The Life and Times of the Plume

[photograph courtesy of RW]

We rafted the Snake River a couple of days ago.  It was beautiful.  I know I use the word beautiful a lot but it’s really true.  If I call something beautiful, it’s because it truly was.  My parents were down from Saskatchewan visiting this week and so we woke them up extra early one morning, injected my dad with coffee and a breakfast sandwich, and drove up to our put-in on a section of the Snake River that flows through the Fort Hall Reservation.  After juggling trucks to take-out and put-in points we were ready to launch.  It was a funny, misty morning that gave way to a hazy afternoon.  The river was running fast and smooth.  The wind was peppered with Canada geese, ducks and swans.  My dad was delighted to be an oar beast — he rowed, steady and sure, all day long.  Tater Tot was wicked excited about all the birds we were seeing and Robert was jump shooting ducks from the bow of the boat, trying to bring home a little dinner while we were out recreating.

Let me say that I love my dad but I love him best of all when he is in a boat.  I grew up canoeing Northern Saskatchewan with him and my sisters and friends.  He is the very best version of himself when he is in a boat crossing water with smooth sweeps of a paddle or oars.  He had a spectacular time and we did too, just being with him in a beautiful place, traveling slowly across a living body of water, counting moments in feathers and sun glimmers.

We saw 33 bald eagles, a variety of hawks, kingfishers, swans, multitudes of ducks and Canada geese, two bands of wild horses (the Shoshone wild horses in the bottoms country, not mustangs), whitetail deer and a lot of fish.  Rafting is a wonderful way to view wildlife.  Nothing runs away too fast or flys off to quickly when you peacefully drift by on a current.  Robert took two ducks out of the sky for future dinners here.  Tater Tot found three wounded Canada geese on a gravel bar, all with broken wings, unable to fly, barely able to run, and while Tater dispatched one, Rob ended the suffering of another.  I am actually somewhat against goose hunting, and I prefer eating upland meat but I’m going to find a way to cook up some delicious goose for dinner since we wound up doing nature a favor by ending a little needless suffering out there on the river bend.  It makes me sad to think of all the wounded ducks and geese out there during hunting season.  Nothing ever goes to waste in nature, every dead thing feeds other living things and eventually bones turn to wildflowers and willow, but it still strikes a melancholic chord in my heart when I see wounded wild things slowly die.  I suppose life comes with a little suffering, now and then, and that suffering is natural and good for exercising the compassion of our hearts as humans and tenders of the wilds.  But it still makes me sad, and frankly, I’m thankful it does.

Tater Tot also found a porcupine, most unfortunately, and we had to dedicate a little time to pinning him down and extracting quills from his paws, nose, lips, tongue and the roof of his mouth with a pair of fishing forceps.  Thank goodness my dad was there to help.  There was some wrestling involved but we managed to pull every single quill and Tater Tot was as spirited as ever once we had him doctored up.

We stopped for lunch and a fire shortly after I managed to fall in the river and soak myself up past my knees (I do it every time I am in our raft and am officially ready for a pair of neoprene waders…).  It’s not a big deal in the warmer months but it’s a bloody disaster in cold water and cold weather.  I dried off, cooked my socks, and warmed up by a lazy-mans driftwood fire on a lovely gravel bar while dad dozed in the sun and Robert watched ducks breeze by on squeaky wings.  After that, since my Sorel boots were entirely soaked, I bundled up in my sleeping bag and wool coat in the stern of the raft and simply watched the wild world pass by with a full heart, wide open eyes and a thermos of peppermint tea.  It was peaceful and relaxing.

I found duck feathers, goose feathers, beautiful river rocks for future jewelry designs, a full cow skull (top and bottom) and my dad found me a gorgeous, river polished, huge, natural agate!  What treasure!  It looks like the heart of the North, simply exquisite.

I wish every day of my life could be this beautiful.  And I wish the Earth, everywhere, could be this robust and healthy (even that is a relative thing though…).  Do you ever think about how different the face of our planet must have been 100 or 200 or 1000 years ago?  Before our oil spills, mine tailings, clear cuts, sprawling cities began to bite away at the skin of our Earth?  I think about that all the time.  I get lost in my daydreams when I let myself drift into thinking about the way our world used to be.  I’m a good daydreamer, I can take myself to those old times, drift there on the breeze like a seed in a time capsule.  But still, the imagination only lets us travel so far.

I want to get in my raft sometime and run from the mountains to the sea — from the Tetons to the Pacific Ocean.  Right now, it’s just a dream, but I’m going to find a way to make it happen.  Just you wait and see.

Life is so good and I’m always grateful for the way Robert and I are able to spend ours, so grateful.  When the sun sets on days like these, I can’t hep but thank God for every breath I took while out in the wild places.  I fall to sleep tired, transformed and healed by creation.  Everything is just the way it’s meant to be.