As morning warms, put canoe in; terrain continues much as last few days; not unpleasing country, just too much of it between us and mountains. Water at first drably olive and murky except for reaches where certain angle of light makes them wobbly blue mirror reflecting sky. The beauty. Pass low riverbank with dead steer hanging on edge, dehydrated skin collapsed over rib cage like tattered and fallen tent, everything so dry even flies ignore it. River for hundreds of miles has been virtually free of litter other than occasional plastics: pop containers, fishermen’s bleach-jug floats, broken-up Styrofoam coolers.
Through long pool of cottonwood-seed fluff lying atop like summer snow. We’re reading chutes well now, backing down only one, although often successful ascent is but chance. Lunch on sandbar; too warm to enjoy. On again— Onagen, title of our voyage. Scoop up clot of foam from river: feels soapy but smells like mud, almost sensuous except for thought it’s probably agrichemical runoff. Long stretch of sweet air that seems to be melding of sage and cottonwood; soothes day.
Out of west comes thunderstorming, but it slants away to leave us dry and hot. To pass time I try to concoct games; one this afternoon—think of four simple words I’ve never used in my books: hutch, razzmatazz, stapler, porkpie. Task takes up twenty minutes. Near bend where steamboat Big Horn went down, we hit run of boils that thumps out tedium; ghost of Big Horn warning, “Vigilance, my jollies!” Passing time again: Words that will never appear in my books: scaphoid, epigynous, decalescence, monophthong.
Arrive at Poplar; not visible, of course; some young Assiniboins swimming; they stand up in shallows to watch, their wet hair shining like obsidian. We’ve made twenty-seven miles. Cool showers at old motor court, then hoof down to Buckhorn Bar for R Relief and supper and conversation with Richard Von Burton Courchene, massively shouldered and handsome mixed-blood Assiniboin (also Blackfoot, Chippewa, French). I say, Your name is almost Richard the Lion-Hearted. He: “I’m Oak Heart. I had one wife who thought my heart was wood.” His grandmother played on the championship Fort Shaw Indian School basketball team at the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis. Father was civil engineer, and Oak Heart grew up sharpening surveyor’s stakes; he’s now foreman for Montana highway department. P: “Are you a surveyor?” He: “More like a purveyor. I’ve had seven wives. One was barren. My first marriage was annulled when my wife’s mother learned I was a halfbreed.”
His speech has rhythm of Indians of Northwest; can recite Robert Service’s “Cremation of Sam McGee” and his vocabulary is broad and slightly eccentric; character waiting for his novelist. He’s read Koran and, “in three translations, the Bible.” I ask would he like another beer. “I would—I want to cuss some more.” And he does, an amusing billingsgate. P asks if Buckhorn takes credit cards. Oak Heart: “Only if you lay one out and turn your back.” Later I grow alarmed at leaving my notebook on bar, and he says, “You think we can read?” Dinner is egg sandwiches. He’s more curious about voyage than anyone we’ve met and wishes he could accompany us. Walks out to his truck and returns with large manila envelope and tells me, “Open this later. It’s for guidance.”
When we head back to our rooms, Prof announces he will leave ten days early, says, “I want to go home and see what’s growing.” Unable to dissuade him. Could his defection spread? Is weakness more contagious than will? Big trouble if it is. Later, on phone, [my brother] tells me [our eighty-five-year-old] mother each week seems to lose a little more of about everything. Should I come home? “No, no, keep going. There’s nothing you can do here.” Does she understand where I am, what I’m doing? “Not at all.” Adding, “She’s not near death—she’s just dying more visibly than the rest of us.” When I hang up I can hardly speak. Should I have to return for funeral, I’ll never come back—I know that. Foundation of miles accomplished is crumbling. Before I sleep I open Oak Heart’s envelope; inside long tail feather of pheasant. “For guidance.” Have to love a man like that.
WEDNESDAY, DAY THREE
Rain in night, ending by dawn. Although thunderous sky still hangs in northwest, clear directly above, wind fifteen to twenty mph. River looks dangerously rough for canoe, so we pull on life vests and try water; little pisspot shoves us along, then wind abruptly ceases. Thank you. After more than an hour on a six-mile oxbow, we’re only half mile west of where we started, but above Spread Eagle Bar river straightens to fourteen-mile reach with only one broad bend. I like those reaches.
