Wired for Thought

CHAPTER 2

Darwin’s Cloud

CRUISING UP THE awe-inspiring Columbia River, with the cliffs rising steeply from its sandy banks and the many waterfalls twisting like white rope as they tumble from the cliffs, a visitor cannot help feeling the raw magnificence of nature. That sense is not diminished when you see the salmon pushing upriver, thrashing their tails as they force their way to their spawning grounds; nor is it diminished when you see, in a parallel sense, the many windsurfers on the river soaring and flipping against the wind-whipped whitecaps. This is life on the edge of something elemental—a struggle against nature and at the same time of nature—stripped clean so that it can be seen clearly and in full.

It is also here, at a town just ...