You recognize the river introduced you right here. To this bend. On a Tuesday.
You would possibly come right here on a Tuesday. To the path, to this bench, to this place the place the willows and sand and gravel meet the sting of historical past. Yours. The rivers. At this bend.
Within the coronary heart of Idaho’s Salmon River Mountains, a lady unknowingly begins what turns into a journey of understanding. Haunted by private loss and the complicated historical past of the American West, she seeks magnificence and understanding at alpine lakes, beside wild rivers, crosscountry snowboarding, on trails, and together with her canines. Right here, amidst granite peaks and endangered beings, she confronts the challenges and awe of nature, the ethics of looking, the previous, an unsure future, and the depths of her personal being. As she navigates bodily and emotional landscapes, she grapples with questions of identification, belonging, and the fragile stability between humanity and the wild.
It’s the top of one thing. Or the start. And also you want a spot that’s reserved. Reserved, not within the sense of “only for you” however reserved as in “holding again just a little.” Someplace apart. Off to the aspect. A spot to observe from. So you’ll be able to see, as you do now, the kid in her pink jacket. The lilac skirt because it flutters towards the girl’s knees. Birds whose names you promised to study however have but to seek out the time to take action and it aches you to know that you’ve got put this straightforward activity to date down now, to date down on the to do checklist.
And there goes the canine chasing the stick the water has worn easy. For a second you certain together with it, your personal fur bouncing, and suppose that possibly it’s lastly time for one more canine. A brand new canine. You keep in mind that pleasure of watching wagging. Of the welcome house. Sure, possibly it’s time. You lean again towards the bench fascinated by time and the canine runs from view and is quickly forgotten or forsaken just like the water bowl you positioned on the shelf within the closet.
You’re far sufficient from the river to see it as an owl would possibly, because the previous would possibly, however from the peak of a willow. It’s daybreak, or it’s early night. The summer time warmth is urgent, extra urgent than you bear in mind from different, youthful days on the river. Different bends. Earlier than the dams. You marvel if, sitting right here, you breathe within the exhalations of fish. You ask, are there salmon on this river? The alders reply. The cottonwood reply and their reply is sufficient. Isn’t this why you’ve got come right here? For sufficient? To be in a spot that’s with and with out. Right here the climbing and struggling is merely an ant upon your trouser leg with nothing to promote. No agenda. A being that sees you as a factor to be wandered, explored. Tastes that drop of honey, or was it hummingbird nectar, that dripped off your finger at a time when a candy want of one other was what you crammed.
You draw a circle along with your toe and watch the earth fall in. You want your scuffing would uncover an arrowhead. You recognize it’s cliché, however you lengthy to seek out one. Not as a result of your pockets are empty, however as a result of to carry an arrowhead would enable you to keep in mind that others have come right here and have left their knowledge, and, like them, you need to go away one thing of worth. One thing helpful. To not be forgotten. One thing that somebody would possibly uncover with an oh and bear in mind what it feels prefer to be crammed with marvel and thriller and curiosity, one thing that brings them to their knees in the hunt for extra. You suppose you might have one thing in frequent with the one that left that arrowhead. Possibly it’s a love of rivers. Possibly they too favored the scent of moist rocks and cottonwood resin.
You want to throw a rock and listen to the splash. You bear in mind what it meant to be a baby on the river. To deliver your naked soles to the seam. However even then, you understood decisions. Different’s concern. The hazard of going too far within the swift stream. However you would not assist it. All of us need to get carried away. Typically. The place are these skipped rocks now? These probabilities and splashes? The place is the fishing pole and your mom’s sack lunches and that lover who beloved to make love beside water? A pair flutters a quilt to the sand and lie down. In your thoughts, you lie down, too.
While you have been small, you thought that rivers have been meant to take issues away. The stick you threw, the ball, that plaything that you just let go of. You noticed floods. The home carried away. The logs, the street. You noticed fish float from baited hook. Even snow and ice have been carried down, down. If the river can take, can it additionally deliver again? You recognize the river introduced you right here. To this bend. On a Tuesday.
And now the clouds have to be gathering. Or maybe the solar has dropped under the horizon, or you might be simply rising older, drained, however it’s darker. You rise and stroll lastly to the river’s edge. You see sky mirrored there. The blue of it. The sunshine left shimmering in water. The kids have gone house for his or her suppers. The lovers moved again into the bushes. Within the distance a canine barks and the canine and the lovers and the kid within the pink jacket and even the girl within the lilac skirt have been by no means there in any respect. Because of this you’ve got come to the river. You and these recollections. You and each river you’ve got ever recognized. Ever beloved. Weren’t all of them the life you needed to be a part of? Weren’t every of the rivers what you craved from life? To deliver life? To deliver and be carried away? To be helpful and exquisite and to have shores that may collect others?
And right here it nonetheless is. And it isn’t too late. Not too late to take off your sneakers. Your coat will probably be on the bench the place you permit it. We are going to all be right here with you, all of us, arrowheads pressed in our palms, canines at our sides, wading collectively, into the gush of cool, feeling the sleek of stones skipped for hundreds of years, the salmon returning previous the breeched dams bringing us collectively like pebbles right into a redd. A group, a household, kin holding on to at least one one other, gathering at this bend and with all of the river brings.
CMarie Fuhrman the creator of Salmon Climate: Writing from the Land of No Return and Camped Beneath the Dam: Poems, and co-editor of Cascadia: Artwork, Ecology, Poetry and Native Voices: Indigenous Poetry, Craft, and Conversations. She has printed poetry and nonfiction in a number of journals and anthologies together with Orion, Emergence Journal, Alta, and others. She is affiliate director and director of poetry at Western Colorado College, the place she teaches nature writing. She is the director of the Elk River Writers Workshop. A former Idaho Author in Residence, she lives within the Salmon River Mountains of Idaho with canines, a fish biologist, and wildness
Learn poetry by CMarie Fuhrman showing in Terrain.org: “Cryptobiotic Sonnet” and “Kokanee”.
Header photograph by OLya_L, courtesy Shutterstock.