Numerous boils shimmy canoe, and I caution P not to throttle down but drive us hard across them. After one good rocking, P yells, “It’s like going through a rising cumulus in a small plane!” I’ve given names to various river surfaces to help us recognize how to handle differences: teepee water (vibrations, no peril); mountain water (shakes, thumps, rolls, mild threat); shark surf (avoid going broadside); chaos whites (time for lunch). And so we proceed.
This morning woman in grocery told me when her grandson is thirsty he opens can of sodapop; she asked him, “Whatever happened to going to the faucet for a drink?” He said, “Pop’s ninety-eight percent water.” She: “So I said, ‘And how many resources did it take to quench your thirst? Making the sugar and flavoring, carbonization, the aluminum container, cooling it, plastic ring straps, delivery trucks? Then where did you throw the can?’”
Pelicans frequently fly toward us, but geese and ducks go away—response to hunters? Temperature rises to ninety; at one P.M. pass Assiniboin sweat lodge; this canoe a sweat lodge; off with life vests. P speaks about historical layout of transport lines all along here: typically, between river and highway is a railroad track; “Turn the three ninety degrees and you have a stratified archaeological site—steamboats on the bottom, tractor-trailers on the top.”
Long day ends at Wolf Point, again near sewage lagoons. Assiniboin man fishing nearby has caught five species in an hour: goldeneye, white bass, sturgeon, buffalo, and a walleye, keeping only the last. Later, when I rinse my face with cool water, in my mustache I can smell river like a sweetly scented woman from night before.
THURSDAY, DAY FOUR
Morning conversation with Ken Ryan, big Assiniboin who P thinks looks like me (mountain to molehill). Wm. Clark said tribe had “turbulent and faithless disposition.” President Andrew Jackson invited one of Ryan’s great-grandfathers to Washington; upon return he told tribe, “We must not fight the white people—there aren’t enough of us to kill all of them.” Ryan’s grandfather was Black Horse, name he refused to give to soldiers, believing knowledge of it would allow Army to keep him. Ken served in military (they got his name), has been tribal chairman, and talks much about great usurpations of Indian lands and former forced schooling of young Assiniboins: “The missionary idea was to save the children by killing the Indian in them.”
To my surprise I can understand Assiniboin name for the Missouri; it’s almost same as Osage use two thousand miles away. He says, “When our people come upon the Missouri, we always say, ‘Mini-sho-she, I’m glad to see you.’ When we leave it, we say, ‘Mini-sho-she, ake wachishna ginkt’—‘Muddy River, I’ll see you again.’ Because we respect Mini-sho-she, it hasn’t drowned one Assiniboin. We teach our children about it. An uncle taught me how to kick out of a whirlpool.” I ask him to explain the method, but he declines except to say we must not be afraid to ride funnel all the way down. You first, I say. Years ago, he tells us, Wa Wonga, a Missouri River creature, pushed relative out of whirlpool to save him.
When we head for river, Black Horse the younger says, “I wish I could go on your journey with you,” and I ask would he then tell us how to escape whirlpools? He only smiles. “If you’re strong and respectful, Wa Wonga will follow you.”
As we push canoe onto river, Indian children gather at shore to watch, scene out of early-nineteenth-century traveler’s account. I say loudly, Mini-sho-she, we are glad to see you! and children laugh and repeat it. None of them can speak Assiniboin. P: “Is it my imagination or do Indians show more interest in joining us than whites?” Prof: “To Black Horse
the river is a living thing—to a lot of white Montanans it’s a sewage system.”
Prof has made extension for tiller to ease our otherwise wrenched arms; crew doesn’t like my hands-free method of steering by leaning from side to side. Pools sleeping under coverlets of cottonwood fluff; river as legs of tree. Proceed, proceed. I have to admit, at last, our ascent here drudgery; each morning, without thought otherwise, I automatically head to water—Wm. the lemming. Yesterday I was almost envious of Prof going home. I’m not angry, rather I long for freedom he’ll soon have. Still, I disprize his weakness. When I feel like quitting, I reach for anything to buoy me. Yesterday I trotted out line from some Christopher Columbus movie where CC, after his last voyage, says to adversary, “The difference between us is that I went and you did not.” Message: remember how we must earn our differences. Look up that despair quotation from M. Lewis:
[The river for several days has been as wide as it is generally near its mouth, tho’ it is much shallower or I should begin to dispair of ever reaching its source; it has been crouded today with many sandbars; the water also appears to become clearer; it has changed its complexin very considerably. I begin to feel extreemly anxious to get in view of the rocky mountains.]
