Pennsylvania as an inexpensive recreational site. The city’s Parks and Recreation Department built a softball field on that landfill. I imagine it complete with utilitarian and tidy dugouts for the teams, and bleachers for the parents, and a concession stand for the brothers and sisters who were brought along. I can even see a small announcer’s stand sitting up and behind home plate like a kid’s fort in a tree with field lights set all over for evening play. There’s a sprinkler system to keep the grass green and a red clay infield. White chalk looks best on red clay to my mind, against a bright green outfield.

It blew up one night, that reclaimed landfill. No one was playing ball, but in my mind the lights were still on. Maybe the last game was a blow out and the innings were called early so the defeated team wouldn’t feel any more defeated than they already were. Anyway, the landfill’s methane gas had built up, the landfill wasn’t designed as well as it should have been, and the dugout and bleachers and concession stand and announcer’s berth were all sent to be rubble and debris again. I would think that the memory of an exploded softball field would mean that that real estate wouldn’t resurrect to the same use again. The stigma surely must be too great to overcome Little Leaguers’ and grandparents’ objections. Wait a generation and then try it again.


I haven’t seen any vents that I can tell at Oaks Bottom, but there are a lot of acres to explore and some parts are not easy to get to unless you have waders on and don’t mind brambles and brush. The birds seem to like it enough. There are supposedly over 100 species that either visit or reside at the reserve; I’ve maybe seen a dozen; mostly jays, ducks and geese, crow and heron, and osprey in summer. I have heard red-winged blackbirds and northern flickers. I’ve seen widgeons and hummingbirds, song sparrows and golden-crowned kinglets. But I haven’t seen any methane gas vents and I hope that isn’t a problem.

I have seen railroad tracks nearby; they sit up to the west of the reserves and separate the wetland’s wildlife from an asphalted non-motor recreational path, that being set apart from the river proper by a wooded shore of varying width. The rail has been there a long time, not as long as the river, but it pre-dates the recreational path and the reserve and possibly other structures in that area. It seems to be in good shape, fenced off as it is from pedestrians so that there isn’t trash lying around making it look like an eyesore, other than the cyclone fence itself. But railroad tracks have their problems, ecologically speaking. The ties are soaked in creosote, these days most of it tar-based, and treatment is certifiably carcinogenic for fish, fowl, and human. Some of the thousand chemicals found in creosote break down over time but many don’t. The Willamette Valley rain must wash some of that into the reserve, along with petroleum products, diesel fuel, hydraulic fluid and God knows whatever other toxins might have found their way in the railroad car as either a by-product of transport or cargo itself.

The use of creosote-treated wood is not an old technique put away in this age of ecological enlightenment. It was a part of the recently completed recreational path, the Springwater Corridor. The mile markers on the path are creosote-treated. I stood by one of them at days end in January; following a noisy flock of robins as they cajoled and yakked at one another from trees near the railroad tracks, moving west to east across the path to visit trees near the river. I was motionless; I love cheery, bold robins, theirs the first voice of morning and the last song at night, one solitary hello to welcome the day or a goodbye to soften the chill of evening air. They are for me an avian version of weeping willow, being earliest to arrive at spring’s party and not willing to leave till well after midnight as deep fall moves into winter. The robins ignored me and one nearly flew right into me, or so it seemed. I was as sturdy and solid as a tree trunk. But the acrid stench of creosote moved me from that place, a post over two years old was still fresh with that stinging scent, a signal to pests as well birds and human to stay away.


I glimpsed strange water lying on a meadow near a pond one day last January while visiting Oaks Bottom. It was blue, a color I initially took to be reflection of sky overhead. But it was in fact a film floating on the surface, so pale and otherworldly to at first glance not be noticeable. Just like a ghost it would not be seen by looking at it straight on, but was better viewed from the periphery. I saw it more clearly by peering at the thing sideways, by spying it out of the corner of my eye. I had to sneak up on it, it seemed.

Had I particular knowledge and a microscope to go with it, what would I find through a lens focused on a drop of that liquid sandwiched in glass? What odd chemical scum might confound me, seeping sludge percolating through layers of debris up like a slow moving geyser? What soiled remnants are left in 400,000 cubic feet of debris that might warrant monitoring? Are there ancient acid car batteries and old fluorescent tube lights once filled with mercury, broken and shattered, now having bled out their contaminates resting in this burial site? Was it industrial effluents leaching from the railroad track, some past toxic spill from a long ago cargo train, or simply petrochemicals sluiced by our Pacific Northwest rain from a heavily used roadway above? I couldn’t tell, and the sound of frogs croaking nearby nearly silenced my questions, but I am sure the wells must be a part of this story.