12 The Mighty Columbo
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I think it’s safe to say we all know the scene: it’s the one in Jurassic Park where Dr. Alan Grant—having just been informed that billionaire John Hammond has successfully recreated a T. rex—begins teetering about like a drunkard before eventually collapsing in the grass and looking on, dramatically—at the towering brachiosaurs as they wade across a small, glittering lake; at a herd of parasaurolophuses drinking in the shimmering, south American heat; at the birds fluttering about the sauropods’ great bodies. Well, that’s a little what it was like as we gazed out at the Columbia River from the Sam Hill Memorial Bridge: like something from the movies, from Jurassic Park, complete with long-necked sauropods (I think these were diplodocuses) drinking along the