Slowly, slowly, miles. Engage your mind! Find a topic! Soda fountain recipes aren’t working anymore. Remember something. I once was smitten by auburn beauty called Cutches. Cease! No women stuff. Literary things are harmless. Words to use one day in book to annoy some reviewer from nitwit fringe: quadrate, xiphoid, epact, peplum. “The author, infatuated with arcane vocabulary, drags words from the underbrush of our language as a retriever does a dead duck.” Miles not going away—I’m just getting older. Mini-sho-she! Give me topics! Then it does when we reach Prairie Elk Rapids, first we’ve encountered. We grab paddles, motor still pushing, and pull hard against water and rocks, straining enough for P to shatter one; picks up spare; hickory against river. Struggle, grit teeth, then reach good pool, and P says, “Back to boredom,” words hardly spoken before western sky begins darkening fast, flashing, rumbling, blotting out hot sun; then the Missouri makes turn directly toward storm; obese, icy raindrops and small hail whacking us, rat-a-tat hard against canoe, and soon lightning on spiky legs comes walking down the river; head for shore, narrow mud ledge against steep twelve-foot-high bank that traps us; barely enough room to stand; pull canoe from beating water onto muck; we’re drenched and shivering even before we can pull on rain gear, and we huddle soggy and sorry and trying to decide whether to get into the mud and under canoe to escape hail, but electric river reminds us to keep clear of aluminum. Waves break over legs as if we’re pilings. Storm turns to near whiteout, air almost solid with water and ice, and in fact it is hard to breathe. Stand helpless and stupid like cattle and just get beat. P’s lips blue, teeth achatter. Hypothermia here we come. After five hundred miles of cottonwoods blocking the view, there’s not a goddamn one in sight. Plains hailstorms can produce ice the size of oranges, deadly missiles. P: “If this gets worse—” Electrocuted or stoned to death?
Hail stops, then wind, rain next, clouds move east, day slowly rebrightens and twenty degrees cooler. Find two eagle feathers stuck in bank—lightning rods someone left us. We set off again, behind one more thing that came and went so quickly we might have dreamed it. Our muddied clothes attest otherwise.
On gravel bars pelicans and cormorants raise big wings to dry; avocets, willets, Franklin gulls clean and groom as we wish we could; sandpipers worry themselves up and down rocks and cry, Wet-feet! Wet-feet! Indeed.
We finally find our crew at terrible place for landing, but we’re tired so we clamber up muddy gulch, over putrefying steer, its stench fierce, shrubs crawling with ticks. Once ashore, I realize we’re five miles short of destination; don’t want to face either distance or putrescence tomorrow, and I announce I’m going back out; good P reluctantly accompanies. We go on, doing nothing more than proceeding in silence to about where steamboat Amelia Poe went down some hundred years back, not far from Frazer, Montana. We call it a damn day. But these miles are like memory—can’t be taken from us. Can they?
FRIDAY, DAY FIVE
Most nights before I fall asleep, I read journals of Lewis and Clark or Maximilian, and strange thing has happened, strange because for years I’ve usually read before turning out lamp, yet never before—as much as I’ve wanted it to happen—have I carried a book on into a dream. This week it’s occurred twice, once with Meriwether, now with William; the dream last night had Lewis peeping through brush to watch lubricious scene between Clark and “the Indian woman.” I was present but apparently invisible. When I woke, encounter had somehow measurably strengthened my resolve to continue; once again I felt I had enough left to go on. I ascend in dreamboat.
Hard wind in night blows morning clear; mild temp. Beaver slaps tail at us soon after we set out. Hour later we reach Frazer Rapids, and for first time we must get out of canoe and cordelle it over rocks; fast current, slick stones, and invisible holes make progress touch-and-go; water ankle-deep to above the knees; foreheads sweating, feet almost going numb in coldness; but it’s only for hundred yards; legs strung with long strands of algae we drag along as if tethered to river. As if?
Pools usually lie above rapids, and so they do here. With much curiosity we begin to await mouth of the Milk, sometimes vigorous watercourse Hidatsas called River-That-Scolds-at-All-Others. Along this segment of the Missouri, M. Lewis wrote of grizzlies, “I expect these gentlemen will give us some amusement shortly as they soon begin now to coppolate.” Bears gone, no such entertainment for us.
