River-Horse: A Voyage Across America (58 page)

We proceeded on. My fear subsided, but for some days it did not leave me completely, and Pilotis never again mentioned my alleged lack of respect for moving water. I said, We should have known the Missouri would say goodbye in a way we’d never forget. Pilotis: “I would’ve been disappointed had it done otherwise,” pausing, then, “Well, maybe not
that
disappointed.”

Not far into Red Rock Canyon, we stopped at an old mine with small, collapsing smelters and ovens—or so we took them to be—of well-laid native stone, one of the most picturesque ruins we’d seen along the river. Said Pilotis, “To corrupt a cliché, in country like this, the only beautiful mine is a dead mine,” and off we went again.

The Missouri, naturally, had one more surprise: as we rounded the horseshoe bend above Toston Dam, we came under a clearing sky of a deep blue the river reflected splendidly, and we saw ahead three dozen pelicans, brilliant in the sun like seraphim, take wing to lead us right down our final Missouri mile. We had climbed its back, all 2,290 miles by my measure, and it had lifted us 3,400 feet—about three stacked-up Empire State Buildings—above its mouth. I can hardly believe it, I said, and my friend finished the sentence, “but we did it.”

Out of the river came the canoe and onto the top of our vehicle, then we headed toward Three Forks for the night. Beyond, to the southwest, we could see far into the higher Rockies still topped in snow, a forbidding horizon, and Pilotis said, “That’s where we’re going to cross?” Yes, I said, after we tend to the little business of getting up the Jefferson and Beaverhead. “You mean the streams Lewis and Clark dragged up?” Those are the ones, I said.

That nippy evening, as I sat in a rocking chair alone on the big porch of the Sacajawea Inn, a place carefully restored, I thought how the Missouri at last—
at last
—was behind us. Of course, it did give one final unforeseen turn: something about our ascent was missing in me. I had a sweet sense of relief, but where was the jubilance of doing what so few people have ever done—go
against
the Missouri all the way? There was no hallelujah in my heart, not even a huzzah. Then I knew why. We hadn’t quite gone against it all the way. We had turned downstream for those last several miles. By agreeing to descend for just a few hours, the final hours, I had fouled my sense of arriving at the traditional top of the long river. When we should have been toasting a dram in Headwaters State Park, we were instead standing numbly twenty miles away at Toston Dam. Toston! Goddamn!

Was it right to give caution precedence over an unwritten rule of the voyage? We were, after all, still alive to continue tomorrow. But as I sat rocking on the porch in what should have been a golden hour, in hand a tired glass of spirits meant for celebration, I thought, whatever else, I’d made an emotional miscalculation, and I vowed I’d not again turn away from westering.

IX

August 4th, Sunday, 1805

Proceeded on verry early and Brackfast at the Camp Capt Lewis left yesterday morning; at this Camp he left a note informing that he discovered no fresh Sign of Indians &c. The river continued to be crouded with Islands, Sholey rapid & clear; I could not walk on Shore to day as my ankle was Sore from a tumer on that part. The method we are compelled to take to get on is fatigueing & laborious in the extreen, haul the Canoes over the rapids, which Suckceed each other every two or three hundred yards and between the water rapid oblige [us] to towe & walke on stones the whole day except when we have poleing; men wet all day, Sore feet, &c., &c.

William Clark

Monday August 5th 1805

The river today [Capt. Clark] found streighter and more rapid even than yesterday, and the labour and difficulty of the navigation was proportionably increased; they therefore proceeded but slowly and with great pain as the men had become very languid from working in the water and many of their feet swolen and so painfull that they could scarcely walk. At 4
P.M.
they arrived at the confluence of the two rivers where I had left [another] note. This note had unfortunately been placed on a green pole which the beaver had cut and carried off together with the note; the possibility of such an occurrence never onc occurred to me when I placed it on the green pole. This accedent deprived Capt. Clark of any information with ripect to the country, and supposing that the rapid fork was most in the direction which it was proper we should pursue, or West, he took that [wrong] stream and asscended it with much difficulty about a mile and encamped on an island that had been lately overflown and was yet damp; they were therefore compelled to make beds of brush to keep themselves out of the mud. In ascending this stream for about a quarter of a mile, it scattered in such a manner that they were obliged to cut a passage through the willow brush which leant over the little channels and united their tops.

Meriwether Lewis

The Journals of the Lewis & Clark Expedition

I
F, ON FOOLSCAP
, you drew an elongated S the length of the paper, then let a three-year-old scribble over it for a minute, you’d have a map of the Jefferson River that would serve a navigator almost as well as any you could otherwise come by. Above its junction with the Madison, the Jefferson wanders, staggers, and crankles, flushing half its water askew, the other awry, and throughout its upper and lower miles manifests little urge to go anywhere other than sideways; when it’s not hunting a new route or sending one channel off in search of two others, it will flow properly just long enough to fool a boatman. In short, it is the little Jefferson that puts the mischief into the big Missouri, and, like its descendant, it seems always to ask “Where am I?” although it stays not for an answer.

