Introduction
The Chehalis River Valley connects a series of rural communities in southwestern Washington primarily located along the aforementioned waters. Adna in particular is a peculiar region within the greater faction in the sense that its positioning between the progressive urban centers of Portland and Seattle, it continues to remain sequestered along the coastal foothills west of development as it seems to always have been. Chehalis(Łəw̓ál̕məš), or otherwise known in the Tsamosan-Coast Salish language as shifting sands defines perfectly the experience residing along its banks. Like the constant flooding, meandering, destruction, and recreation of the land yearly, so too are the memories and histories of those who have settled here. This equilibrium is not a new phenomenon to the area but rather has been a process of accretion and reciprocity for generations. This ethnography however, moves upstream through the past and acts more like bioturbation than a linear passage. Moreover, what attempts to be accomplished are the transgressions on time and space this community has encountered and how the experiences and actions of individuals through traumatic or pivotal events on the landscape has reinforced that perception. This work of the historical and contemporary era can only be understood by dredging up the archaeological past and seeing it from the long view as a place of consistent potential and appropriation since time has permitted human usage of it since the last Vashon glacial maximum.

Archaeological and Historical Analysis
Adna’s story is not the beginning but serves more as a continuation of diffusion that has existed in the region for centuries. Prior to the era of contact and later the homestead act of 1862, the region served as a vital transportation hub for the indigenous communities throughout the northwest. Conveniently located through a relatively flat passageway to the south towards the Columbia connecting both land and waterway to the west, and safely through a series of trail systems through the Cascades controlled primarily by the Yakima peoples (through a balanced reciprocity system) linked together a crossroads of trade networks affixing the area with cultures’ commodities as far reaching as Mexico. Resources such as mineral deposits and manufactured organic material like waterproof baskets from the Columbia basin made its way across the mountain range. Obsidian shards native to the high plateaus of Oregon and Eastern Washington have been found throughout the Chehalis and Yakima territories, hundreds of miles from its source. Smoked and fresh salmon as well as precious Eulachon oils imported from Athapaskan, Upik, and Coast Salishans from Alaska and British Columbia became highly sought after, including with early Russian trappers. Pemmican, a smoked cake of Wapatau and bitter root pounded with dried berries and salmon became vital for winter consumption in between seasonal rounds – as did the oil for passing it. These footpaths connected tribes virtually across the west and beyond linking up in Idaho with the Nez Perce and Shoshone, and heading south to the Acorn processors of the California cultures and further Nahuatl and Uto-Aztecan territories. This system of economy lead to a highly stratified society with royalty and slave ranks based on merit, lineage, ancestral rights, and reciprocity through the giving of Chilkat cedar blankets, and other adornments. Although evidence for the actual foot trail is scarce, and due to the rising of sea levels over three hundred feet, evidence for early migration theory is also predominantly inaccessible. This expansive trail system was observed by outsiders and documented firstly by Russian, French, and Spanish fur trappers and tradesmen as early as the 18th century and later the encroaching pioneers and cattle drivers who used the very same networks. By the mid 19th century the establishment of Claquato (now abandoned) and others to the north such as Tumwater, Alki, etc established the foundations for the present industry and roadways such as highway 30, Interstate-5, and others. As Pacific Union brought track lines to communities along the Chehalis the demand for officializing towns with railway structures gave Adna its name inspired by Edna Browning, an important early figure in the Euro-American settler community.

Predominantly agriculturalists and timber specialists were attracted to the area’s natural abundance of prairie lands, wildlife, and old growth and remains to be the majority of occupations held throughout Lewis county today. People mentioned throughout the pages to follow continue this legacy and are vital to the function of this community’s prosperity. The significance of traditions practiced in Adna by people such as Tom Paulin; a retired Yugoslavian-descended lumberjack are becoming more idiosyncratic to Adna and other surrounding unincorporated communities as the encroachment of land management companies such as home development firms and major players like Weyerhauser along with rising real-estate and other advances of modernity continue to permeate the countryside, the collective nature of core-values is changing while simultaneously shrinking the isolation and pastimes of the region.

