On the River

Inspired by/in tribute to Edward Abbey’s wonderful documentation of his float down Glen Canyon in the book Desert Solitaire.

When a cool breeze, a precursor to evening, rushes across the water and over your face, when you’re eye level with the water and the party downstream moves out of earshot, the river almost seems wild. I let myself believe, for a moment, that I’m here two hundred years ago, before the loggers and the homesteaders and the tourists started arriving by the boatload. It’s like squinting at someone in a hazy bar and convincing yourself, just for a moment, that he or she is more beautiful than you first observed.
Not that the river, especially on a sweltering day like today, isn’t beautiful. The sun, low in the sky, highlights each ripple on the wide, shallow expanse of water moving slowly toward the Alberni Inlet and eventually the Pacific. Trees loom on either side like living canyon walls, taking on a slightly disjointed appearance with the slanted shadow cast by the sun. It’s that long, hot stretch of summer that reaches lazily between July and August, but the river always has somewhere to go ¬– crisp, cool and smelling of high forests.

We’re close to the end of our float. Crystal and I, hot and tired after the Saturday market, had set our inner tubes in a few miles upstream of the farm and spent the past three hours taking our time coming home. This river, which runs right by Collins Farm, is known as the Somass. The salmon run here in greater numbers than any other river in North America – earning Port Alberni (the closest city to us) the title of Salmon Capital of the World.

We aren’t too concerned with salmon, though, other to watch them jump as we float effortlessly down the river. I keep one eye skyward in search of eagles, which are another common sight in these parts. Just last week, Peter and I were in the barn chatting with the horses when we noticed a crowd of vultures gathering around a glistening, translucent blob of cow afterbirth in the field. We stood on the lower rung of the fence watching, and soon an eagle joined in the feast. To us, it seemed like an undignified way for such a regal bird to get a meal, but eagles are, after all, scavengers. A second eagle landed and the vultures began to back away, and with good reason. Even from five hundred feet away, I could catch the sharp, menacing look in the bigger birds’ eyes. We stayed where we were, trying to keep still, the toes of our boots pointed firmly toward the dirt.

The Somass drifts past a shooting range, a large greenhouse, a few small farms and quite a few houses. Crystal and I get off our tubes and bask in the sun whenever we feel in need of a break. At other points, curiosity simply gets the better of us. The Field of Weeds, for example, demanded investigation. From the river, we could make out over a rocky embankment hundreds of tall, strange-looking plants. Crystal is here on the WWOOF (Willing Workers on Organic Farms) program and is, like me, interested in all that grows. We park our tubes, climb up the rocks and up onto a large pasture hosting a few cows and some geese. The odd plants take up half the field, but we can’t quite figure out what they are. They grow two or three feet apart over bare ground, towering over our heads with thick stalks, huge leaves and pointy heads that bend over with their own weight. A few that have fallen over sprout three or four new heads out of the side. I express jealousy for the plant’s ability to bud offspring so effortlessly; Crystal admires its resilience in the face of potential setbacks.
Life lessons learned, we decide the best course of action will be to run through the plants with our arms outstretched, yelling nonsense at the top of our lungs and feeling the beat of hundreds of stalks against our hands. It doesn’t solve the mystery, but it gives the cows something to ponder over as they chew their cud.

***

Back on the river, I’m daydreaming with my chin pointed toward the empty sky when I notice Crystal out of the corner of my eye, floating with the top of her head in the water. I question her motives. She tells me I have to experience this perspective, so I follow suit, leaning all the way back on my tube until I’m taking in my bobbing surroundings upside-down. I have to admit that this is unexpectedly amazing. The last few of my cares and worries, already fried to a crisp in the sun, fall right out my ears. The trees look even taller. The water and sky are even bluer. I feel like Lucy in the sky with diamonds. Few experiences in life require a person to instantly begin singing at the top of their lungs, but this is one of them.

The only possible threat to our enjoyment this afternoon may be an encounter with George Fleagle. Mr. Fleagle represents the crème-de-la-crème of the Port Alberni beer-gutted, tobacco-stained bachelor crowd. I’d met him a couple of weeks ago while swimming in the river with Crystal and Andre, another WOOF-er, near her farm. He came snorkeling down the river, unnoticed by us until he popped out of the water just as Crystal was lighting a cigarette, sure that she wouldn’t mind if he bummed one and oh, by the way, do you gals ever want to go tubing? We claimed a strong aversion to water, a defense that was probably undermined by the fact that we were in bathing suits, dripping wet by the side of a river. George stuck around anyway, educating us on the many pleasures of inner tubing and the river in general.
I was due back at the farm soon and decided to head home, leaving Crystal to deal with our new friend. My car was parked in her driveway at the top of the hill a short distance away. I hadn’t been paying much attention when we came down, and it was my first time there. Naturally, I assumed I would find it anyway and became utterly and completely lost in the thick brush. I ended up back down near the river, but some thirty feet away from the path I was supposed to be on with a thick patch of thistles blocking my way forward. Luckily, I could see my friends from where I stood, so swallowed my pride and yelled for direction. George, who happened to have grown up in the very house Crystal was staying in, jumped to the rescue. He gallantly escorted me up the hill, questioning my rash decision to move to Canada all by myself without anyone to help me along. Because of my embarrassment, I found myself being what probably came off as friendly to the hopeful Fleagel, who now considered himself a bonafide hero. He promised to come visit me at work.
When I told Ann and Bob about the experience, they seemed quite amused. My gut feeling – namely, nausea – about him had been dead-on. George had grown up with their two sons – he and his friends habitually threw rocks at their campground sign, picked on their kids and generally made nuisances of themselves. Fleagle was a man who lived up to his name.
Thankfully, we haven’t seen him yet, and the prospect of a redneck admirer has turned into a favorite farm joke instead of an actual threat. Still, when we near crowds of young guys on the river, I sink a little lower in my tube, ready to go for an impromptu swim.

But the waters are surprisingly quiet today. Tubing is something of a sport in this town, where most of the kids seem to have nothing to do but drink beer, smoke pot and go for a float, often taking with them giant boom boxes strapped to rafts, which shake the trees to their roots for miles around. Like many places in the Pacific Northwest, the two major industries here – logging and fishing – collapsed on themselves in the latter part of the last century. This leaves the young people with the unexciting prospects of collecting welfare checks and scrambling for tourist dollars if they wish to remain in the area. Boredom seems to hang heavy over the town. If only they could all be bussed out to Collins Farm to pull weeds. All, of course, except the pesky Fleagle.

***

Before the river meanders around to our jumping-off point at the farm, it flattens out and gets wide for a long, shallow stretch. Over the sound of water scurrying over rock we hear music – not the obnoxious thump of a tuber’s bass but a lighter melody. It actually sounds like the trees themselves are ringing.
The music gets louder, coming from the left bank ahead now. I crane my neck to peer through the underbrush. Then I spot the source. A ray of lingering sunlight makes its way through the trees and illuminates a man standing with his back to us, his arms flying across the keys of a huge xylophone, wooden mallets in hand. The chiming, stacatto music rises on the breeze above his back yard, his house, and the river. He seems to be performing for nobody but himself and the trees, completely lost in the joy of it. I stand up in the shin-high water, entranced by the sight and the sound, the sudden reminder of life’s endless mystery.