Witchful thinking: Columbia River Witches Collective’s high priestess says, ‘This isn’t an aesthetic. … This is my spiritual path.’

For Camas resident Angel Biederbeck, being a witch isn’t just something she does for Halloween.

“I’m a witch 12 months out of the year,” said Biederbeck, 62. “I am out of the broom closet completely and I have been for decades.”

She is high priestess of the Columbia River Witches Collective , which has 434 followers on Facebook and an inner coven of 13 member witches. She also posts witchy content on TikTok under the moniker “ The One Minute Witch .”

Although not widespread, this sort of nature-based spiritual belief finds fertile ground in the Pacific Northwest. In the Portland-Vancouver metro area, 2 percent of adults identify as pagan or Wiccan, compared to less than 1 percent nationwide, according to the Pew Research Center’s 2024 Religion Landscape Study .

“When people say ‘