The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

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This is the first morning at our cabin on the flood-swollen Salmon River. The sun’s coming up over the canyon walls, a pair of geese just landed on the far shore, a crow is pestering a bald eagle and a heron is wading a small submerged island where a few shrubs bob in the fast current. A doe tiptoed across the shallow side of the river, feeling her way tentatively, then stopped halfway among larger islands in the middle before plunging into the icy currents to swim the last 30 or 40 yards, finally dragging up onto the rock embankment nearly down here to the cabin.

It would be easy to draw metaphors out here watching the river flow, draw comparisons to the ‘outside’ world of politics and the bustle of our ordinary activities, see ourselves splashing across the floodtides. But … for the time being at least, this morning anyway, why not put the pen down, douse the brain’s fever and wade into this place where time flows downstream while we sit watchful? Adam and Eve weren’t thrown out of the Garden, they just couldn’t see it finally. God and the Serpent? The kids should have realized they created both.

Even these words make for a kind of fence, one with a sign that says No Trespassing, No Admittance. We should go outside and leave the gate open behind us …

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