Spring time in Adna is full of energy as the break in the dreary, wet winters experienced dissipate into fresh wind. Riding in the back wagon of Tom Paulins 1940’s Red International tractor leftover from his father the air is crisp and full of budding smells of wild grass, conifer, and flowers which traverse through the tips of your senses and passes by with the diesel fuming out the pipe. Heading into the grassy alfalfa pasture the sun hits the wall of evergreens in front of us like diamonds as the the fresh beads of rainwater shimmer and dance among the needles. Four hundred yards out leans a barn next to the creek which overflows into a large pond after storms. Brown and grey from weathering, yearning for a purpose again.
“ My dad built this one right around ‘45 and was used for mostly grain storage in those days instead of all my nicknacks in here – watch yourself on the nails coming up”
says Tom as we step over some scrap wood beams entering the dusty, dank, structure looking for spare parts to reinforce our chicken coops after the last storm damaged the rigged together frames.
“see originally this whole field including where Mikes’ and my trees are now used to be open for Cattle grazing until about the ‘70s when we sold ‘em off but now I just keep my lumber scraps in here until this place tips over for good, but that’s okay, I always got the other one down back at the house.”
While continuing to determine which roofing tiles and spare beams would hold up the best I became intrigued with the scenery no longer in front of me and began to ponder about how the relationship with the land has changed throughout a lifetime, and how it has provided for the well being of the community.
“ Just about everyone in the area up to Galvin over there by Centralia opened up to Cattle back then but that all started to change with the protections of state forest lands so the incentives for timber rose up again and we all replanted, and that’s where I found my calling was working outside in the woods. I tell ya, I tried college for a little while, I was actually studying engineering but just one day hit a wall and couldn’t hack it so I dropped out and got work in a saw mill – and it paid pretty well too. It was tough work but by’golly I loved it. Even the winter jobs up in the Cascades where one time it snowed on us all night and by morning we were cuttin’ through logs with snow up to here (signalling with his hand to his chest) but that’s alright, it makes a good story anyways.”
Like many Pacific Northwest dwellers, the importance of trees and forests are personal and imperative to our understanding of the world, and most importantly the landscapes of our memories like Lou Paulin: Uncle to Tom and an original family settler to the property who also greets us back at the more structurally sound barn next to the road. Strung up with white lights inside and out, they connect with the apple tree out front. Painted with Cadillac Ranch along its side in Norwegian red. Sitting at the cinderblock fire pit next to the original once white-now cream colored 1920’s bungalow adjacent to the barn Lou waves seeing us cross out into the field which made him curious as to our adventure. Instantly after beginning to tell him about the transition to the lumber industry he chimes in;
“oh you bet, I remember when we planted this one right here (pointing to the windy, curving Gravenstein apple tree) along with all them trees out there (pointing out into the field of 70 year old douglas fir and hemlocks). Of course there was more of these apple trees here then, we had an orchard here when we first moved to this place before the depression, and that’s what really fed us and our neighbors, this here is the only one left, the flood took out the other two still standing and one fell over from rot – what was it, 3 years ago now? anywho, I miss those times. It was the best time to be alive. People shared and worked together to get things done, and you could trust ‘em too. We all knew each other. Not like it is today with how crazy everything is, I watch too much news ‘cause now I have nothing better to do and everywhere seems like they’ve lost their minds. You couldn’t pay me to go to Seattle now, you just couldn’t.”
After hearing what Lou told me it made all the more sense about his character as being my neighbor who looks out in the field of grass all day for no reason at all. His purpose became clear. He wasn’t seeing the land before my eyes, none of them were, but rather the ghosts of old workers, the faint sounds of field songs, and rumbling of old early century machinery.

