NATURAL LANDS
O
ne sparkling morning last fall, a chartered ambulance arrived at the
Portland, Oregon, home of a woman named Nancy Russell to take her on
a journey to the Columbia River Gorge. The gorge—an iconic natural feature of the
Pacific Northwest—had been a favorite haunt of Russell’s since she began prowling its
slopes in search of wildflowers 40 years earlier. In the 1970s, she spearheaded a grass-roots conservation effort and founded the nonprofit Friends of the Columbia Gorge
(known locally as “Friends”) to fight inappropriate development and lobby for federal
protection of this remarkable landscape at Portland’s front door.
