The old Knappton shoreline is crowded with knarled driftwood and other visual delights.

Late June offers a conglomeration of moods: warm and clear, one morning. A light rain the next. Fog. Hounding Northwest winds. Calm. Heat.

This morning, a soft mist unfurls, a gray mask. Ten miles upriver, the sun rises in all its glory. My friend Matt calls. “How about a walk from Knappton, upriver?”

“Sure. Ten O’clock? Coffee first?”

“Hey, got a story.”

Matt loves stories. And there is always a story. The trick is digging it out. Shaping it.

A great lumber mill stood here once. For years, a bronze plaque greeted us with a rich history, but thieves carted it away. Now the landing is just a wide swath in the road, about two miles upriver from the east end of the Astoria-Megler bridge.

Timber was king then. Many of the first-growth trees grew over 20 feet in circumference. Vast forests of cedar and fir. The vocation of the men who felled these monster evergreen was always colored by an unspoken degree of fear, by inevitable and deadly miscalculations: Falling trees whiplashing sideways or backwards, a misjudged undercut, or just bad luck. And by a second factor. Dollars. Though the timber fallers never got rich, the owners did. Push on, they insisted, though workers were broken regularly. Often, the injuries proved fatal. If a logger happened to get in the way, 50 tons of falling timber killed a man as surely as a rifle slug. So did a falling deadhead or a two-inch cable, snapping and whipping like a steel snake. This was the life: Tough men. Tough country.

Today, the sun rises and optimism dances on the silky morning tide, empowering us to scurry along. The glistening water is flooding. A couple dozen white pelicans ply their trade, dipping their heavy, beak-laden heads into the shallow water, eating their breakfast with due diligence.

The beach is a bed of scattered softball-sized rocks, unpleasant on the soles of one’s feet, but beautiful in the sun. How did all the stones get here? Matt offers a probable answer: ballast. Think of all the lumber ships that moored here. How many a day? How many years? Numbers are like memories. They ebb away slowly.

Lewis and Clark and their soldiers walked along this shoreline. Indeed, just a mile or so upriver, they suffered at Dismal Nitch and later, Hungry Harbor. The applied names tell it all, appropriately chosen for an uncomfortable week in pouring rain and feral winds. From a small stream that races into the Columbia, they cornered a mess of steelhead and ate protein for the first time in several days. After a disaster suffered in a Nez Perce village, Chief Joseph’s people (gorging on too much rich salmon flesh after weeks of a near starvation diet), their tummies erupted. Naturally, they were in no rush now, to feast on the silver swimmers. But hunger gnawed at their bellies. If they complained, most of that never entered Clark’s diary. That is, except this pleading note from Captain Clark: “If a feeling person could see our situation today…”

Here, then, is a historical walk. An excursion along a deserted river front with a destination of Portuguese Point and further along — several more miles — the now broken remnants of Frankfort, a fishing village built and deserted in the early part of the 20th century. Sadly, its residents packed up and left their homes, the wooden fishing docks and piles of gear to the rain and enveloping forest. As a Boy Scout in the early 60s, we hiked the five miles down a rough trail and into this enclave. I remember one house that still had abandoned coffee cups and a faded yellowing newspaper on the breakfast table. A piano, out of tune, attracted the inquisitive boys and rough tunes floated out of a handsome two story home, competing with birdsong and a gentle wind that rustled through the tall fir and cedar stands that still lined the river.

Of course, that was then. And all that is gone now, even the old growth. Decay, chain saws, and the passing years have brought down the remnants, one by one. And if the Chinook camped here, that cedar civilization is no longer visible, though we hoped — shuffling along the shoreline — that we might stumble upon some stone shards or even an arrowhead. Native history clawed at our imagination. Did these First Peoples live contentedly here? How many millions of salmon plied their way upriver? Were the Tsinuk warm and dry when the winds of December pummeled the landscape?

We only walked a couple of miles, moving easterly. The stones and soft mud nibbled and sucked at our heals. That didn’t really matter much, but Matt had a deadline. Along the way, the mind tripped over the obvious: Times change. Technology advances. But here, the shoreline and the Great River flows along, changing courses four times daily. Astoria is in the background. Saddle Mountain rises majestically above the North Coast, and the great ships ply their trade, shipping out from upriver ports with logs and automobiles and soda ash.

This river and the lush landscape appear benign, at least just now. A soft wind huffs over the water and more of the pelicans drift in, awkward in appearance but dignified in their flight. Soon the river will open for salmon season and the regatta of small boats will litter the water with hopeful fishermen. Are human beings defined by their dreams? Or by their losses? Today, in the sunshine, we chose the former.

We walk along, happy with our private thoughts. Overjoyed that we are away from the daily news report, at least for a few hours, and relegated — joyfully — to the here and now of big water, sunshine and the dominating evergreen that line the river bank. And history, whittled down to its elemental form: truth, fiction and disparagement. And seeds of hope.