River-Horse: A Voyage Across America (64 page)

Again to river: onward, downward, seaward. Elkhorn Rapids almost equal to Big Mallard; on farther, high water turns Growler into purring rollers. At Ruff Creek pull up for night on another fine, if narrow, sand strip where we swim until 65-degree water too much; strike out against current to see what it’s like—I manage only to stay in place. After much paddlework today, P says, “I feel my hands turning to fins.” Supper is trout we carried in; two anglers have caught only three squawfish and one old tire, probably from abandoned mining camp.
As
stars appear, I tell an intimate story to my friend who worries about his memory, then say, Forget it now. He: “Easily done.” Made only nine miles today.

MONDAY, DAY SEVEN

Years ago old cargoman took big wooden scow down the Salmon. One rapids after another tore it up, forcing him to cannibalize it for repairs; by time he reached Riggins he was in boat “without hardly room for his butt.” Day uneventful although we stop often, once at gold mine abandoned sixty years ago but recently bought by jerk who hauled bulldozer to his pocket of private land within Wild & Scenic segment and began tearing things up, threatening to subdivide acres, all with idea he could scare government into buying him out; feds ignored him, and now dozer sits rusting, trapped by River of No Return. Reach Mackay Bar and old ranch, now lodge served by pocket airstrip; a few of us rent house there; showers, beverages on porch where P says, “That last rapids we’ll face, it keeps turning up in odd corners of my mind. A while ago the part of my brain that helps me dress found the Slide under a clean shirt.” Yes, I confess too, I got a glimpse of it behind the bathroom mirror. “What’s happening to us?”

TUESDAY, DAY EIGHT

Morning. Someone calls into room, “Did you know
Nikawa
spelled backwards is Awakin?” Throw boot. River full of long backeddies we enter to wait until sweepboat comes along; currents gently haul us up
stream right next to the hard charge down of main river; weird sensation, seems impossible. Metamorphosed canyon walls cooked brown by ancient subterranean fires; a few stands of Pacific yew (Taxol), more ponderosa. Along north bank is Gospel Hump Wilderness. P: “What’s a gospel hump?” Somebody: “Ask one of those de-churched evangelists.” Rapids mild, helmsman lets me steer paddleboat through. Pleasure of white water lies in its navigation; otherwise it’s theme-park ride—almost. Dried Meat Rapids our oarsman calls Dead Meat because five people drowned here thirty years ago, including helmsman named Lucky; but for us Wet Meat is more accurate. Hot day produces water fight. After twenty quiet miles, we make camp on triple terrace beach at Johnson Creek; take nippy swim. Around evening campfire—our fire in large metal pan so we don’t mark sand—our baker’s dozen, on last night together, bestow on me Trogdon Memorial Peckerwood Award (unspecified whether for conduct or frequent use of term); trophy is driftwood remarkably like Lewis’s woodpecker (jokes about that and Clark’s nutcracker); all sign it; lucky they didn’t find one shaped like posterior of horse. Night so lovely we sleep outside tents, under rotation of stars, beneath clock of heavens; all around small conversations dying out slowly like embers until only river speaks, and I remember old riddle-song:

You passers-by

who share my journey,

you move and change,

I move and am the same;

you move and are gone,

I move and remain.

WEDNESDAY, DAY NINE

Pack for departures; quickly under way and soon out of Wild & Scenic portion. Only five miles to our point of separation but way is hearty rapids, fitting farewells to those leaving; soak all peckerwoods down. Arrive Carey Creek at head of west-end road; reorganize gear and four of us move to another oarboat, this one fitted with small outboard motor for run from here to Clarkston. Goodbyes.

Four of us, plus BB at helm, continue on; pass accurately named Fall Creek—drops five thousand feet in five miles—now
that’s
a wet elevator. An hour out, the Salmon deepens and slows enough to use ten-horse
motor for first time, and we putt through warm afternoon, country much more open, vast treeless hills, no longer gorge but valley, gravel road again alongside, a few dwellings, great wilderness behind. We all feel a letdown, especially when we pass island some screw-you-world guy keeps sheep on in winter; when spring rise comes, it flushes manure—
E. coli
and giardia
—right on downstream; such poisoning still permitted. Past Music Bar, name having nothing to do with harmonics; rather, years ago German miner Fritz Music lived near; so fearful of serpents he walked the seven miles to town with metal stovepipes clanking around his legs. Explain to P how snake is ancient Indian symbol for river.

