What is an ill-UH-hee?

I get asked what the name means and how to pronounce it a lot and the shortest answer is it’s where I grew up. However the name has an interesting history and some different meanings and since it’s been a while since I wrote about it (I think I did an explanation back in the old blog spot days) I thought I would take a minute to talk about what’s in a name. Please enjoy a few of the Fritillaria that are coming into bloom now.

Fritillaria crassifolia-an old Jim and Jenny Archibald collection from the Mountains of Iran

So after our family moved back from Europe in the early 1980’s (I was actually born in Germany and we lived in Austria when I was very young), we moved to the rural outskirts of Salem, Oregon in the Willamette Valley. Our house was at the end of line of the Cascade Union High School district, actually somewhat closer to the urban Salem schools, and a long drive through grass seed fields and farm pastures out to the tiny little grade school, that was Cloverdale Elementary. Along the back road to that miniscule country grade school (my 6th grade class had 10 students in it) was a bridge over the interstate with a green sign on it “Illahee Crossing”, if you are ever barreling down the I-5 South of Salem and see the somewhat creepy, but endearing theme park- Enchanted Forest and the big winery on the hill, you are about to go under '“Illahee Crossing”

Another Iranian, Fritillaria raddeana blooming now.

As I got older I noticed there were Illahe’s all over our part of Western Oregon, sometimes spelled illahe, sometimes illahee. In the college years I spent a lot of time backpacking and white water rafting down Southern Oregon’s famed Rogue River. Just past the little hamlet of Agness, the jumping point for the adventure of a lifetime down the Wild and Scenic section of what I think is the most beautiful river canyon in the world is an illahe. There is a rv park that is Hee-Hee Illahe, there is winery and a country club, and another Hee Hee Illahe along the Siletz river (great winter steelheading spot). Drive around any backroad around these parts and you are likely to run across an illahe market, illahe lodge, illahee lookout, etc. etc. So it would be easy to tell people, it’s an oft used geographic name in my little part of the world, but it’s more than that.

Fritillaria striata, wonderfully fragrant, perfuming the bulb house now.

The name has it’s origins in the Chinuk Wa Wa, also known as Chinook Jargon, Chinook Talk, Shawash-Wawa or sometimes just called Jargon. It began as pidgin language developed to facilitate communication and trade between the tribes of the lower Columbia River all the way to Southern Oregon and the British, French/Canadian, Russian, and other ethnic and foreign language fur traders that made their way into the Pacific Northwest in the 1700’s in search of everything from beaver pelts to eventually gold and timber. Over time it developed into a Creole, or a stable language that is still used and taught today in the region. Lane Community college offers courses in the language and you can read the student produced magazine that is written entirely in Chinuk Wawa. If you find this sort of history fascinating I have to strongly recommend the book “Naked Against the Rain: people of the lower Columbia 1770-1830” It is a mesmerizing account and an in depth look at the life and culture of this region during a rather short period in time.

I’ve read a dozen or more different ways that illahe was used in this language, most often translated are “land, earth, soil, place, country”.

To me illahe is a memory of an early summer backpacking trip down the 38 miles of the Rogue River Trail with my old brother in law when we were in our 20’s, walking a path carved from footsteps at least 1000 years old. It’s the flash of silver lightning that is a winter steelhead, the rarest fish of a 1000 casts, in small coastal stream, shaded by towering Red Cedars. It’s the rolling hills painted blue with Camas flowers and streambank Lupine in the spring time. It’s the spreading branches of a huge white oak tree that escaped the axe and plow. Its the churn and chug of the Buena Vista ferry motors as you cross the Willamette River where there are no bridges. Its the last day of grade school as you wave goodbye to your friends to start summer break. It’s the towering Douglas firs that occasionally still exist as old growth in the “Emerald Empire”. It’s the smell of cottonwood trees and willows coming into seed along the valley bottoms at the start of summer. It’s the 9 months of dark, grey skies and three months of sunshine. It’s the excitement of the rare snow day. It’s the crashing of huge waves on the miles of sandy pacific coast beaches. It’s the crawdads and cutthroat trout in the creek we played in all summer. It’s the smell of skunk cabbage in the swamp and it’s catching bluegills on jigs in the oxbow ponds off the big river.

It’s the last seat on the school bus where the “cool kids” sit as you ramble down a country road past the “illahee crossing” of your childhood.

Dodged snow showers and hail to frame the shutters and exhaust fan on the greenhouse project this week, Chilly start to it after a beautiful spring like weekend.

Mark