Now I'm in the groaning and burping stage....
Thursday, November 22, 2018
Saturday, March 7, 2015
A Bend in the River
In the recent evenings this summer I've walked down and stand in the trees, cottonwood lining the Big Hole in light paused just so in the leaves, as if the change in the river here were not simply known to me, but apprehended. I did not start out this way; I began with the worst sort of ignorance, the grossest inquiries. Now I ask very little. I observe the swift movement of water through the nation of fish at my feet. I wonder privately if there are for them, as rare for me, moments of faith, however brief.
The river comes around from the southeast to the east at this point: a clean shift of direction, water deep and fast on the outside of the curve, flowing slower over the lip of a broad gravel bar on the inside, continuing into a field of shattered boulders to the west.
I kneel and slip my hands like eels beneath the surface of the water. I feel the wearing away of the outer ridge, the exposure of roots, the undermining. I imagine eyes in the tips of my fingers, like the eye-stalks of crawdads. Fish stare at my hands, conscious of the trespass. the thought that I might be observed disturbs me.
I've wanted to take the measure of this turn in the river, grasp it, for my own reasons. I feel closer to it now. I know which deer drink at which spots on this bank. I know of the small screech owl nesting opposite. I am familiar with the raccoon and fisher whose tracks appear here, can even tell them apart by their prints.
The attempt to wrestle meaning from this spot began poorly, with illness. A pain, slow in coming like so many that seemed in my back, then in my chest. An ache, yearning, as strong as the wish to be loved, a pain along my self. As the weeks went on I moved about less and less, until finally I merely sat here, the recliner tilted back.
I began to think (as on a staircase descending to an unsure level within myself) about the turns in the river, and how they pertained to me, to my life. If I could understands the turns in the river, I could imitate it, I reasoned.
Thus became a search, doomed to failure.
I finally reduced the bend in the river, and my life, to an elegant, verbal equation. This happened at night, and I let it sink in, then got up and went to bed. I knew I didn't have the strength then to realize them, but I felt my recovery was certain.
I woke during the night to sounds of birds, the few that live in early summer in Montana. They told me much, my mistakes, things I can't speak of here. They departed, leaving the odor of bruised grass and cracked bone in the air. I knew my understanding was incorrect.
I have lost, as I might have inferred, some sense of myself. I no longer require as much. And though I am not hopeful of recovery, an adjustment as smooth as the way the river lies against the earth at this point, this is no longer the issue with me. I am more interested in this: from above, to a hawk, the bend must appear only natural and I for the moment a part. A greater whole we are all part of. It seems we all, me and them, are one. This has somewhat dismantled my loneliness, and my fear of the end.
Like the river, I'll flow out to sea, become part of the greater world around us. This idea gives me comfort.
I will tell you something. It is to the thought of the river's banks that I most frequently return, their wordless emergence at a headwaters, the control they urge on the direction of the river, mile after mile, and their disappearance here on the beach as the river enters the ocean. It occurs to me that at the very end the river is suddenly abandoned, that just before it's finished the edges disappear completely, that in this moment a whole life is revealed.
The river comes around from the southeast to the east at this point: a clean shift of direction, water deep and fast on the outside of the curve, flowing slower over the lip of a broad gravel bar on the inside, continuing into a field of shattered boulders to the west.
I kneel and slip my hands like eels beneath the surface of the water. I feel the wearing away of the outer ridge, the exposure of roots, the undermining. I imagine eyes in the tips of my fingers, like the eye-stalks of crawdads. Fish stare at my hands, conscious of the trespass. the thought that I might be observed disturbs me.
I've wanted to take the measure of this turn in the river, grasp it, for my own reasons. I feel closer to it now. I know which deer drink at which spots on this bank. I know of the small screech owl nesting opposite. I am familiar with the raccoon and fisher whose tracks appear here, can even tell them apart by their prints.
The attempt to wrestle meaning from this spot began poorly, with illness. A pain, slow in coming like so many that seemed in my back, then in my chest. An ache, yearning, as strong as the wish to be loved, a pain along my self. As the weeks went on I moved about less and less, until finally I merely sat here, the recliner tilted back.
I began to think (as on a staircase descending to an unsure level within myself) about the turns in the river, and how they pertained to me, to my life. If I could understands the turns in the river, I could imitate it, I reasoned.
