Peter Cornelison
OUR GORGE : PERSON OF INTEREST
Preserving the Wonder Kevin Gorman leads Friends of the Columbia Gorge with vision and passion STORY BY RUTH BERKOWITZ • PHOTOS COURTESY OF FRIENDS OF THE COLUMBIA GORGE
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n the spring of 1994, shortly after Kevin Gorman moved to Oregon from Michigan, he hiked the steep switchbacks of the Columbia Gorge to Wahkeena Falls. As he stopped to take in his surroundings, a bald eagle soared into view — a sign, perhaps, that the Gorge would be his destiny. Four years later in 1998, shortly before the birth of his daughter, Gorman became the executive director of the nonprofit Friends of the Columbia Gorge, where he has been ever since. “The Gorge has become another appendage,” Gorman says. Just as his daughter has grown up under his tutelage, so too has the organization. Friends began as a small committee formed in 1980 by Nancy Russell, a Portland housewife and avid Gorge hiker who gathered her buddies from the prestigious Portland Garden Club to block plans for 28 building lots across from Multnomah Falls. They fought another development near Beacon Rock, but their biggest victory happened in 1986, when the group worked with Oregon Senator Mark O. Hatfield and convinced Congress to pass the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area Act. Hatfield’s position as chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee provided him with the leverage to convince President Ronald Reagan — who once proclaimed, “If you’ve seen one redwood, you’ve seen them all” — to sign the law. “It was a coup,” says Gorman. The Scenic Act would prove to be integral in protecting the Gorge from unchecked development. Friends cheered the victory, while some mourned it — including the pro-development contingency in Skamania County, where flags were lowered to half-mast for a week. According to Gorman, the Scenic Act is one of the main reasons why the Eagle Creek Fire was less devastating than it might have been. “Only four structures burned and it could have been so much worse,” Gorman tells members of the Portland Garden Club at a recent meeting. Speaking in the same room where Nancy Russell announced the passage of the Scenic Act, Gorman unveils his new initiative, the Gorge Resiliency Plan, a path from the crisis of the Eagle Creek Fire to what he sees as an exciting future. On the night of September 2nd, when Gorman saw images of flames incinerating the old growth forest, he worried that the Gorge would burn to the ground and all of Friends’ work would be futile. “That night all
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Michael Horodyski
of us feared for the 150 stranded hikers,” Gorman says. He posted an appeal on social media, urging people to donate to the Hood River County Sheriff ’s Office Search and Rescue. In just a few days, Friends raised $46,140. Eighty percent of the 500 individual donors were not in Friends’ database; people from all over the country were sending money. Gorman was relieved a couple of days later to see that the historic Multnomah Falls Lodge was still intact even as the fire had burned all around it, but he still questioned the future of Friends. Then Gorman reminded himself that the Columbia River still flowed and the Gorge is resilient, having withstood earthquakes, ice and fire. “The fire knocked us back,” Gorman says with his signature optimism. “It didn’t knock us down. Gorman sees the fire as a watershed moment, one with new opportunities made possible by the closing of the old highway, the horrible smoke-filled days and the outpouring of support for the Gorge. Gorman’s Gorge Resiliency Plan requires groups like the Trailkeepers of Oregon, the U.S. Forest Service, the Gorge Tourism Alliance, educators, business owners and volunteers to work
WINTER 2017-18 : THE GORGE MAGAZINE
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