Trying to slow erosion, farmer has bulldozed down cottonwoods for revetment along a bank—does he think dead ones hold better than living trees? On, on. I’m trying not to anticipate mountains; if Rockies continued due north-south orientation they have in New Mexico and Colorado, we’d now be at foot of Front Range; as it is, we have a couple of hundred miles to go before entering them. It’s this northwesterly angling that permits the Missouri Valley to approach Continental Divide so far west; without Montana angle, this geologic shift, our portage would be quite long, as if we were to try boating across Colorado.
A few farmers abandon junked vehicles and machinery along edge of the Missouri in full knowledge river will sooner or later eat away sheer banks and topple junk into water.
Over the edge
and out of view,
I live upstream,
my dear neighbor,
so to hell with you.
Then we pass south-side slope where rancher has dumped mess of dead and stinking cattle into river. P: “A rotten thing to do.” Yes, but a kind of historical recreation—L & C complained about buffalo carcasses in the Missouri near here. Those bison, of course, were not vandalism.
Stop to stretch legs by old wooden ferry hauled onto shore but left too high for river to carry off. I fear we might have passed mouth of Milk River without seeing it, something that can happen when island inter venes, but soon the Missouri becomes two rivers side by side, blue-green one on south, muddy one to north. I steer exactly along division where I dip my right hand in and cannot discern ends of fingers, but on left I plunge in length of my paddle and can still see beyond its blade. In vertical cutaway how strange separation would look. Then we reach that curious debouchure, sometimes rich with creamy glacial silt. Cf. M. Lewis q.: [“The river we passed today we call Milk river from the peculiar whiteness of its water, which precisely resembles tea with a considerable mixture of milk.”] It’s quarter smaller than the Missouri, and seems incapable of scolding it.
Pass huge overflow spillway of Fort Peck Dam, about eight miles downstream from dam itself. Happy to have five-day canoe segment nearly behind us, and say so, forgetting Great Ears. Almost immediately enter one rock garden after another, striking stones again and again; cussing; where they cease, long strands of algae twist around prop; each pause to clear it causes us to lose much of hard yardage we’ve just made; cussing; effectively, we’re ascendi
ng here nearly three times—up, back down a piece, up again. Heat waves off river make it tough to read; cussing; our eyes red and tired. Above Willow Point, current stiffens and threatens to overpower pisspot; cussing. Then we’re into maze of islands and I lose track of our probable location, decide to keep turning left since dam lies south. Failing to avoid irritation. My life is down to one word, a preposition repeated repeatedly: on, on, on.
To P: If there’s some possible way to miss largest earthen dam in America, I’d say we just managed to do it. “No time to get us lost, Skipper.” But of course that’s just when one does get lost. Rule of River Road.
At last I recognize roof of old lodge at Fort Peck and start taking what I think are shortcuts through the islands; if I’m wrong we’ll be out here into night rather than sitting in cool dusk on great old verandah and sipping secret (not permitted) glass of iced gin. Finally, finally, finally, tops of tall surge tanks at powerhouse come into view, and soon we pass into shadow of dam that’s so big it seems to be foothill; four miles long. Our fifty-seventh day on water: we’ve reached Fort Peck Reservoir. Learn Corps is holding back river because of flood conditions in Missouri 1500 miles away. Rockies now less than week distant? “O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!”
Little Gods and Small Catechisms
SOME FEW DAYS before I left home to take Nikawa east to launch her in New York Bay, I heard through a happenstance a piece of grave news. To control “traffic” between mid-May and mid-September of each year, the Bureau of Land Management does not permit boats with motors to go upstream on the 111-mile segment of the Missouri from Kipp Landing to Virgelle. When I learned of the prohibition, even though all other aspects of the voyage lay in order, I was troubled by such a long portage around the most famously scenic stretch of the river. A cartage where there was no alternative was one thing, but a portage where water—beautiful and historic water—existed to let a boat pass was something else. An agent with the BLM told me an exception was remotely possible, but a request would require weeks for a decision. He listened as I explained our proposed trip and my deep resistance to portaging. After some time, he volunteered to take us over those miles in a government patrol boat. We would have to travel faster than I wanted, but I had no other choice. With reluctance, I accepted.