Thus became a search, doomed to failure.
I finally reduced the bend in the river, and my life, to an elegant, verbal equation. This happened at night, and I let it sink in, then got up and went to bed. I knew I didn't have the strength then to realize them, but I felt my recovery was certain.
I woke during the night to sounds of birds, the few that live in early summer in Montana. They told me much, my mistakes, things I can't speak of here. They departed, leaving the odor of bruised grass and cracked bone in the air. I knew my understanding was incorrect.
I have lost, as I might have inferred, some sense of myself. I no longer require as much. And though I am not hopeful of recovery, an adjustment as smooth as the way the river lies against the earth at this point, this is no longer the issue with me. I am more interested in this: from above, to a hawk, the bend must appear only natural and I for the moment a part. A greater whole we are all part of. It seems we all, me and them, are one. This has somewhat dismantled my loneliness, and my fear of the end.
Like the river, I'll flow out to sea, become part of the greater world around us. This idea gives me comfort.
I will tell you something. It is to the thought of the river's banks that I most frequently return, their wordless emergence at a headwaters, the control they urge on the direction of the river, mile after mile, and their disappearance here on the beach as the river enters the ocean. It occurs to me that at the very end the river is suddenly abandoned, that just before it's finished the edges disappear completely, that in this moment a whole life is revealed.
Monday, January 26, 2015
Downstream Pt. 2
She would go down to the river while it was still dark, and know by the call of the thrushes when it was light enough (opening her eyes,having been at the memory of some wine, like Burgundy but with another name in a village,and how she had felt to find they were alike, and parentless, and how he had looked away as though embarrassed when she said sexual, about her first feelings)---light enough to see the path through the trees. But she went when she went always before dawn, before she could see.
One morning in the gray light, it's sound as first submerged in the river's movements, a dory came. A man in a hat rowing. Moving downriver, as foreign as anything she could imagine. Another stood in the bow. He wore another hat and was dressed in neat khaki clothing. She saw the gentle whip of his fly rod pointing into the slack water behind large rocks, after rainbow trout. He looked--exactly the word she was after--silly. But he whipped the rod to set the fly here and there, time and again, the other man rowing, now the rattle of an oarlock, the boat moving toward her, the excessive neatness of their clothing, the creases, the grim expression clear on their red, razor-stropped faces, rowing hard.
She froze with the weight of lead in her belly, coming that fast across the water toward her---never saw her, whipping the shallows for the waiting trout, thirty feet away. Silly. Her face quivered. Silly. She put her hands, her palms cold from the rock, against her face. What this meant, the fear, or qualms about being seen by men, she put off examining.
Winter and summer she would come down to be in the rocks by the water, lying in the dark, waiting for the light, as though by the act itself she could overcome her losses. She meant to remember to tell someone--how the colors came out each morning, show she would like a dress where the wind blew each layer open, somehow.
One morning in the gray light, it's sound as first submerged in the river's movements, a dory came. A man in a hat rowing. Moving downriver, as foreign as anything she could imagine. Another stood in the bow. He wore another hat and was dressed in neat khaki clothing. She saw the gentle whip of his fly rod pointing into the slack water behind large rocks, after rainbow trout. He looked--exactly the word she was after--silly. But he whipped the rod to set the fly here and there, time and again, the other man rowing, now the rattle of an oarlock, the boat moving toward her, the excessive neatness of their clothing, the creases, the grim expression clear on their red, razor-stropped faces, rowing hard.
She froze with the weight of lead in her belly, coming that fast across the water toward her---never saw her, whipping the shallows for the waiting trout, thirty feet away. Silly. Her face quivered. Silly. She put her hands, her palms cold from the rock, against her face. What this meant, the fear, or qualms about being seen by men, she put off examining.
Winter and summer she would come down to be in the rocks by the water, lying in the dark, waiting for the light, as though by the act itself she could overcome her losses. She meant to remember to tell someone--how the colors came out each morning, show she would like a dress where the wind blew each layer open, somehow.
Friday, November 7, 2014
River, The Birds
River: The Birds
I hold in my heart an absolute sorrow for birds, a sorrow so deep that at the first light of day when I shiver like reeds fluttering in a cold fall wind I do not know whether it is from the cold or from the sorrow. Whether I am even capable of feeling such kindness. Perhaps I am. The herons have taught me that.
