Welcome to the 2nd annual Indian Creek Trail Poetry Walk!
This year (2026) we are delighted to feature poems written by poets with roots in the Mid-Columbia Gorge. Their poems were juried and selected especially for the Poetry Walk. The poetry signs were installed on April 1 and will be displayed until the end of September. Thanks to all the local photographers who contributed their photographs to serve as background images for the poems.
The Indian Creek Trail Poetry Walk is a collaboration of the Hood River County Library District and The Hood River Valley Parks and Recreation District. The goal of the Poetry Walk is to reflect and celebrate the natural and cultural history and beauty of the Mid-Columbia Gorge. To share comments or ask questions, send an email to gorgepoetrywalk@gmail.com. Please support the Poetry Walk with a tax deductible donation.
Scroll down the page to learn more about the Poetry Walk. Open a self-guided map to the signs on the Indian Creek Trail.
View the Poetry Walk signs and poems by swiping left or right using the slider below.
AFTER EVER
by Stacey Danner
STACEY DANNER lives in Hood River, Oregon, with her husband, a violin maker who wooed her to the Columbia Gorge from Seattle in 2011. She is a CPA by day, with her own dust-covered tax practice down the hall from the violin workshop. While numbers do indeed tell stories, she prefers words when crafting poems. Her work has been published in North Coast Squid, Two Thirds North, and the anthology Broken Circles: A gathering of poems for hunger (Cave Moon Press).
ANOTHER ANTIPASTORAL
by Vievee Francis
VIEVEE FRANCIS is the author of four books of poetry, most recently The Shared World (Northwestern University Press, 2023) and Forest Primeval (TriQuarterly Books, 2015), winner of the 2017 Kingsley Tufts Award and the Hurston Wright Legacy Award. She received a 2024 Guggenheim Fellowship and the 2021 Aiken Taylor Award for Modern American Poetry. She has also been the recipient of a Rona Jaffe Award and a Kresge Fellowship. She is a Professor of English and Creative Writing at Dartmouth College.
AT THE INSATIABLE EDGE
by Kerry Ruef
KERRY RUEF was an award-winning poet, writer, and the founder of The Private Eye Project, an internationally recognized educational program devoted to cultivating close observation, creativity, and interdisciplinary thinking. Her work — both literary and educational — invites readers and learners alike to look more closely at the world, think by analogy, and discover meaning through curiosity, imagination, and deep attention. A long time resident of the Gorge, she had recently returned to the Pacific Northwest after five years of living in Mexico. She died in December 2025.
CONDOLENCE
MARY DODDS SCHLICK (1925 – 2020), born in Ames, Iowa, became a long-time resident of the Columbia River Gorge, writer, weaver, and expert on the basketry of the Native peoples of the Columbia Plateau. Her fondest childhood memories were the summers she spent on Rainy Lake in northern Minnesota, happily occupied with nature and creating with her hands.
She married in 1949 and moved with her husband to the Colville Reservation in Washington. Mary spent the rest of her life working with and living among and near Native people on reservations in Washington (Colville and Yakama) and Oregon (Warm Springs). She wrote about those experiences in her memoir, Coming to Stay: A Columbia River Journey (Oregon Historical Society, 2006). She also wrote newspaper features and from 1985 – 2000, a weekly column “Mountain Musings” in the Hood River News.
Mary studied and documented the traditional native basket making creators, techniques, materials and styles of the Columbia Plateau. Her scholarly work was widely published and presented. Columbia River Basketry: Gifts of the Ancestors, Gifts of the Earth (1995), was her award-winning book on the history, makers, materials, and techniques of the Native peoples of the Columbia Plateau.
Mary was a prolific poet for decades and taught poetry writing at workshops including Beargrass in Trout Lake, Washington. From her verses for children to deceptively simple rhymes to haiku, Mary’s gift for words deftly wove many elements of nature and the human condition.
LISTENING
by Pat Cason
PAT CASON is an Oregon native who works in the mental health field. She enjoys the precision and focus of poetry in its pursuit of the ineffable, and believes that the natural world tells us the truth, if we listen deeply enough. Her poems have appeared in a variety of literary journals and periodicals including The Oregonian, Columbia Gorge News, and The Lancet, where this poem originally appeared with the title “Psychiatrist, Listening”. She has worked in the Gorge intermittently for nearly 40 years and returned as a continuous resident in 2017.
