By Scarlet Torch and Blade/Builders of Highways

by Anthony Euwer

BUILDERS OF HIGHWAYS

MASTERFUL builders! You who've planned
 Your limitless highways through our land,
Splendid in vision—well have you wrought,
Leaving your trails where trails were not;
Weavers-weaving gigantically
Into a boundless tapestry,
Systems of travel skillfully traced,
Hither and thither—interlaced,
Gathering, linking, chain on chain,
Corn-land and pasture, fields of grain,
Acres of orchard rolling down,
Forest and homestead, nestling town,
Binding our counties, joining our states,
Breaking the locks of our cities' gates,
Letting humanity's stream rush through
Into the open, into the blue,
Into the sun or into the shade,
Into the playgrounds you have made,
Treading where never before they've trod—
Touching the earth and seeing God!

Long have you wrestled, unconfounded
With problems the grim old earth propounded;

Meeting each taunting challenge while
She watched with cold, sardonic smile,
Flinching at nothing your labor met,
Writing your answer in dirt and sweat.

First with your transit, pounding stakes—
Rotten logs, briars, sticks and snakes;
Trees of the thicket hatchet-scarred,
Blazing tomorrow's boulevard;
Shaping the New World's big romance,
Unloosing your swarms of human ants,
Slashing the willows, crowding in
Under the maples and chinkapin;
Tottering timbers—see them crash,
Deafening thud and crunch and gash,
Tearing their rifts where boughs arch high,
Baring blue holes in the gaping sky;
Follows the blasting—dynamite,
Deep in the damp earth tamped in tight,
Sputtering spark
Into the dark,
Travels the fuse to the buried guns,
Vomiting stumps in hurtling tons,
Falling back mangled, shattered, torn,
Into the clay where they were born.

Through pine-pillared aisles the thunderings ring,
Echoing canyons answering;

Enter the horses—lashing reins,
Yelling and curses, jangling chains,
Snorting and straining, steaming brutes,
Grappling hooks shackled to stubborn roots,
Snug in their sockets holding fast—
Steadily pulling, they yield at last!
Shovel of steam—omniverous scoop,
Gouging the way for one more loop;
Rearing a wall that will prevail
Against the push of sliding shale;
Peeling a slope to fill a draw;
Stuffing the crusher's hungry maw
That crumbles to bits the rock you've fed
To blanket a roadway's winding bed;
These are the digits running through
The problems that Nature's handed you.

And we of the people—we for whom
These miracles are, behold we come!
Driving our chariots blazoned bright,
Crimson and yellow and pink and white,
Silver and black and gray and green,
Rattletrap Lizzie and limousine,
Bulgy with bedding, grip and can,
Lashed to the back and tucked to the van;
Letting our home-town banners flame,
Advising the world from whence we came,

From everywhere under the dusty sun—
From Mosier, White Salmon, Pendleton,
From Boise, Seattle, Saginaw,
From Buffalo, Little Rock, Waukesha;
Still we are coming, see the train—
From "all points east" to Bangor, Maine;
Up from the Dixies, looming still,
From Charleston, Havana, Jacksonville;
Down from the Old Dominion, see—
From Montreal, Winnipeg, Calgary,
We of the people are on our way,
Turning the world to a holiday!

And vast are the hollows from crest to crest
Where stretches the hand of the big Northwest
And out of the winds from her frozen peaks
A welcome speaks:
"Come all you people! Come and keep
Tryst in our mountains! Play and sleep,
Wrapped in the silence here that lies
Under our star-jeweled western skies;
Wake if you will and see the sun
Unveiling our canyons one by one,
Slanting his golden fingers till
The shadows have crept from each drowsy hill,
Rousing the giants in their beds—
See how they lift their hoary heads

Up through the purple robe of night
Into the light!
Tahoma—the Mountain that was God!
Jefferson, Adams, St. Helens, Hood!
Hold fast to your visions and your dreams,
Memories born of our laughing streams,
Our cataracts, castles, towering domes—
Oh carry them back to your million homes!
Drink, oh you people! Be satisfied!
Our wells of beauty are never dried.
Search out each Eden that awaits—
Blazed are the trails and wide the gates!"

Come oh you people! Look upon
The bountiful sweep of the Oregon,
Forcing a pass through the blue Cascades,
Lapping the walls of her palisades,
Cradled in sand-dunes gleaming white,
Girdling her islands of malachite!
And high on the hills where a thrush's song
Tells out its gladness, there winds along
Like a sinuous serpent-twist and bend,
Following on to the river's trend,
The lordliest highway that ever ran
Through the hills of the world since the dawn of man.
Pride of the West! Sublime event!
Columbia the Magnificent!

Conceived by a poet who believed^[1]
Dreams should be dreamed and then achieved.

And he bored him a tunnel-rock and boulder,
Out of a mountain's granite shoulder,
Chiseled his windows-arching wide,
Glimpsing the sky and the rolling tide;
Throwing his graceful spans across
Dripping ravines of fern and moss;
Charming the serpent up and down
Till it lazily coiled on the lofty crown,
Goal of each traveller who would be
Thrilled with unspeakable ecstacy.

Oh climb in your chariots pink and green,
Rattletrap Lizzie and limousine,
Throbbing triumphantly toward the sky,
(There's never a grade but you take on high)
Honking and honking, round on round,
Honking again till the cliffs resound,
Looping at last the Crown Point top-
And there you stop!
Where winds from the North, East, West and South
Tumble their clouds in the chasm's mouth-
Curtains of mist and far-off thunder-
And somehow you look and look and wonder

If he who was wise to the sparrow's fall
Didn't have something to do with it all.

Over the broad Willamette go
Into the Coast Range—learn to know
Who are the Vikings—see them rise
Out of the gulches into the skies;
There are plummet-lines dropped through the hearts of these
And they're girthed like the pillars of Hercules!
Nursed by the centuries, still they stand,
The Viking Spruce of the bottom-land.

And ever the pageant swings along,
Blossoms and fruit and birds and song—
Sword-ferns high-heaped beneath the firs,
Glistening like emerald scimiters;
Foxglove and fireweed—sunlight flashes
Blotching the banks in purple splashes;
Salmon berries in hordes untold—
Luscious clusters of dangling gold;
Elders above them, bending branches,
Falling in ruby-red avalanches,
Hedging the roadways, climbing back—
Up through the alders and tamarack;
And over the bridges, rumbling, coasting—
Oh God of the Humble—keep us from boasting!

Ranges, ruff-backed with their jagged trees,
Crawling and sprawling down into the seas,
Reaching their ragged, granite hands
Out through the shifting, drifting sands—
Out where the wild, white horses prance,
Tossing their manes—and the cormorants
Strut with the lions and blustering seals,
And the sun-god reels
With a splash of blood
Into the great, Pacific flood!

And this is the welcome waiting you,
Drivers of chariots gold and blue—
You who fare
Under the heavens from everywhere—
This is the crowning of your quest
When you've looked in the heart of the great Northwest!

1. Reference to Samuel Lancaster, Portland, Oregon.