One rainy winter dawn I stood beneath gray clouds with my arms up stretched, dripping in my cotton shirt (it was clear earlier, I did not heed the wind), staring at the sand at my feet, when I felt the birds alight. I first felt the flutter of golden plovers against my head, then black turnstones landing softly on my arms. The red phalarope with their wild artic visions, fighting the wind to land, prickling my shoulders with their needling grip. Their delicate bones denying the weight of anguish I felt from the journeys these birds had come.
Beneath the weight I recalled the birds of my childhood. I had killed a robin with a new BB gun. I thought the name of the kittiwake funny. Later, much later in life when my father died I wondered if the remaining uncles would want his fly rods. I coveted then in cold contradiction to my grief. Feeling watched I turned from his bed in the ICU and saw ravens watching me, perched on the bare branches of a cottonwood. They waited.
I became tired beyond the limits of what was capable, and lay on the sand, damp but warm.
When I awoke the sky had cleared. In the damp sea air I could smell cedar smoke, a cabin just up the mouth of the river. I felt from here I could see far, up to the headwaters. The plovers had told me what the herons do at night, what the tears they shed added to the mingled memories and guilt's of the people living along the river equaled.
The herons have tried to teach me, but I am still incapable of absorbing what they have to offer. I watch one across the river, just before the reeds on the other bank. Perhaps you know it is raining. The intensity of your stare is then not oblivion, only an effort to spot between the rain drops in the river, past your feet, the movement of small trout.
I know, your way is to be inscrutable. When pressed you leave, the dark grey of your wings fading into the mist. I wonder about the way you seem to brood about the water. Is it more than fish? Do you wonder what your tears have become, have transformed as they flowed downstream?
A dream, like all of my dreams, reveal something but not all. The dream told me that someday we will dance together. Before then I will have to become a trout, and bear scars from your stabbing, rare, misses.
The Falls
River, the last. The Falls
I did three other stories about the river; all somewhat connected,
the same river on the Oregon Coast, the people, the occurrences. This, I
think, is the last.
Someone must see to it that this story is told: you shouldn't think that his man just threw his life away.
When he was a boy there was nothing about him to remember. He looked like anything else-like the trees, the other people, like his dog. Sometimes he would change places with the dog. For a week at a time he was the dog and the dog was himself, and it went unnoticed. It was harder on the dog, but the boy encouraged him and he did well at it.
This is what happened. The boy grew. Visions came to him. He began to see things. When he was eighteen he dreamed he should go up in the Crazy Mountains, near Bozeman, to dream. He went. He was careful hitchhiking, he took rides only from old men, old trucks. He was old enough to be careful, but not to know why.
He got a job down there around Beatty, in Oregon, and I didn't see him for two or three years. The next time was in winter. It was the coldest one I had ever been in. Birds froze. The river froze solid, all the way across. I never saw that before. I picked him up hitchhiking north, he had on dark cotton pants and a light jacket. He had a brown canvas bag, and a hat pulled down over his ears. I pulled over right away, he looked sorry as hell.
I took him way up north, all the way to my place. He had some antelope meat with him and we ate good. We talked. He wanted to know what I was doing for work. I was cutting wood. He was going to go up to British Columbia, Nanaimo, somewhere in there.
I woke up the next morning when it was just getting light. I could not hear the sound of the river and the silence frightened me until I remembered. I heard chopping on the ice. I got dressed and went down, the earth was like rock that winter.
He had cut a hole a few feet across, black water boiling up, flowing out of the ice, freezing. He was standing in the hole naked with his head bowed and his arms straight up over his head with his hands open. He had cut his arms with a knife and red blood was running down them, down his ribs, slowing in the cold to the black water. He gave a cry, the cry was like a bear, not a man sound, something he was tearing away from inside himself. He climbed out and ran into the timber, long high steps.
He cut wood with me that winter. He worked hard. When the trillium bloomed and the birds came he went north.
I did not see him again for ten years. I was in Montana harvesting wheat, sleeping in the back of my truck (parked under cottonwoods for the cool air that ran down them at night). One night I heard my name. He was by the tailgate.
"You got a good spot." He said
"Yeah. That you?"