MT HOOD
ELAINE KIRBY, born and raised in a small town in the Ohio River Valley, made her career as a nurse and paramedic. When she and her husband Jim first visited the Hood River Valley in the fall of 1986, Elaine had the feeling that she had come ‘home.’ They purchased property in Mt Hood and returned after retiring in 1992 to build their log home. Self-taught as a writer, Elaine corresponded for over twenty years with her high school English teacher, an important influence. Inspired by the beauty of the Hood River Valley, Elaine began writing poetry about nature, which was published in the Hood River News. She is also an accomplished quilter.
PLANET OF PECULIAR CHAMPIONSHIPS
by Monique Mos
MONIQUE MOS has been an appreciative inhabitant of the Columbia Gorge for several years and marvels daily about her good fortune. She enjoys writing prose, poetry, songs and lists, most of which she has kept hidden in a drawer (She did, however, write a prize-winning rhyme, at age 15). The most fulfilling work she ever did was to use songwriting and puppetry to help children learn a new language. Often, she can be found roaming the neighborhood, where she takes photographs of unlikely things.
RETURN OF THE PRODIGAL
FRED STAGER grew up in the Hood River Valley, spending his summers working on Rasmussen’s farm in Odell, graduating in the Hood River Valley High class of 1980. A trip to Alaska to pay for his education landed him aboard a commercial fishing boat and set him on a life of adventure on “a road less travelled.” He’s spent his life plying the cold waters of the Pacific Ocean between Astoria and the Bering Sea. He’s a fisher-poet with a boat homeported in beautiful Kodiak Alaska, where he lives with his family; still fishing his boat, tending his subsistence farm, writing poems, prose, and music.
SAY AMEN
by Jim Tindall
JIM TINDALL, like many poets, celebrates the poignant among the commonplace. He discovered the joys of writing and acting for radio. His subjects have ranged from mysteries to Meriwether Lewis to Hood River artist Percy Manser and have aired on local stations KIHR, KBOO, and KVGD. Jim and his wife Pam moved to Husum, Washington in 1984 to operate an inn, which they did for ten years. They continue to savor life along Stair Step Falls on the White Salmon River. Jim was the writer behind the biweekly column of fiction the City Council, a serial that reported commonweal in government and small acts of kindness. It began in 2007 in the Enterprise and ended in 2025 in the Columbia Gorge News. As a singer-songwriter Jim has performed with Jim Bob, D.A.C., the Fathas of Convention, and Johnny Butane and the Hot Ones.
SHE LISTENS TO THE RHYTHM
by Earle Thompson
EARLE THOMPSON (1950-2006) was a Native American writer and poet. He was raised and educated in the Yakama Valley, Ellensburg, and Tacoma. He was a winner of the Written Arts competition at the Annual Bumbershoot Festival in Seattle. His work has been included in numerous anthologies and magazines, including 20th Century Native America Poets, Dancing on the Rim of the World, Akewon, AtlAtl, Argus, Blue Cloud Quarterly, Contact II, Greenfield Review, Prison Writing Quarterly and the Real Change anthology No Apologies. His first poetry chapbook was published by Blue Cloud Quarterly in the early 1970s; his last chapbook was published by Real Change in 2003. In a foreword to the Real Change chapbook, Sherman Alexie wrote, “His poems make me cry and laugh. His poems shake and change me. His poems are necessary, essential and elemental.”
SOUNDS I CAN'T HEAR IN THE FOREST
by Brian Johnson
BRIAN JOHNSON lived in the Gorge from the late 1980’s to the early 2000’s. During that time, he worked, loved, played, and enjoyed the rivers, mountains, rocks and crannies of the Mid-Columbia Gorge. He has always appreciated poetry but never seriously devoted much time to writing it until he moved to New Mexico. Since then, he has been engaged with other poets, and written dozens of poems, including a number inspired by his time in the Gorge. He says that, to date, he has little interest in publishing, preferring to share and trade work with other poets as the moment and times may inspire.
