If you're a paddler, one of the best things about living in a riverhouse is being able to plop your kayak or canoe off the deck and go for a paddle. From my houseboat, if I go downriver I paddle past a lot of greenery -- the woods of a state park on one side, and mostly protected wetland/forest on the other. From that direction, of course, coming back is all upriver. (Even though we're about 80 miles away from the ocean, the tides affect the Multnomah Channel, and I've been drawn swiftly upriver, but mostly I go out and paddle when I feel like it and pay no attention to the tide table.)
What's come to be my favorite paddle is to go upriver to the channel's confluence with the Willamette River and the southern tip of the island, about six miles round trip. It usually takes me 2-1/2 hours. I paddle east upriver, passing a sailboat moowith four containers heading toward the City of Portland, plus the gravel barge that passes almost daily -- sometimes twice daily -- on the channel by my houseboat. Yesterday when I was near the bridge and some foolish boater got too close, the barge pilot let out a blaring horn signal.
The cargo ships make you realize how living on a river is different from living on a lake -- you are connected to other places up and down and even around the world.
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