"Sure"
How you doing?"
'Good. Talk in the morning."
He sounded tired, like he'd been riding all day.
We worked three weeks together,the next morning someone lost their job, too much drinking. We baled hay for days, the dust would gather in our clothes.
He came home with me, and he stayed that winter too. I was getting old then, and he was good to have around. In the spring he left. He told me a lot that winter, but I can't say these things. When he spoke it was like when you fall asleep in the woods, the breeze in the pines. You listen hard, but it's not easy.
A few summers later he was in Alaska, working at a farm in the Matanuska Valley. All that time he was alone. Once he came down to see me but I was gone. I knew it when I got home, I went down to the river and saw the place where he went into the water. The ground was soft around the rocks, I knew his feet.
I am not a man of power, but I waded into the river and shouted. "Keep going, you keep going!" My heart was pounding like the falls.
The last time I saw him he came to my house in the fall. He came in quiet as air sitting in a canyon. We made dinner early and at dusk he went out and I followed. He cut twigs from the ash, cottonwood and alder. He brushed me with the branches, telling me I had always been a good friend. He said this was his last time. We went swimming a little, there is a strong current there, I had to be careful.
I woke in the morning, just as light was seeping into the sky. I went to look at his bed, he was gone. I got dressed and walked the path to the falls. I see him all at once standing at the lip of the falls. I heard that bear-like cry, and his hands went out. He was in the air, turning over and over, the last moonlight finding the silver-white of his sides and dark green water before he cut into the river, the sound lost in the roar.
I went back up the path, to a clear-cut area where alders have started to grow. The sun was up, warm to me as I sat down, my back against the remaining fir. Good day to go look for morels, but I fell asleep.
When I awoke it was late. I went back to my truck and drove home, wondering if I felt strong enough to eat venison.
Someone must see to it that this story is told: you shouldn't think that his man just threw his life away.
When he was a boy there was nothing about him to remember. He looked like anything else-like the trees, the other people, like his dog. Sometimes he would change places with the dog. For a week at a time he was the dog and the dog was himself, and it went unnoticed. It was harder on the dog, but the boy encouraged him and he did well at it.
This is what happened. The boy grew. Visions came to him. He began to see things. When he was eighteen he dreamed he should go up in the Crazy Mountains, near Bozeman, to dream. He went. He was careful hitchhiking, he took rides only from old men, old trucks. He was old enough to be careful, but not to know why.
He got a job down there around Beatty, in Oregon, and I didn't see him for two or three years. The next time was in winter. It was the coldest one I had ever been in. Birds froze. The river froze solid, all the way across. I never saw that before. I picked him up hitchhiking north, he had on dark cotton pants and a light jacket. He had a brown canvas bag, and a hat pulled down over his ears. I pulled over right away, he looked sorry as hell.
I took him way up north, all the way to my place. He had some antelope meat with him and we ate good. We talked. He wanted to know what I was doing for work. I was cutting wood. He was going to go up to British Columbia, Nanaimo, somewhere in there.
I woke up the next morning when it was just getting light. I could not hear the sound of the river and the silence frightened me until I remembered. I heard chopping on the ice. I got dressed and went down, the earth was like rock that winter.
He had cut a hole a few feet across, black water boiling up, flowing out of the ice, freezing. He was standing in the hole naked with his head bowed and his arms straight up over his head with his hands open. He had cut his arms with a knife and red blood was running down them, down his ribs, slowing in the cold to the black water. He gave a cry, the cry was like a bear, not a man sound, something he was tearing away from inside himself. He climbed out and ran into the timber, long high steps.
He cut wood with me that winter. He worked hard. When the trillium bloomed and the birds came he went north.
I did not see him again for ten years. I was in Montana harvesting wheat, sleeping in the back of my truck (parked under cottonwoods for the cool air that ran down them at night). One night I heard my name. He was by the tailgate.
"You got a good spot." He said
"Yeah. That you?"
"Sure"
How you doing?"
'Good. Talk in the morning."
He sounded tired, like he'd been riding all day.
We worked three weeks together,the next morning someone lost their job, too much drinking. We baled hay for days, the dust would gather in our clothes.
He came home with me, and he stayed that winter too. I was getting old then, and he was good to have around. In the spring he left. He told me a lot that winter, but I can't say these things. When he spoke it was like when you fall asleep in the woods, the breeze in the pines. You listen hard, but it's not easy.