Social Discontent and the Dawn of 20th century modernity

Lewis county at the turn of the century experienced a continually changing (and rising) demographic which lead to an influx in the importation of ideas, allegiances, and occupations. Ultimately these challenges gave way to a climax of indifference and violence not uncommon to the unheavenly pastimes undermined in the Northwest. As a transportation and industrial network hub for major urban centers, the communities such as Adna which surround Centralia began to depend on the exportation of precious materials (primarily timber and coal) to the growing metropolis centers and federal infrastructures such as the military and rail companies. For the last 5 decades up the 20th century over 400,000 migrants made their way westward, many of whose final destinations included southwest Washington. Of these migrants included a large number of both Union and ex-Confederate veterans, outlaws,miners, bandits, loggers, sailors,dubious business entrepreneurs, prospectors, and tradesmen of both newfound American descent, and old world immigrants congregated in communities together alongside the Chehalis River. By the time of the arrival of peak migration, or shortly thereafter the core-values of early Lewis County began to divide as federalism and national identity started to capitalize on the citizens as well as the land. The years before The Great War saw expeditious claims of land by major players such as Weyerhauser company, Milwaukee Land company, Schafer Brothers, Weyern Timber company, and the Bureau of Land Management for several hundred acre plots for in some cases cents on the acre with the intentions of logging and coal mining.
Consequently, what became clear relatively quickly were the dangers and risks involved with participating in not just industrial positions, but also occupations with patriotic connotations such as logging, mining, and agriculture. Ideas of Unionization, pacifism, and other inferred socialistic mentalities grew greatly in Lewis County during the direct years leading up to, and equally so after the end of the first world war. As discontent spread due to the unequal reciprocity experienced by the private land companies and the federal government towards its employers for the price of products extracted, the popularity of organizations such as the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) expanded into heavy labor regions and ports along the entire west coast, including Centralia and its surrounding communities as one of the forefront headquarters. Actively during The Great War, including the two and a half years prior to U.S. intervention in Europe, an increasing American home defense appetite required the cooperation of private land firms to contract timber plots out for military production. Including specifically the preference of old growth Spruce to support the construction of aircraft which Adna at the turn of the century remained to have standing, some as old as Rome. By the time of war reaching to the United States the situation in western Lewis County between various factions of loyalists, socialists, pacifists, and unionists seemed to leave no room for bystanders and in 1918 a new landscape was created.

In response to foreign policy, and the direct involvement of harvesting local forests for not only combative purposes, but for aircraft – a new time shortening machine with the potential delivery of awe, or devastation, the IWW or “wobblies” set fire to hundreds of acres of old growth spruce forests, forever changing the appearance of the landscape. Retaliations followed soon after including the bombing of IWW headquarters in Centralia as well as the lynching, threatening, and severe beatings of multiple known wobblies given by freshly organized Loyal Legion of Loggers and Lumbermen (4L), a group predominantly made up of pro-war veterans and anti-unionist laborers. Furthermore, Adna had introduced itself for the first time publicly to the nation.

1919 was a year to be believed as the beginning of humankind’s entering of understanding that clearly became a harsh realization for communities with numbers of returning individuals from the frontlines importing with them their experiences from overseas. In celebration of the first armistice day, the conjoinment of Chehalis and Centralia to conduct a memorial parade established one of the most attended events in either cities history up to that point which required the last minute maneuvering of parade routes creating a chaotic, but festive scene down main street, Cherry Lane, and N. Tower avenue, where the IWW’s new headquarters were established. Due to fear of treason, the IWW fabricated as an fictional organization when leasing a new center and whether what happened next was planned before its new establishment or not, the unthinkable happened.
as the 4L parade line marched down N. Tower avenue, witnesses and victims recounted the recollection of a series of moments which are still debated among parties today. What is fact is the 4L parade line turned about-face towards the IWW. It is also clear that wobblies were positioned tactically and armed accordingly so among rooftops, various vantage points, as well as compounded within the building now owned by McMenamins’ Olympic Hotel and Bar. What is not fact is who fired on who first. In the end 5 lay dead,one socialist, three 4L members and one marshal shot by a .22 500 yards out, gunned down in the street by wobblies. A 6th socialist attempted to flee with a broken pistol as defense but was shortly captured by loyalists while wading the Chehalis river, and was hanged nearby on the river bridge now connecting Adna to Chehalis along Highway 6. It was clear that the realities of human nature, and of post-war environments would not be eradicated so easily. This was the environment people like Lou Paulin were born into and where his story begins.