Water makes sweeping curve toward little Riggins atop steep and high bank; find rooms, showers, and supper where BB says, “We had one old raft we’d pump up in the morning to get it going, pump it again at lunch to keep it going, pump it at bedtime to keep it from sinking.” P: “There’s my life in a sentence.”

THURSDAY, DAY TEN

From Riggins, the Salmon runs about fifty miles north before making broad loop topped by six-mile horseshoe, then continues due south to confluence with Snake River. Photog asks will we meet the Slide today, and BB: “Don’t rush it. Give it time to drop.” Every hour should help. Photog: “I just want it over with.” If we rush it, that’s exactly what could happen. Below Riggins, pass under “Time Zone Bridge” and enter Pacific clock; small cheer goes up. Water easy although many jolly rollers; to starboard for about thirty miles runs U.S.
95
; people wave from car; reminds me of I
-90
along Erie Canal—seems I’ve lived many lives since then. On the Salmon I descend like Cleopatra in her barge; sit royally atop baggage which I fashion into soft throne; or, in slack water, sometimes stretch out on locker box; take notes, pictures, speak little, just delight in such happy pace down miles toward ocean. From shore, oyster plants releasing parachute seeds, and in places on hills hackberry and mountain mahogany, but also invasive yellow-star thistle, exotic taking over whole slopes through root inhibitor lethal to other plants; nasty spines prevent even cattle from eating it.

Snack at Hammer Creek; 92 degrees; on again; river sloshes us cool at right intervals as if it knows our need. Rollercoaster Rapids leave us laughing. Into Green Canyon, first of four splendid gorges—Cougar
,
Snow Hole, Blue—each one successively more austere and magnificent, fuliginous stone having tinges of color; grand gifts of gravity-driven water. Into Demon’s Drop, curling waves and good pounding, then series of rapids with names better than their challenge, at least in high water: Lorna’s Lulu, Lower Bunghole (where else?), Bodacious Bounce (especially if you don’t hit it right), Half-and-Half (half the time you make it), Gobbler (eats your lunch). But Snow Hole is different, partly because motor quits twice on approach and BB has to grab oars at last second; sharp drop, huge boulders, deep pit. Holey rollers help interrupt miles—could have used a few on the Missouri. Stop at long sandbar to unkink legs; near here, Chief Joseph and Nez Perce in 1877 crossed as cavalry chased them north, conflict that eventually led him to utter perhaps most famous of Indian sentences: “I will fight no more forever.” Sudden smashing wind rips down narrow defile like cannonball in gun barrel, blasts us with blinding sand, then gone as swiftly; a shock of wind. P: “Was that Chief Joseph or the cavalry?”

Make camp near Skeleton Creek, a name we trust not prognostic; last night we hope; tomorrow the Slide, only six miles below, perhaps final block between us and Pacific. Having shed baker’s dozen contingent, our reduced company made seventy-three miles. For future transcontinental crossers
, DoggeRule of River Road:

Fine be a pair,

and four be fair,

but more beware.

FRIDAY, DAY ELEVEN

Sleep under stars again and rise dewed over; to river to check rock placed at water line as I’ve done last few nights; the Salmon dropped a few more inches; no better morning message. Decamp and enter multiple but easy moils that get us ready for big one. Blue Canyon is steep black walls free of vegetation; stretches out cold and lonely, lovely like beautiful corpse. Listening for the Slide to announce itself.

