The yard sale burns me out. The house is a ransacked mess. I should be tidying, packing, organizing.
To heck with the shoulds and oughts. I load the canoe, pack the paddles, both single and double bladed, and take off up and over the lovely curvaceous
Flowery Trail mountain pass road. My local Nile is calling my name: I need to spend some quality time with the north flowing
Pend Oreille river.
I stop for coffee at an espresso stand at the outskirts of town. A solar powered hula girl sways for me. Signs and omens. Spellbound by her plasticity I fumble my change.
I discover a delight of meadows of blue I
ndian Camas (
Camassia quamash) flowering along the trail. At one time a staple in the diet of native peoples of the region, I have eaten this root. I have walked with the ancestors. I can see the future.
A little way after Little Yoni and I join HWY 20, buzzards circle, floating effortlessly on the air currents. How very Western: the spread of huge dark wings, the vulture head. How very Egyptian. Nekhbet, protectress of the dead, watch over me. I used up all the pictures in my yard sale post.
Here.
When I get to the river, I find an eager, impatient stretch of water perfect for my mood: it engages me physically and mentally, helps me let go of all the aftermath of being on the market in a tiny town.
I launch and turn upstream. The Pend Oreille river with a belly full of snow melt is no single blader, Sunday afternoon float. This is a big, deep river with a purpose, in a donʻt mess with me mood.
This strong aquamarine green god is fierce: full of boils and swirls, driven with the energy and urgency of fresh mountain water on its way to a date with salt water. Somewhere down the crazy river.
In spite of the upper eighties temperatures, the water is icy cold, fresh out of frozen snow and oh so passionate with it. Cool passion has a dangerous vehemence. May is the most dangerous month for drownings in Washington State. Air temperatures rise filling the rivers and lakes with cold cold water from melting snow. Every year the water gods claim some human sacrifices.
On this day, however, everything comes up shimmering for me. There are robins on the banks, fresh bud and leaf greening the brown. Birds call, geese honk accompaniment.
Perhaps out of respect for the sacrifice-hungry, icy water, people are elsewhere. Little Yoni and I, and the birds and the bees, and the flowers and the trees, have the river all to ourselves. We experience a few hours of blessed, beautiful, restorative solitude. Life for me is here. Now.
I stop against a sheltered bank, in a cove, to contemplate a bit. I am mobbed by magical mauve butterflies. Behind me are splashes of big fish jumping. I marvel at the collection of fibres, natureʻs lint, in a nest in the branches of an riverside shrub. I think about the origins of basketry.
Little Yoni breaks free, impatient with the waterʻs pull beneath her. None of this sitting around examining belly button lint. We have water to explore. The sun is shining. The river is flowing.
The blue blue sky is scribbled with vapor wraiths. I let them blow through me, invite them to take my ghosts up up up and away into the infinite blue.
After a while I turn and float back to my launch site. Little Yoni moving fast on the current is like a horse which has the scent of stable and hay.
I let it all flow through me, in me, dissolve me. And pass. This too shall.
I put in at one of the
Pend Oreille River Water trail launch sites.
There are good his and hers toilets behind a neat fence and a great parking lot just off HWY 20. Discover Pass is necessary for parking here..
Yeah, I can see it now
The distant red neon shivered in the heat
I was feeling like a stranger in a strange land
You know where people play games with the night
God, it was too hot to sleep
I followed the sound of a jukebox coming from up the levee
All of a sudden I could hear somebody whistling
Fromright behind me
I turned around and she said
"Why do you always end up down at Nick's Cafe?"
I said "I don't know, the wind just kind of pushed me this way."
She said "Hang the rich."
Catch the blue train
To places never been before
Look for me
Somewhere down the crazy river
Somewhere down the crazy river
Catch the blue train
All the way to Kokomo
You can find me
Somewhere down the crazy river
Somewhere down the crazy river
Take a picture of this
The fields are empty, abandoned '59 Chevy
Laying in the back seat listening to Little Willie John
Yea, that's when time stood still
You know, I think I'm gonna go down to Madam X
And let her read my mind
She said "That Voodoo stuff don't do nothing for me."
I'm a man with a clear destination
I'm a man with a broad imagination
You fog the mind, you stir the soul
I can't find, ... no control
Catch the blue train
To places never been before
Look for me
Somewhere down the crazy river
Somewhere down the crazy river
Catch the blue train
All the way to Kokomo
You can find me
Somewhere down the crazy river
Somewhere down the crazy river
Wait, did you hear that
Oh this is sure stirring up some ghosts for me
She said "There's one thing you've got to learn
Is not to be afraid of it."
I said "No, I like it, I like it, it's good."
She said "You like it now
But you'll learn to love it later."
I been spellbound - falling in trances
I been spellbound - falling in trances
You give me shivers - chills and fever
I been spellbound - somewhere down the crazy river
