Just in time, some might say. The perils to the nation's rivers are growing dramatically, as population growth and rising water usage overtax watersheds and deplete aquifers. In the western United States, that skyrocketing demand is on a crash course with the alarming effects of climate change. In response to warming temperatures, winters are bringing less and less snow to the American West, and snowpack is mother's milk to rivers like the Klamath. The Cascades and other Northwest mountains whose snowmelt feeds the river are the harbingers of what's to come elsewhere. Since the 1940s they have seen a significant decline in total snow accumulation because they are lower in elevation and so more susceptible to the region's rising temperatures than other western mountains. All of which makes the decisions over how to handle the competing needs for the Klamath's waters even more crucial. In coming decades, as governmental agencies turn increased attention to rescuing the world's riverine ecologies, they may cast an eye back to the way the small and relatively isolated communities of the Klamath River watershed negotiated their entrenched local issues and resolved historic antagonisms.

Especially since until this year, those issues seemed so intractable, and the antagonisms so fierce. Toby Freeman of Pacific Power, the company that would be responsible for the dams' removal, understands those antagonisms as well as anyone. Last year, asked for his forecast on the outcome of the river negotiations, he responded with bureaucratic cheer. "In the long run, I'm looking forward to a resolution that fully addresses the river's health while providing the best outcome for our customers," he said.

"In the short run," he added, "I'll be happy if no one gets shot."

Perhaps it's appropriate that the sources of the Klamath River begin in a geographic region known informally as the "blast zone." The blast in question was the eruption 7,700 years ago of Mount Mazama, one of the restive volcanic cones of the High Cascades, in southernmost Oregon. Klamath Indians explained the explosion as a battle between the sky god Skell and Llao, the deity of the underworld. Geologists describe it more technically. A series of eruptions blew much of Mazama's molten understory skyward; a mile-wide column of pumice, ash, and gas climbed into the upper stratosphere. As the 12 cubic miles of mountain and mantle fell back earthward, it draped 320 million acres in tephra—volcanic ash and rock—in a layer as thick as 20 feet. The remaining bulk of Mazama's summit collapsed (the mountain lost about a mile of elevation during the eruption), and the caldera filled partially with water, creating the con­summate natural tourist attraction, Crater Lake. To the lee of the crater stretched a vast new living desert of pumice, and, with time, a broad-based forest ecosystem dominated by bitterbrush, aspen, and lodgepole pine. Crater Lake locals liken a stroll through the blast zone to walking in kitty litter. The pale granular topsoil crunches underfoot and emits effusions of smoke-fine dust.