Testimonials
Born just shortly after the Centralia Massacre in 1921 to Tom Paulin sr., an Austrian with Italian nationality and mothered to Matilda a former Yugoslavian , Lou was raised during his early childhood in a town called Mendota where these emotions were still contested.
“It was a real different mind set then, the IWW felt real upset about wages rights. It was like the Wild West back then, everyone packed a gun and tensions were real high – you couldn’t go around saying just anything, people had real troubles then.” said Lou quietly and reserved. The only native born Washingtonian, the family moved from Montana where the couple married and birthed his siblings Matilda jr. Frank, and Joe to Mendota for work in the Mendota Coal and Coke Company who erected a town for the migrating workers. The Lewis county census records of 1930 indicate his father at 54 was renting a home for $6 a month as a miner. With 39 total residents and only 9 working bodies, Mendota was a small community of swampers, riggermen, miners and engineers.
“I lived there until I was 10 or 11 (8 years of age at 1930 census) when papa bought this land here in ‘33.” Says lou to me in his wistful, yearning voice.
“We liked it up there but the coal mine went corrupt and so the town folded with it. It was so different then. Those hills behind you originally were old growth, mostly Douglas Fir but some Cedar and Spruce too.”
His long face matched his pensive voice. Wherever Lou seemed to look it was as if his mind was turning pages in a book which gave a constant reflective gaze of both disappointment and collectiveness.
“we logged ‘em all out there in 1929 and we bought the land mostly for pasture after that from the Milwaukee Land Company for five dollars an acre if you can believe it.”
according to a 1940 township map made by Portland civil engineers,square plot number 26 to be exact, 140 acres immediately next to Weyer timber co. Geo. Geiszler, and State F.B.
“ Big timber back in those days, that’s really something you don’t see anymore. The bark and wood of those old growth’s made such better materials. They lasted so much longer than the crap today, panels and shingles seemed to last a lifetime.”
“yep, yep, you betcha they did, I remember the red tannins from those old cedars used on the barn runnin’ off the panels onto the ground around it, coloring everything bright red, you don’t see that anymore, they don’t get old enough.” piped Tom sitting near Lou on the tailgate of his red Dodge pickup.
“Hell – you can’t even find Cedar anymore! what’re ya gonna do when you have to replace those shingles Tom?”
“I really don’t know, it’s so damn expensive now ‘cause not many people grow or cut it anymore ‘cause it takes too long for ‘em to grow. They’re protecting what’s left of the old ones now which is for the best but it really is a shame ‘cause you won’t ever see them again like that.”
Some universal agreement and tailing off words of agreement lead to silence for some time and Lou retreated back into his book of nostalgia. Fixing his eyes above us towards the top of the barn he gives a good affirmative look before lurking our attention to where he’s looking before adding: “yahp, I remember throwin’ hay up there with papa. You used to have to do all that by hand, bales didn’t exist back then. What you had t’do was take that pitchfork and stab at the pile a few times and shovel it up the ramp. A lot of time I’d be up top there moving it down – that loft is still up there too by the way.
This old barn has held up well, took some work doing but its held up well. I’m surprised papa built one so big honestly, he only had a few cows but – God there’s a lot of traffic on this road” Lou interrupted himself as a caravan of cars drives by on the curvy, uneven, pothole ridden road that divides the property in half extending into centralia and Grand Mound to the north.
“The other day I was set up on the porch and counted over a hundred cars in just an hour! Even five years ago it wasn’t like this.” Said Lou, and something like it every time thereafter a vehicle passed by. “This used to be only a small gravel road and we didn’t have any telephone lines yet either. ‘Course when it did come out here you couldn’t ever use it ‘cause so many people would be using it or listening in on ya.”
Tom suddenly became inspired again to include that where the property I rent across the road used to be a part of Milwaukee Land Companies railroad.
“Yep that’s right, part of your driveway is too Lou, and a bit of mine, it started out towards Pe El west of here and snaked down through Lincoln and Bunker creek and ended just down there where my grapes are over there.” He said pointing eastward.
“ you can’t see it much anymore ‘cause they rip ‘em up as soon as they’re done logging through here, plus its been flooded and tilled up so much since then but the end of the line and the loading house was just there.”
Lou suddenly had a re-emerging inspiration about our previous conversation prior to the interruption of modern machinery and continued:
“I remember the logs they used to pull outta here, many were over 8 feet wide when I first move here. The community was real different in those days, nowadays everyone is American and there’s no argument over it, but then it was a lot of Germans, Dutch, Norwegians” – “and all those Swiss too who lived near the coast too” added Tom.
“right, we had all kindsa cultures and different languages then, but we somehow all made it work together. We helped eachother out all the time, neighbors were real good then.” he stumbled over his words as he trailed off mid sentence and shook his head. “not like today, you can’t even get anyone – “ he shook his head again, and further added: “its a shame this country went and killed us all off in our prime. I’m always amazed as to how someone like Hitler could do all that to us. Just like they’re doing now over there on the other side of the world. It’s all repeating itself.”
No one said anything. An unspoken nerve visibly hit Tom before anyone could think of what to contribute and made it his excuse to continue his day. Lou followed and the evening closed a little too familiarly.