A few summers later he was in Alaska, working at a farm in the Matanuska Valley. All that time he was alone. Once he came down to see me but I was gone. I knew it when I got home, I went down to the river and saw the place where he went into the water. The ground was soft around the rocks, I knew his feet.
I am not a man of power, but I waded into the river and shouted. "Keep going, you keep going!" My heart was pounding like the falls.
The last time I saw him he came to my house in the fall. He came in quiet as air sitting in a canyon. We made dinner early and at dusk he went out and I followed. He cut twigs from the ash, cottonwood and alder. He brushed me with the branches, telling me I had always been a good friend. He said this was his last time. We went swimming a little, there is a strong current there, I had to be careful.
I woke in the morning, just as light was seeping into the sky. I went to look at his bed, he was gone. I got dressed and walked the path to the falls. I see him all at once standing at the lip of the falls. I heard that bear-like cry, and his hands went out. He was in the air, turning over and over, the last moonlight finding the silver-white of his sides and dark green water before he cut into the river, the sound lost in the roar.
I went back up the path, to a clear-cut area where alders have started to grow. The sun was up, warm to me as I sat down, my back against the remaining fir. Good day to go look for morels, but I fell asleep.
When I awoke it was late. I went back to my truck and drove home, wondering if I felt strong enough to eat venison.
Downstream
Downstream
1952
Rebecca Beeson drove 18 miles each morning to work in a men's clothing store in town and came back each evening in time to fix her husband's dinner. It was a job that had paid for a second automobile, a funeral for an aunt and a new stove, but it left her depressed and stranded now, at fifty-six, as if it were a clear defeat, invisible but keenly known to her.
Her husband operated a gas station and logging supply shop in Beaver Creek, a small town on the river where they lived. They had no children, the only time she'd been pregnant the baby was stillborn, which had caused Cawley Beeson a kind of dismay from which he'd never recovered. Maybe this wasn't a place to raise children, he'd thought. He lived as though he were waiting for wounds to heal before moving on.
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He hardly noticed, when she helped him in the shop on Saturday's, that someone often came by with wildflowers her, or to tell a story, to ask if she'd seen the skunk cabbage in Watson's field or the pussy willows blooming, sure signs of spring. Cawley appreciated these acts of kindness, while he finished a job for whoever it was, as a duty done that he had no way with.
Men were attracted to Rebecca in an innocent but almost hungry way, as though needing the pleasure she took in them. Because there was never a hint of anything but friendship, their attentions both pleased her and left her with a deep longing, out of which, unashamed, she lay awake at night in a self-embrace of fantasy.
Late at night, when he couldn't sleep, Cawley would roll over to her and try to speak. Sometimes he would begin to cry and sob in anger at a loss he couldn't find the words for. He cried against her nightgown and drove his fist weakly into his pillow. On these nights she held him until the pain ran it's course, and said nothing about her own yearning.
She had hoped that at some point they could go away for a while, in a deeply private place she wished to go to Europe, alone; but she could not bear the thought of his loneliness, and did not believe that in a journey together there could be any joy.
One summer evening while Cawley was in the living room reading, she sat on their bed with her face lowered to a glass bowl of dried blossoms in her lap. Twenty years of anniversary roses, flowers from her first garden, wildflowers from men who were charmed by her. She felt the tears run the length of her nose. She wished to be rid of it, and rose with the bowl and left.
In the dark yard by the side of the house she walked down to the river and stepped in, wetting her dress to the waist. She scattered the first handful on the water, the pieces landed soundlessly and tettered away. She flung the dry petals until the bowl was empty, then dipped its lip to the current to swirl it clean.
Of the flowers she threw on the water, some floated down to the log jam, and washed up on a stump that had been cut with a saw, and had a fading dark stain on it's surface. They stayed there until the first fall rain washed them away.
Rebecca Beeson drove 18 miles each morning to work in a men's clothing store in town and came back each evening in time to fix her husband's dinner. It was a job that had paid for a second automobile, a funeral for an aunt and a new stove, but it left her depressed and stranded now, at fifty-six, as if it were a clear defeat, invisible but keenly known to her.
