How climate change is wrecking the spectacular landscape where California meets Oregon

The drive from Portland to Sacramento on Interstate 5 is about 10 hours or so. It’s mostly scenic and borders on spectacular.

In Oregon, you’ll see the McKenzie River in Eugene, Mount Ashland and the Rogue River Valley before you come to California’s Mount Shasta, Castle Crags, the valley dropping down into in the Siskiyous, Lake Shasta and lots of beautiful vistas in between.

Right now, you will also see the devastating effects of climate change.

I make this drive routinely, and it never disappoints. Yet when I made it last week, it confronted me with rapidly encroaching catastrophe.

I had already had my own personal climate moment before the drive. One of my favorite fly fishing spots, the Crooked River in Prineville, Oregon, was about to see its water flow reduced to 10 cubic feet per second. If the Ochoco Irrigation District goes ahead with the reduction, it will likely destroy the trout population.

The Crooked is a tailwater, which means it flows from Prineville Reservoir, below Bowman Dam. It stores water for many farms in the area, which grow mint, wheat, carrots, hay and several other crops. The farmers, at 25% of their usual allotment, are down to their last drops.

Apparently, so are the native trout.

The drive down I-5 started out pretty and uneventful as usual. No smoke was visible except for a light haze around Eugene. Oregon was experiencing record-setting temperatures north of 100 degrees. We’re equipped for that in most of California; as we learned last year, the Pacific Northwest isn’t.

By the time we reached Medford in the late evening, the smoke in the air was evident. I puzzled over where the fire might be because it was acrid and thick. The next morning, as we approached the Oregon-California border, ash covered my truck.

In Talent, Oregon, the effects of the catastrophic Almeda fire two years ago, which mostly obliterated the bedroom community, were still blisteringly obvious. Blackened trees are reminiscent of a Tim Burton movie, houses are missing save the foundations and clusters of temporary trailers dot the freeway’s shoulders.

Ashland, which is nestled in tinder-dry hills, barely escaped that fire. The thought of losing the town was particularly chilling to me, having visited its charming Shakespeare theater and restaurants for decades.

Crossing the border, the freeway was completely enveloped in ocher smoke. Traffic slowed as we headed toward Yreka, where a quick check of the news told me that the McKinney Fire had grown out of control, barreling toward a populated area.

On Saturday evening, that fire had exploded to some 50,000 acres and turned into a network-news-leading disaster. By Sunday morning, there was still no containment, and at least four people had died trying to escape — some of them trapped in their cars, the ultimate horror.

I was deeply concerned that traffic might stop in the middle of the smoke on I-5 or that there might be a chain-reaction crash, which can happen when smoke overwhelms a road or highway. Surprisingly, the smoke cleared quickly just south of Yreka, and we were back to mostly sunny skies.

As we approached Lake Shasta, the arms of that impoundment were empty. Marinas were an uphill walk from the water. It’s pretty obvious that more drought years could one day render Lake Shasta barren.

As Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema kept Senate Democrats waiting with Hamlet-esque hesitation over a major climate bill that even West Virginia coal baron Joe Manchin had signed off on, I couldn’t help but feel that I had just completed a profoundly disturbing climate change misery tour that every American would benefit from taking.

As we huddle in front of our air conditioners in August, pulling power off grids not designed to handle this much demand, we will all eventually come to the conclusion that the time for action was yesterday.

If the smoke doesn’t clear, we won’t have the luxury of acting. We won’t have to act anymore. No one will be around to act.

This story was originally published August 5, 2022 at 5:00 AM.