The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

The Salmon River, where we’re staying this week, is one of the only large rivers in America not dammed. It’s also the largest river that starts and ends in one state, this one being Idaho. From our cabin in a bend of the river we can see about a mile of it as it churns through this canyon with its steep walls on one side and green hills on the other. There’s an island across from us and more upstream, all slowly submerging as the Salmon rises about one foot a day. I figure at this rate we need to leave in three days and hope the only road out of here is navigable.

We’re the only renters. Fishing’s no good in these rapid muddy currents and cabins nearby are vacant too. The guy who rents these bought them yesterday, cash on the barrelhead, lodge, cabins, shop, tools, furniture, the whole she-bang from the previous owner who has Stage 4 cancer and is now in Mayo receiving daily chemo and radiation. The new owner tells me it’s human papillomavirus, an STD, caused from ‘eating too much pussy’, pardon my Idaho French, Bob says. His face and neck are swollen and if it hasn’t spread lower, he might have a small chance of survival. If it has, Bob tells me matter of factly, ‘he’s fucked.’

If this river rises a few more feet, someone else is fucked. My boy put every dollar he’d made in his 69 years on this resort, his 5th entrepreneurial venture in the outdoor hospitality industry, from Ohio to Illinois, Missouri to Oregon and now here, campgrounds, cabins, lodges, some seasonal, some year round. I assume he’s no neophyte. Still, he must be noticing the No Vacancy sign isn’t going to be turned on any time soon and the season is short up here at 4000 feet elevation.

He tells me he doesn’t care and I believe him — although I haven’t heard what his wife thinks. If I had to choose a spot to go slowly bankrupt in, this is better than most. Either way, I figure he’ll die rich.

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The mizzus and me are on a Retirement Road Trip. Tonight we’re hunkered down on the raging Salmon River which is over its floodstage and rising fast. Of course we’re in a cabin alongside it, a few feet from its bank-chewing edge. The mizzus is on edge too, since we booked this place for three nights on the assumption we wouldn’t be evacuated or swept downstream, a bet she’s not willing to take now. The Salmon, what some call the River of No Return, drains eventually into the Snake near Hell’s Canyon, digging canyons deeper than the Grand as it drops 7000 vertical feet from its headwaters.

Okay, I know, if you wanted a correspondence course in Geography, you’d have gotten one on-line and accredited. But hellfire, we’re parked here, the mizzus is chillin’ and I’m blowing up the inflatable raft — just in case.

The guy we rented from just bought these cabins, signs tomorrow. He was planning to retire himself but his buddy made him that offer he couldn’t refuse. You know the one. So good it can’t be true. He’s 69, Bob is, two years younger than me and he’d sold his own resort in Oregon a year earlier when this place came up and his pal ended up with Stage 4 cancer and supposedly practically gave this place to him. He’s been here all of 5 days now. We’re the first guests and yeah, the only ones.

We’ll see. Maybe his friend saw the 10 day forecasts. Rains, pestilence and frogs. Followed by the 100 year flood. River of No Returns, indeed! Fiscal returns anyway.

But … the mizzus is retired and her river affords no paddling backwards. We’ve visited friends and we’ve hiked places from our place to the Tetons. America is a beautiful country, like the song sez. Trump fired Comey, we heard about the same time as Comey, through sporadic reports and red state newspapers. No one much cares about some Saturday Night Massacre of the FBI director, they got a river rising and so do we. It’s roaring toward Hell’s Canyon and, well, so are we. Hang onto your hats and don’t look back, the rapids are at our front door. All our front doors….

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