BB unusually quiet except to say twenty thousand cubic feet per second of water passing through will send us back upriver to wait it out; do we have enough food? Sheer walls prevent portaging or lining raft down. Nobody shoots hard rapids flawlessly every time, yet we trust in our
craftsman-raftsman. Slide lies only three miles from very end of the Salmon—theatrical suspense; drama increases as we hear it, hidden around bend, echo up canyon; hear it even better when motor abruptly quits again just above thundering. BB rushes forward to oars, nearly sending me overboard, his pell-mell revealing what his wordless calm covers. He strokes hard to pull into backwater. Tie up so he can clamber over boulders to scout passage. As he loops line around rock, I ask, Did you kill that motor to make good drama? No. He gives smile that, were it any grimmer, would be a scowl. What if motor quits when we enter? “That would be drama.” Can’t believe timing—the luck, she is still running good?

The Slide a result of collapsing canyon wall forty years ago constricting river to about half its width—now a fire hose trying to shoot through keyhole. Does good job of standing river on end. Unnoticed, P and I climb high above to see rapids and observe BB who studies a long time, turns away only to come back; studies more; starts toward raft, stops, returns again. I say, It’s that third look that bothers me. P: “More drama?” Don’t think so, I’m sorry to say.

At boat we wait for bad news. BB: “In low water you can run plumb through, but this is the highest I’ve ever known it, about seventeen thousand cfs.” A couple hundred cfs in this channel would float canoe. And? “Just low enough to give it a try.” A try? I think, A try is something where alternative to failure isn’t death. Photog to BB: “Are you sure about this?” I answer for him: Let’s go
.

Motor still dead—bad word. Oar into center of river, negotiate for position, get set as current locks on; decision made like parachutist’s first step out of plane; rapids of no return; lying behind us now only our deeds done, and ahead maybe nothing more than Judgment Day. To myself:
Too-nuts!
Raft begins to shimmy, standing waves hump it, violate it; coming on fast white dread of water bashing hell out of boulders, working to grind them down and unconstrict passage; rivers eat mountains, not vice versa. Sucked forward fast, barely miss nasty flipper wave, bump and bounce; pitch, yaw, and roll at same time, then skim easily onto tailwaters; we’re barely dampened. BB’s cautiously masterful steering is perfect except for negating ten days of expectations and chance for dramatics. Feel like one who just died in sleep and wakes on other side: “That was it? That’s what I dwelt on for a lifetime?” P oxymoronically: “That’s the happiest letdown I ever had.”

BB sends me to oars while he tinkers with motor. On to Sluicebox, Checkerboard, and Eye of Needle; I head smack into centers, drenching us, “wahooing it,” as BB says; just trying to bid proper farewell to River of No Return. He glances up, says casually, “That green ridge ahead is Oregon.” Sentence overwhelms me. Oregon? I remember shouting to workman at Third Avenue Bridge on Harlem River, We’re bound for Oregon! Now it’s there, it’s there, we are goddamn-the-hell there! Between us and Pacific only two more rivers, fully navigable; no Snow Imperatives. We’re alive and we’re down-bound.

XI

[On the Snake River] Ice Harbor Dam was finished in 1962, Lower Monumental in 1970, Little Goose in 1970, and Lower Granite in 1975. Hydroelectric generators produce 1,305 average megawatts—enough for Seattle. Though navigation was the impetus for the project with power being incidental, hydroelectricity provides ninety-six percent of the benefits, navigation two percent. Construction of Lower Granite alone cost $370 million; annual operations require $14 million. No one has analyzed actual benefits and costs since the projects were built. “We don’t sit around and worry about that anymore,” says “Dug" Dugger, public affairs director for the Army Corps of Engineers in Walla Walla.

Even though laws mandate mitigation for lost habitat, little has been done to replace the 140 miles of river, 14,400 acres, and forty-eight islands. . . . What would real mitigation entail? Private riparian lands that would otherwise be developed could be bought. Overgrazed riparian acreage could be acquired for wildlife. Obsolete dams could be removed. Flood-prone development could be cleared instead of using disaster relief funds to rebuild on the floodplain. Wetlands could be acquired and levees removed. Water rights could be bought for instream flows. The Army Corps of Engineers is barred by law from doing most of these things. Much
could
be done, but almost nothing
is
being done, not because biologists lack the will or competence but because riparian values are not recognized in the political system.