Her husband operated a gas station and logging supply shop in Beaver Creek, a small town on the river where they lived. They had no children, the only time she'd been pregnant the baby was stillborn, which had caused Cawley Beeson a kind of dismay from which he'd never recovered. Maybe this wasn't a place to raise children, he'd thought. He lived as though he were waiting for wounds to heal before moving on.
He hardly noticed, when she helped him in the shop on Saturday's, that someone often came by with wildflowers her, or to tell a story, to ask if she'd seen the skunk cabbage in Watson's field or the pussy willows blooming, sure signs of spring. Cawley appreciated these acts of kindness, while he finished a job for whoever it was, as a duty done that he had no way with.
Men were attracted to Rebecca in an innocent but almost hungry way, as though needing the pleasure she took in them. Because there was never a hint of anything but friendship, their attentions both pleased her and left her with a deep longing, out of which, unashamed, she lay awake at night in a self-embrace of fantasy.
Late at night, when he couldn't sleep, Cawley would roll over to her and try to speak. Sometimes he would begin to cry and sob in anger at a loss he couldn't find the words for. He cried against her nightgown and drove his fist weakly into his pillow. On these nights she held him until the pain ran it's course, and said nothing about her own yearning.
She had hoped that at some point they could go away for a while, in a deeply private place she wished to go to Europe, alone; but she could not bear the thought of his loneliness, and did not believe that in a journey together there could be any joy.
One summer evening while Cawley was in the living room reading, she sat on their bed with her face lowered to a glass bowl of dried blossoms in her lap. Twenty years of anniversary roses, flowers from her first garden, wildflowers from men who were charmed by her. She felt the tears run the length of her nose. She wished to be rid of it, and rose with the bowl and left.
In the dark yard by the side of the house she walked down to the river and stepped in, wetting her dress to the waist. She scattered the first handful on the water, the pieces landed soundlessly and tettered away. She flung the dry petals until the bowl was empty, then dipped its lip to the current to swirl it clean.
Of the flowers she threw on the water, some floated down to the log jam, and washed up on a stump that had been cut with a saw, and had a fading dark stain on it's surface. They stayed there until the first fall rain washed them away.
The Stump
The Stump
A storm came this year, against which all other storms were to be measured, on a Saturday in October, a balmy afternoon. Men in the woods cutting wood, children outside with thoughts lodged somewhere in the memory of summer. It came up the river valley, as did every storm in the fall, but the grey-black thunderheads were piled up high, much too high. In the stillness before it hit, men looked at each other as though a fast and wiry man had pulled a knife in a bar. They felt the trees falling before they heard the wind, and they dropped chainsaws and choker cables, scrambled to get out.
Olin Sanders tried to free his saw from the big fir, but it caught him barberchairing, as he tried to run it hopped after him like it was trying to find it's stump. When the wind died the men found him. They laid him across the laps of two men in the back of the truck and sent word ahead. When they got down to the road his wife was there crying, with pink curlers in her hair. Two county sheriffs were there, drawn by the word of death. When she looked through the window of the truck and saw him broken in half, like a buckled tin can she raised her fists and began beating on the truck. When the sheriff held her back and said in a polite voice "Now, control yourself." she began beating her thighs. One of the men stepped up and punched the sheriff.
All this time the son, in whose lap the father's broken head was cradled, sat silent. He was aware of the beginning of something else, more than his father's end. His pants were wet with his father's blood.
That night the boy left the house, walked past his father's shirts hanging to dry on the line, and drove up Jumpoff Joe Road to where they had been cutting. He sidestepped downslope with the chainsaw in his hands to reach the stump of the tree (the blood congealed like dark sap on the wood) and cut off the top of the stump with the stain of his father's death on it, the saw screaming in the dim night.
No one had ever done anything like this before. The lack of any tradition in it bothered the boy. As he walked past the trees near the house he was suddenly afraid. His mother was awake, sitting in the darkened living room when he walked in, wearing the tattered quilt robe that embarrassed him when his friends were around. Behind the glow of her cigarette she asked where he had been.
The butt of the tree eventually rolled downhill after the logging was done. A family of Marten's took up residence beneath it, living as well as was possible in that country.
Olin was the only person killed, among the other dead were Cawley Beeson's dog, and two deer, quietly butchered and passed among neighbors.
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