For sixteen months my concern had been with finding our way up that torture of lost waters, but once we reached it, the question was moot, and instead we went looking only for somebody knowledgeable enough to suggest we had even a slim chance of ascending what had become for a couple of weeks a most unambiguous route of hard-flowing water. The worry now was not getting
lost
on the river, it was simply getting
on
the river. We found no one to say anything other than “It’s impossible,” although one man added, “And if it isn’t, you should wish it was.” Outfitters, fishermen, and a government agent each trotted out the hazards we already knew: diversion dams (small barriers for irrigation), barbed-wire fences (illegal), bridges with clearances low enough to decapitate (if the fences didn’t do it), logjams (perhaps the deadliest of all), and overhanging trees called sweepers. I pointed out that those perils posed less danger to an upward-bound boat because the current would not ram us into them. “Sure,” said an outfitter, “but how’re you going to make headway against that uproar? There’s a ten-horse legal limit for motors on both the Jefferson and Beaverhead, and that river’s coming down in places more than twelve miles an hour. Maybe you don’t know, but current increases geometrically, not arithmetically. A twelve-mile-an-hour current is much more than twice as powerful as one at six. You get it?” He looked to see whether I comprehended. “If you go on that river, I can just about guarantee I’ll be along tomorrow afternoon cutting you out of the trees.” Then, “But hell, last year you could have poled up the Jeff.” As I stared disconsolately, Pilotis said, “What we need is a little stream boat.”

Here was one more thing I’d evaluated the wrong way like a simpleton who reads a comic book back to front and wonders why he’s confused. The issue for us in the Snow Imperative was no longer missing it and finding a river too low but rather catching it and finding a river too high. Could I have foreseen a big snowpack breaking a decade of diminished precipitation, I might have made plans for an additional craft of some sort. I complained so much about my shortsightedness in not having a bad-water contingency boat standing near, Pilotis said, “Enough, enough! Just remember your history: Meriwether Lewis walked all the way from here to the Divide and on over it, while Clark and the others dragged the pirogues for a hundred miles. To go up the Jefferson and the Beaverhead in a boat is unhistoric.”

Such a remark is further evidence why one should never undertake a venture such as ours without companions, intelligent companions who can restore common sense and open the way to any skipper blinded by insistence. I thumped my hand on the table. That’s it—we’ll do it on foot! Pilotis: “Oh, no. What have I said?”

I pulled out our best topographic maps and a magnifying glass. By sweet chance I found what appeared to be a railroad grade running along the south bank of the Jefferson, a route through the most scenic terrain the river passes, a confined way where Lewis himself likely walked. But Pilotis wanted wheels: “You and your historical precedents—me and my mouth.” What lovely precedents they are, I said, and sometimes your ideas too. “It was no damn idea.”

We spent the afternoon looking into that passage and phoning for permission to hike the abandoned grade, and by nightfall we ended up in Willow Creek, a village just off the Jefferson. At the venerable Blue Willow Inn we took supper, finishing with peanut butter pie, then went into the adjoining taproom where we discovered a worn player piano and a cabinet with rolls of music. I looked inside, came across “Cruising down the River,” put it into the antiquated instrument, and began treadling the thing into creaking motion and wobbly music. As the notes rolled across the room, fair-voiced Pilotis sang along with words slightly altered for the moment:

Walking up the river

on a Thursday afternoon,

the clouds above

no one we love—

waiting for Heat-Moon—

an old piano playing

a mountain-river tune.

The next morning we began fulfilling the lyrics. A couple of days earlier, the Photographer had hauled
Nikawa
over the Divide to a farmhouse of acquaintances and tucked her under some big poplars near the Lemhi River. Thus unencumbered by boats, we agreed that the only point in walking, other than historical precedent, was to
see
the Jefferson, so we decided to hike just the portion that would allow us next to the water, a segment almost a quarter its length. From Three Forks (a town where in season you can witness ice fishermen engaged in racing their bait, that is, maggots) we went west to near the Sappington bridge and set out on foot up the abandoned grade of the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul & Pacific Railroad, a name only a little shorter than its route. Stripped of tracks a couple of decades earlier, the way at first was fairly smooth but became progressively rougher, yet never enough to hinder a good pace. I liked hearing my footfalls and thinking each one took me a twentieth of an inch higher up the slope toward the Divide and a yard closer to the Pacific. Although the portage across would have to be longer than I’d wanted, I made my peace with it: from the Missouri Headwaters—as flies the mountain raven—the next certain river was 112 miles away. Given the imposing barrier of the Great Divide, that distance was negligible.

It isn’t happenstance that the old railbed and a functioning one across the stream rub shoulders with the Jefferson through those singular miles because the high, hard walls of the London Hills admit passage only via a canyon the river has taken three million years to cut. The sixteen-hundred-foot cliffs drop to the water and leave scarce space for works of humankind, and for fifteen miles the deep defile is hardly wider than the river itself—about forty yards across—and shackles it into a single, powerful channel. Beyond the cliffs of whitish limestone rise easy hills, mostly treeless, a strange aridity to encounter so near all that pounding water, a place opposite in every way from the low bushy meadows above and below the canyon.