THE FOREST FOR THE TREES
photo credit Mark Caicedo
RENA PRIEST is a citizen of the Lhaq’temish [Lummi] Nation. In a historic appointment, Priest was named Washington State’s sixth Poet Laureate (2021-2023), becoming the first Indigenous person to hold the position. In this role, she championed poetry that celebrated the ecological gifts of her ancestral homelands, the bioregion. She is an Academy of American Poets Fellow, an Indigenous Nations Poets Fellow, and winner of a Washington State Book Award for poetry. Her new essay collection, Positively Uncivilized, was published (October 2025) as the inaugural winner of the Keepers of the Fire Award from Raven Chronicles Press.
THE NETTLES OPEN THEIR MOUTHS TO SING
JESSAMYN DUCKWALL is a neurodivergent poet from Hood River who enjoys reading tarot cards and talking to plants and mushrooms. They are a 2025 Oregon Literary Arts Fellow, and they hold an MFA in poetry from Portland State University. Their work has appeared in Pile Press, Radar Poetry, Josephine Quarterly, and other publications. You can find some of their published work here. They’re also on Instagram as @deadnettle__.
THE TRAILS OF MEMORIES
by Arturo Leyva
ARTURO LEYVA is a Mexican singer-songwriter and producer, originally from Michoacán. More than 200 of his songs have been recorded throughout Latin America, and one of his most popular compositions, “Le Hace Falta Un Beso,” has been recorded by over 600 artists across the Americas and Europe. Since 2016, he has been based in the Columbia River Gorge, where he currently serves as Director of Communications and Event Logistics for the Hood River Latino Network, as well as Director of Programming and Production at Radio Tierra.
Arturo is an activist at heart and deeply passionate about his people and his community.
Learn more at www.arturoleyva.com
TRILLIUM
by Margaret Chula
MARGARET CHULA began writing nature poems as a child exploring eighty acres of meadows and forest in western Massachusetts. She became entranced with haiku while living in Kyoto from 1980-1992. Her collections, Grinding my ink, Shadow Lines, and One Leaf Detaches have been awarded Haiku Society of America Book Awards. Margaret has been exploring the Columbia River Gorge for over thirty years with her women’s hiking group, the Wild Women of the Woods (WWWs). Her recent collection, Weeding the Labyrinth, features poems about wildflower hikes, encounters with birds and animals, and natural disasters in the Gorge. Kim Stafford says of her work: “She has long been a word shaman connecting the wild world to the human heart.”
TURNING BACK
by Joan Naviyuk Kane
JOAN NAVIYUK KANE is an Inupiaq poet. She grew up in Anchorage, Alaska, with family from King Island and Mary’s Igloo, Alaska. She earned a BA at Harvard University and an MFA at Columbia University. Kane is the author of four poetry collections, including Dark Traffic (2021) and Hyperboreal (2013), which received the Donald Hall Prize in Poetry. Her honors include a Whiting Writers’ Award and a Creative Vision Award from United States Artists as well as fellowships and residencies from the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation, the Rasmuson Foundation, the Alaska State Council on the Arts, the School for Advanced Research, Harvard’s Radcliffe Institute, and the Guggenheim Foundation.
WALKING STICK
by Shannon Perry
SHANNON PERRY GILROY has had the privilege of living in the Hood River Valley for over 40 years. Its beauty inspires her every day. Nature and social justice are common themes in her work. Shannon has written for as long as she can remember. Although poetry has always been her first language, she also writes prose, essays, and has explored fiction through a yearlong workshop through Fishtrap. She has been published in The Yes Book, Sharkreef, and local online publications. She is a retired educator, Quaker, and former motorcycle mama.
WEST WIND, OCTOBER
by Audrey Mlaker
AUDREY MLAKAR is lifelong noticer. She and her husband blew into the Gorge on a westerly in the early 90s. Twenty years later, they made Hood River their home and live gratefully, surrounded by loving family and incredible scenic beauty. Audrey has been embraced by the creative community, particularly at the Columbia Center for the Arts and the Hood River Library. At CCA, she was a contributor to En Plein Air, Writing Up the Gorge, and Art-a-Day, where she exhibited 30 poems written in 30 days. Audrey is a founding member and co-facilitator of the weekly library writing group. She is also a Friend of the Library and a long-time library book club participant. Audrey has been published online and in /pãn| dé| mïk/ 2020: An Anthology of Pandemic Poems by Oregon Poetry Association.