______________________________

The weather in late spring is a pleasant unpredictability of golden sunrays which at a moments notice can turn into an attack of the clouds. One peculiar condition about Adna added to the sounds of spring are the sounds of various rumbles from timber felling, the adjacent dynamite factory, and shotguns greeting birds on crops is still an array of noises yet to become background to me. Shortly after a few explosive feeling rumbles felt inside our cedar cabin home cut and built by Tom, followed by the affirmed rain shower, we see his chipping red Dodge with his four legged co-pilot collie dog Sophie over at the Cadillac Ranch barn. The air of rural adna is pleasant during the warmer months, especially after spring rain when the sprouting evergreens throw its sweet, almost fruity aroma that lingers on your throat.
“Hey there kids! How ya doin?” Tom waves and yells as we walk across the smoky still glistening road down the gravel path leading to the barn.
“Did you hear that thunder a little bit ago?” I and my girlfriend confirmed we did and spoke of our confusion as to whether it was the dynamite factory half a mile down the road.
“Oh nope, nope, they don’t usually do that over there anymore, its mostly storage, although sometimes loggers will use dynamite including around here but it’s getting rare.”
Tom Paulin is known as the social butterfly of Bunker Creek, and lives up to his reputation by knowing just about everyone in Adna, and also from his family’s music success, some major outlaw country stars such as Willie Nelson, who once played in the barn we now stood in and is also respected among his generation of locals. His alternative reputation is also the ‘MacGuyver’ of mechanics, being able to fix anything from instruments to machinery, which is where we caught him currently, welding an old wheel cog to something older than both of us combined.
As a true outfitter, and also several decades spent in the lumber industry his face and hands are are plump and rough, but his downhome friendliness would never believe you to think of him as intimidating.
“I’ve used it a little bit and the old timers sure used to a lot. When I was about your age we used to still have quite a bit of old growth still left in this area and even more rotten core stumps still left and we used to use rope dynamite to bring those down. We would wrap a ring around the trunk and then chain it up so when it blasted we would pull it down. You had to be careful though, I know a buddy on the other side of Adna who broke his back in two spots once doin’ that.” with almost no hesitation he continued
“But the only thing they really use it now today for is when you fell a tree we sometimes would bring in a person called a ‘powder monkey’ who would set a charge of powder underneath the log and set it off with a trigger so we could scoop underneath it. I remember this one time we were up in the Cascades doing a job and we had felled this one old growth about ten feet wide and had to send in a powder monkey so in the mean time while we waited we had ourselves a food break and as long as we stayed on the other side of the log we’d be safe so anyways this guy comes by after a little bit to lean in on a story a buddy of mine is tellin’ and we didn’t have enough time to tell him ‘move’ before that cap went off and boy – byegolly I tell ya that guy jumped right into my friends lunchbox.”
Tom is a person who loves to tell stories of all types, and gets distracted often by the doings of others which almost always leads to a telling. His conversations meander like the lower Chehalis river from one spot to the next and always does so excitingly.
“ When logs were still big enough around here they were too heavy to be lifted even with our cranes that held up to ten thousand pounds, what I would do is take my 2 foot saw and lay into the trunk a few slits all along down it and then call for an engineer to plug em with a slow burning powder and a fuse running out each one and boy I kid you not it would make such a clean split you couldn’t ask for any nicer.”
