STEVENSON -- You need to look near and far to fully appreciate spring hiking in the Columbia River Gorge.
What grabs your eye immediately are the expansive textures of a precipitous chasm created millions of years ago by basaltic lava flows and burnished into its current form by epic glacial floods 9,000 to 12,000 years ago.
However, if you focus your vision near at hand, you'll also notice a variety of colors, say the rose-purple fairy-slipper blossoms of calypso orchids, or the showy yellow blooms of balsamroot.
By Greg Johnston | May 11, 2006