WHEN THE LIGHT IS FLAT
by Drew Myron
DREW MYRON is a writer and poet working at the intersection of storytelling and service. She is the author of Thin Skin, a collection of poems and photographs, and her work appears in anthologies and art collaborations. She lives in Hood River, Oregon, and spends time hiking, skiing, and paddling the Columbia River in an outrigger canoe.
Meet the Photographers
BRIAN CHAMBERS
Website: BrianChambersPhotography.net
Email: BrianChambersPhotography@gmail.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BrianChambersPhotography/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/brianchambersphotography/
CATE HOTCHKISS
CATE HOTCHKISS is a photographer based in Hood River, where she lives with her husband, two children, and their labradoodle. When photographing nature, she oftentimes experiments with long exposures in order to capture, in a single frame, the atmospheric elements that coalesce into such grandeur. Her hope is to create dreamlike, ethereal images that reflect the magic and mystery of the Columbia River Gorge. Cate’s work has been featured in multiple gallery exhibitions, magazines, and news outlets. She also collaborates with nonprofits and other organizations dedicated to protecting the environment.
Website: https://www.catehotchkiss.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/catehotchkiss/
LINDA STEIDER
LINDA STEIDER is a conservation/nature & wildlife photographer in the Columbia River Gorge and co-owner of Made in the Gorge in Hood River. Linda has lived in the Gorge since 1984 and spends most days hiking trails with camera in hand; or driving distant back roads in or near the Gorge. She has studied and photographed hundreds of birds and most species of Gorge wildlife, while photographing landscapes along the way.
Website: www.steiderstudios.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SteiderStudios
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/steiderstudios/
PALOMA AYALA
PALOMA AYALA’s artistic vision centers on the Columbia Gorge, moving beyond sweeping vistas to explore the intricate details that reveal its emotional depth. She captures the delicate textures of frost on wildflowers, translating the landscape’s resilience and beauty into evocative imagery. Paloma seeks to convey the awe, serenity, and powerful, unnamed emotions the Gorge inspires.
Website: www.orolumegallery.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AyalaPaloma
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/paloma.photo.nature/
PETER MARBACH
PETER MARBACH’s distinguished career spans three decades creating evocative landscapes witnessed at the edges of day. He has authored several coffee table books and has numerous regional and national publication credits. Marbach’s work has evolved over the years to pursue projects that contribute to the community at large, from working with tribes and First Nations in their quest to restore salmon runs on the Columbia, to volunteer work in Nepal supporting health and educational initiatives in remote areas. Current commissioned projects with the Oregon Historical Society for 2025-26 include the centennial of Highway 101 in Oregon and the Oregon 250 project, part of the America Semi-Quincentennial.
Website: www.petermarbach.com
STEVE LABADIE
STEVE LABADIE came to the Gorge 50 years ago and fell in love with the amazing variety of ecosystems and wonderful people that inhabit this beautiful place. He has felt connected to the land, plants and animals ever since he was a young boy. They taught him about our interactive relationship with the natural world. Steve taught creative expression using multimedia art forms including photography at Hood River Valley High School for 35 years. He earned a Master’s in Art creating multimedia presentations with the themes of social and environmental justice. He continues to use his visual art skills to support these issues.
MEET THE JURORS
GARY YOUNG
GARY YOUNG lives in Hood River with his spouse, Barbara, and their dog, Lewie. In the growing season, his yearly garden crop includes garlic, heirloom tomatoes, and a one-tree persimmon orchard. As a cancer survivor, his life mantra is: “Live as long as you can, as well as you can, not a moment less or a moment more.” Gary used his creative energies in community theater for years as an actor, director, and playwright. Recently, he has turned to poetry and the written word. Before retirement, Gary served as the first Director of Spiritual Care at Providence Hood River, work that inspired his passion for the healing energy of storytelling. He hopes this project will bring you time for reflection, calmness, and peace.