“Its also hard to get now too and you have to go all the way into thurston county to lock it up each night so its not really worth the paperwork anymore.”
A casual breath and a wetting of the lips and back to it:
“ Real different times back then, it sure has changed a lot how everything is done now in such a little amount of time. It was hard work but I loved it” he said with a grin.
“ I could go on forever and bore your ears off with all that stuff but it was really great to be a part of that movement. It is really sad though that not much of the old growth is left around ‘cause its gone forever and the land really can’t support it again.”
As we weave in and out of storytelling and chatter, the clean ground brings out in the distance a pack of Roosevelt Elk up on the rocky, bare hillside grazing on the open range of foliage sprawling from treeline to treeline.
“Oh great the Elk are back! I haven’t seen ‘em in a while, they sometimes will come through here but not so much lately with that sickness they get going around.”
For the last decade or so hoof rot has become a virtual plague for many parts of western Washington to several contributing factors not well documented. Something I’m familiar with from working with Sheep, Horses, and Cattle, once the bacteria infects the ground, it seems to stay and as a result has spread to wildlife such as Deer and Elk.
Favorable conditions for promotion of the disease fits the common temperate climate of this region of 45-55 degrees.
I ask out of instant curiosity if the weather has changed at all within the last decade and immediately he responds: “Yeah you know it has a bit actually, the ground definitely is getting warmer than it was when I was kid. The old timers all had skates. We’d get snow and ice here regularly and bitter cold too, the Chehalis would freeze completely over now and again, maybe 5 or 6 times. We used to use horseback in those days, up until the 60s and 70s actually with skis attached to em and that’s how we’d pull logs down river during winter regularly. I haven’t seen it get like that in just about forty years though. The bees have gone away a lot too, they used to make the sweetest honey – Lou will tell ya that too, all of em would pollinate on the fireweed that used to grow here but doesn’t anymore. Maybe it does have something to do with the weather, but it has been warmer lately. The flooding is getting worse.”

Conclusion
Adna and the surrounding areas have no square inch left of untouched land. I can’t help but think within the last 10,000 plus years of known habitation along this river system every blade of grass has been trampled, and every forest visited. Although various cultures who have occupied this territory throughout time have utilized its resources for opposite objectives and functions, the purpose of settling here along with the wildlife is for the reasons; the illusion of safety. The Stories shared with me from multiple lenses are becoming a place-myth as modernity creeps like ivy further into its interior, making common pioneers like the Paulin family a growing minority. The importation of values has redefined new boundaries for the community blocking off the rural sides with affiliation to downtown residents as the influx of demographic has brought with it careers geared away from the land, viewing it as a form juxtaposed to a function. These changing shifts are divided as much as they were a century ago and the alienation of its local stories has left some with opinion of going against its own self interests. Down the road is a preserved cemetery apart of the old ghost town Claquato which contains some of the tallest trees left in western Lewis county, one of which a several century old cedar tree which Tom told me has his grandmother buried underneath it. This resting place seems a symbolic finishing point as the legacies of old lie peacefully underneath the roots of what made it all possible.