I climb out of Montana only to fall into Idaho
and a sign appears
yellow and black in the late June gloom
like a yellow-jacket warning flying by in the dark
“Winding Road, Next 99 Miles”
US 12, Lewis and Clark Highway
Lolo Pass to Kooskia (leave off the “a”)
the longest continuous paved curve in Idaho
I look for a campsite
Up a fortuitous forest road
a last-minute camp appears
Venus lights the way as I end my day
pitching the tent along Parachute Creek
(without pitching a fit) in the dark
Finally done it enough to know it by heart
and, oh, but it’s good for my heart
Climb in. Notebook the day. Drift off.
Dream and dream and dream
Of lost breath or something like it
indefinable and unsolvable
Waking and drifting, waking and drifting
12:51 — 1:27 — 2:49
Solid sleep arrives in time to be interrupted
by panting just outside the tent
something sniffing me out
I startle. It stomps off in surprise
“Mule deer” I think
but the three moose I saw last night
wade across my mind
I drift into a somnolent eddy
and toss in the tent until light
Now, its 8 o’clock at Apgar
69 winding miles downstream
at a camp along the right edge
of the laughing, lunging Lochsa
I have seen six blue jays
and an equal number of breathless bicyclists
beating uphill toward the long coast to Highway 93
“Just another few miles,” they will tell themselves all day
A Colorado car passes
carrying kayaks and fun hogs
in search of Class IV water
Three dozen cars and trucks
sit empty in wide spots
their drivers, not missing
but visible only as quivering, waving tips of fly rods
Behemoth motor homes labor east, roll quietly west
Green pickups range the highway
looking for forest roads to patrol
garbage to gather and camping fees to collect
The sun warms my back and the river sings
beside my borrowed picnic/writing table
On ridges high above Apgar
ghosts of Lewis and Clark and the Nimiipuu ramble
the white guys impatient, pushing the weather in both directions
while the Nez Perce pick their days and moments
journeying to and from the buffalo country
In water-cut creases between — in the river beside me
phantom salmon clamber through rocks and riffles
running for redds recalled from when they were fry
in Tumble, Whitehouse and Fishing Creeks
and a hundred other contributors
to the song of the river
What was that dream
that whirlpool I was stuck in last night?
Did ghosts come to visit and tell of travails
along those high places
forced passage, starvation, battling nature
Mother and human, across the Bitterroot?
Were the salmon running through my mind last night
looking for someplace to give birth and die?
Or was it just that last quaff of IPA?
Thirty winding miles more
to the Clearwater and Highway 13
The road says “let’s go!”
as impatient as the Corps two centuries ago
I sit in the sunshine instead, throwing down these images
before they escape me like last night’s dream
The Lochsa laughs and lunges past Apgar
clean and green
dreaming of the salmon that used to come
wondering, not if, but when they will return
oblivious to European impatience
moving the Bitterroots toward Astoria
one little grain of sand at a time
Maybe someday, we will learn to live together
Nimiipuu, whites, bicycles, motorhomes
salmon, mule deer, moose, dreams, memory
and the hummingbird rising over the river
laughing and lunging
99 winding miles to Kooskia