LEAH STENSON
LEAH STENSON’s life journey has taken her from New York City to Tokyo to Portland to Mt. Hood Parkdale. She is co-editor of two poetry anthologies, including award-winning Reverberations from Fukushima: 50 Japanese Poets Speak Out, as well as the author of three poetry books and a hybrid memoir, Life Revised. Her latest publication, Poems for Supper, is scheduled for publication this June. Her narratives of everyday life explore the suffering and joy of the human condition and the redemptive power of compassion. She hosts the popular Studio Series Poetry Reading & Open Mic held on the second Sunday of every month at 7 pm at the Ross Island Grocery and Café in Portland.
SUSAN HESS
SUSAN HESS is the Publisher Emeritus of Columbia Insight, a news website reporting on environmental issues of the Columbia River Basin. Prior to starting Columbia Insight in 2014, she was a freelance writer for magazines and newspapers. She wrote for seven years about the rebuilding of Celilo Indian Village and on the treaty tribes of the Mid-Columbia. She also hosted an interview program on Radio Tierra, KZAS. Susan and her husband Jurgen live in Hood River. Susan holds a special interest in the Poetry Walk because for 25 years, she and Jurgen have planted and maintained an acre and a half site along the trail under a permit from ODOT.
TINA CASTAÑARES
TINA CASTAÑARES, a longtime resident of the mid-Columbia, loves poetry for its ambiguity, its elusiveness, its spareness, its role in expressing things that prose can never capture. She has written poetry since childhood and reads poetry daily, often sharing poems with family and friends (whether they welcome it or not). She’s had the privilege of being many things in her life, among them a medical doctor, film buff, public speaker, activist for peace and human rights, youth mentor, and advocate for elders, caregivers, farmworkers, immigrants, and community health workers. Her poetry has been published in six journals and included in two Oregon anthologies.
TERRA METTA
TERRA METTA is a Black, autistic writer, poet, playwright, and musician. Her essays have been published in outlets such as Al Jazeera English and The San Francisco Chronicle, and her poetry has appeared in print magazines such as Troublemaker/Firestarter and Boats Against the Current. Her writing often focuses on the ambiguities inherent in the navigation of race, gender, and neurodivergence as an ambiguously ethnic appearing woman. In her day job, she works as a hydrogeologist for the State of Oregon focused on the remediation of contaminated soil and groundwater. She spends her off time shuttling children, playing bass, and getting knocked to the floor by incredibly strong women wearing skates on the roller derby track
MEET THE STEERING COMMITTEE
JESSAMYN DUCKWALL
JESSAMYN DUCKWALL is a lifelong reader, writer, and Columbia Gorge resident. They have a master’s degree in poetry from Portland State University, and they now teach English and literature at Columbia Gorge Community College. Before that, they spent a number of years as a clerk at the Hood River Library, and before that, they were a bookseller at Hood River’s own Waucoma Bookstore. They have supported a local interest in poetry through their involvement in projects like the Gorge Book Festival and community education poetry workshops.
LEIGH HANCOCK
LEIGH HANCOCK has been in love with words her whole life: from the stories her Southern family used to share to the literature she studied in college and graduate school, and the courses she now teaches at Columbia Gorge Community College, where she chairs the department of Arts, Culture and Communication. Her poetry and nonfiction has been published in several anthologies and small presses, and was performed, once, on National Public Radio. A Gorge resident for over three decades, Leigh is happiest in the wilderness, where she is an avid hiker, backpacker and skier.
PAUL WOOLERY
PAUL WOOLERY is a retired therapist who kept a private practice in Hood River until 2015. He has loved the Columbia Gorge since coming here in 1971 to work as a tractor driver in an Underwood pear orchard. The first poetry walk he saw was in 1973 along a trail in the tiny hamlet of Helvetia, West Virginia. Fifty years later, he discovered poems displayed on trails in the Olympic National Park, and was inspired to initiate the Indian Creek Poetry Walk. He is grateful to the many talented individuals who have contributed to its success.
THANKS TO THE TRAIL CREW!
Chuck Gehling, Gina Mares, and Paul Woolery
