We have just rafted the Salmon and Snake Rivers, Idaho, Nimíipuu Country. There may be too much to say: Bald eagles, big-horn sheep, hawks, osprey, a salmon, mother bear and cub bathing in the river, waterfalls flowing in, quick rapids, longer slower stretches, turkeys, pidgeon-like chukkers, rocky-grassy steep hills all around, scrubby bushes and ponderosa, sun and rain, killdeer (plovers), something like an avocet, starlings, robins, night hawks, bats, rising fish, alto and cumulus and cirrus, blackberries, magma rock columns vertical and horizontal, later sandstone, white sandy beaches each night we camp on, poison ivy and scraggly bushes. Five days. All pulled by on the arms of my cousin and his wife…and those of the river.
Author Archives: jbstubley
Arches
We drive the drives and walk some of the trails of Arches National Monument, Utah; the red-rock forms looking all watery—sculpted by water and wind—resembling the wet-sand castles you might make at a beach; many arch-like forms, the spaces beneath worn away. Close up, the sand is a fine, dusty red. In one spot—a kind of mini canoyn—we take our shoes off and feel it warm and soft between our toes, so dry. Later, we are staying in a hotel-motel in nearby Moab, the Colorado River flowing close by—a kind of marshy floodplain wetland to the west. And as soon as that sun sets, whole clouds of mosquitos come flooding in, ravenous—beings of too much life, too much wet…with the dry, side-by-side.
Pagosa Hot Springs
By the side of the San Juan River flowing cold and spring-summer-melt fast in Pagosa Springs, we walk past the nearby sulphurous foul-egg-smelling scents of the hot springs by the road and river’s edge. The hot, steaming water runs from out the side of the bank above the river, flowing from one shallow, hard-rock pool to another. There are about five pools, seemingly man-made or assisted, in which we sit with grey sediment and test the temperatures—the top one’s very hot, the next one not so bad, and then eventually a spot opens up in the ones right by the river’s edge where we can lean against the flat rocks and find a spot that feels just right, goldilocks-like, between the heat of the slowly-flowing spring, tricking in, and the cold, once-mountainous water of the river’s edge, with only a semi-porous wall of rocks between.
To Santa Fe
Drive Taos to Santa Fe New Mexico. After the sharp peaks of Colorado, and the tall sharp Ponderosa pines, here we find the slightly rounder peaks of high desert, and the more rounded Juniper pines; everything dryer, more worn down; softer rocks? We find a cold spring by the Rio Grande while looking for a hot one. And as usual the clouds build up more cumulus in the afternoon.
St Louis Valley
Driving down through Gunnison, Colorado, then through a small valley with creek and red rock walls, over Buffalo Pass and eventually into the wide St Louis Valley—a rift valley, like the ones we have flown over recently in Africa. We stop at a roadside hot springs and sit in the almost boiling water, and look out at the desert with mountains behind. We pass through towns like Moffat and Crestone; drive by some piles of clear white sand at the foothills to the mountains. And all the while I can feel the opening-up-ness of the valley, the water, its springs. Amidst the industrial junk and flatness, there is a life—a watery life—ripped open and springing up still. We pass on to the Rio Grade Gorge, with its bridge, beyond the Taos Earthships. Down down into the valley we look, and see that water—more water—flowing out, and down, and on. Mexico on.
Crested Butte Circlings
Summertime Crested Butte, Colorado, some 22 years since I was last here working on a winter ski lift. And I have never seen it like this: snow only on the upper peaks, while down here near the base, and on the way to the old T-bar lift, all that lay beneath wintertime snow (and even springmelt) is now revealed, bright and shining green: long, tall grasses; aspens white truncked with round flickering and flitting green-to-gray leaves; dandelions large stemmed and leaved, rising to a big yellow flower or cosmic cluster of seed; yarrow stretching off along the ground in an infinite number of indentations like a rivery floodplain or liver system; small blue birds sitting on ropes courses; new trenches where they’re improving things along the line of lift. And then from slightly down the mountain I spy somethign dark against the pale blue of Sunday morning sky, gliding, rising, slowly circling, wider and wider, higher and higher—some kind of raptor—hawk maybe, brown mostly, circling up from out of the aspens, until here’s directly overhead, and the red of his tail is obvious. He circles around us standing on this one piece of open ground above the old T-bar and the nearby lift; round and round above us he circles, not flapping, merely gliding, not rising, just circling in the morning light; sun above, slightly to the north and east, rising ever higher over us, over the circling red tail, over that butted peak of the rocky mountain looking down. And we stand there in that circling moment, together, until we begin to move, or he does—circling off towards the west, and is gone.
Solstice Halos
Lyons, Colorado. Season of my cousin’s birthday; of northern summer solstice; of full moon approaching. We wake in the morning to a couple of cumulus and cirrus; about 30 degrees C; dry air; 5-6,000 feet; front range Rocky Mountains, with the flatlands of the prairies to the east. And up above, where the sun has risen over the ridge that reminds us of red dirt and green grass of post-rain Pilbara, the sun has slipped behind the clouds—and on their feathered edges they glow a halo of full-rainbow colours, all shimmering and pearly colour-spectrum light.
Everglades
Apparently an everglade is a slow-moving river—very slow, but always moving. Apparently the Florida everglades start up in Orlando and slowly, very slowly, make their way down here towards Miami, splitting off on the one side towards the Atlantic coast, and the other side towards the gulf of Mexico. We take a boat ride. The guide says the levels used to be lower, before they dammed and sculpted the flowing water; says that dear and boar used to walk these shores. He takes the big-fanned boat through watery canals, and then right over the top of the sword-like grasses. He points out an island—something he won’t be going over—and says that first-nation people once used to live on islands such as these. He asks how we think they dealt with mosquitos; I can only think of fire. He also mentions mud. We see turtles, and fish, and birds, and alligators waiting in ‘holes’. These everglades used to be seen as a kind of dead land; now they’re seen as an ecological asset. I have a picture of them as a kind of lungs for the breathing of this part of the east coast. All that water slowly moving; all that water flowing out.
Parakeets at Sunset
South Beach Miami, amongst the long sandy island now built-up, with art deco hotels and other layers. We’re sitting on a rooftop amongst the humidity and cooling wind, amongst the cumulus clouds and passing rain, amongst the sunset flaming golden over the city to the east. And even here, amongst these differences and similarities to all things West Australia, there are the parakeets shooting past, sunset screeching.
Massachusetts Connections
I take an afternoon walk north out of Cambridge in light rain. I see a bird on a fence—grey, black eyebrow, blue tail-feather part—bluejay? juvenile? I walk to a neighbourhood ballpark, under pines, and back. Later I have dinner outside with two old friends—they are tired from their program; we keep the wind at bay; there is no rain. And somewhere on this longer walk I feel a strong connection to all this Massachusetts.
John Stubley 