Location, location, location has a lot to do with the property value of my old log house. It’s walking distance to Terminal Gravity Brew Pub, makers of the finest IPA in all the land. I’m guessing it’s 300 yards from my door to theirs.

Recently I saw Winding Waters Paul there, and somehow it came up that I had ridden my bike to the pub. Paul found that humorous. “You rode all the way here?” I believe is how he phrased it.

Yes, Paul. All three hundred yards. But, hey, I was supposed to be meeting someone and was running late. Every second counts.

So. Paul and Penny have been gone on vacation now that rafting season is winding down, and the activity they chose for their leisure time was to ride their bikes along the Oregon Coast. The entire coast. As in, Astoria, Oregon to Crescent City, California, where they will rent a car and drive back to their starting point.

Uhm . . . my three hundred yard bike ride striking Paul as humorous now makes sense to me. Pedaling the entire length of the Oregon shoreline, however, is not something that makes sense to me, as I’ve driven that route before and recall many sections that involve going uphill.

But there must be something to this long distance bicycle riding, as all the cool kids are doing it. As evidence, follow this link to Steve Williamson’s bicycling site and look for his write-up of rafting with us this summer:

www.curiousrandonneur.blogspot.com

In other news, Morgan is up in the mountains right now catering the victuals for a bull trout survey crew. His kitchen gear and groceries are being packed in by mule. Which isn’t all that different, really, to his gear and groceries being packed up the beach by the gear boat crew. But still. I admire his versatility. I’m not sure I could adapt to cooking river food in the mountains. I mean, what do you call riveritas? Mountainitas just doesn’t have that ring about it.

Many of you met Patrick Baird this year, rowing the gear boat. He just got dropped off at the University of Oregon this past weekend for his freshman year at college. A university campus can be intimidating at first, but so is the big water in Hells Canyon, which I’ve seen him row. So I figure he’ll read the waters at college just fine.

And me? Well, my ship has come in. Literally. OK, not technically literally, as it’s not a ship. But my 26-foot sailboat has come in.

My dad had an inflatable cataraft that he upgraded from, and he didn’t want to fool around with selling his old one. So I said I’d try to find a buyer for his 14-foot pontoon boat.

And there I am, 300 yards from my home, sitting on the porch at TG, when the guy sitting next to me mentions he wants to buy a cataraft. Well, I’ll be darned, says I. I just happen to know where one is.

The long, arduous walk to my house gives him enough time to tell me about the sailboat he would like to find a home for. He takes a look at dad’s pontoon craft and says he’d like to trade. Shiver me timbers, yes. You’ve got a deal.

Needs some fixing up, true. But I lived aboard a smaller sailboat for a year that wasn’t as well-outfitted as this one. Now if I can just convince dad he needs a sailboat.

Abominidable . . . Abdominal . . . I had to look that one up for spelling purposes. Means very unpleasant. Loathsome even. The snowman connection, says Webster, is “a spurious translation of a supposed Tibetan phrase . . . blah blah blah . . . meaning man-bear or snowfield man.”

I was just trying to describe some surprising snowfields I saw above the Salmon River. But now I have to look up ‘spurious.’

Here we are . . . spurious. “Not genuine. Counterfeit.”

Yeah, so anyway, there we are camped on the Salmon River last week, a mile and a half above the confluence with the Snake, and Jacey Bell looks up and notices what appears to be light shining through the rocks on the ridge above us. Hmm . . . seems an awfully stout chunk of rock to have such big peep holes, so I zoomed in, took a photo, then zoomed that in and behold – snow.

At around 3,000 feet. I checked the topo map. Right next to Hells Canyon. After an entire summer. And on a south slope. Curious. There’s the picture right there. Taken from the left bank of the Salmon, just below Checkerboard Rapid, looking to the north. Explain that to me. I’m waiting.

I ran it by the authorities. And by authorities, I mean Tim. The guy who knows all. You may have run into him at his office on the porch of Terminal Gravity brew pub. The great thing about Tim is that in the rare cases where he doesn’t know the answer to a thing, he does anyway. In this case he speculated that deep drifts, coupled with an overhang that provided shade would likely allow for snow that low hanging on this late.

I’m looking out the window of my writing shack at home right now for comparison with Mount Joseph, which is 9,000-ish feet. There’s a few wee pockets of snow up around the summit, but nothing down lower.

So there’s your canyon curiosity for the day. And while nobody called me an outright liar, I was met with some sideways glances when I reported these snow patches to my rafting cohorts. Almost as if I reported seeing a yeti. Which are beautiful creatures, by the way.

Other picture is more easily explained. It’s swirlies made with a finger in the sand, lit up by campfire light. Yes, a nice, late season float down the Salmon with hot days and crisp evenings. Sprawled on a beach at night, feeding driftwood into a little blaze for ambiance.

Nothing spurious about it.

We strung some words together down there in Hells Canyon. This last trip was a Fishtrap expedition, Fishtrap being our local writer’s outfit here in Wallowa County.

Just last week I had me a watercolor artist on my boat, now this. I tell you, I can’t keep up with these new ways of looking at rivers.

We sat on the back porch of the cabin at Bernard Creek and were told to write down what we notice. Not what we know. That “not what you know” part kind of threw me and I sat there kicking that around in my head for a long while, as everyone else was scribbling down noticed things.

I noticed that the shakes on the roof of the porch are longer than other shakes I’ve seen. So I suspect they were split on site. I don’t know that for sure, but I do know the average length of other shakes I’ve seen, so I crossed that one out.

Then I noticed that the boards that make up the walls of the cabin are super-short. Not over four-feet. And that ain’t right. Having two boards on top of each other to go the height of the wall.

So I suspect them milled boards might have been packed in by mule or horse. I don’t know that, but I never noticed it before and I do know it’s not usual to have half-boards, so I scratched that out too.

Then the time was up.

Other folks had noticed the sound of Bernard Creek going by, and also the deeper noise of the Snake River running just over the rise. Damnit, I should have noticed that.

And cobwebs and the scent of creosote coming from the boards of the cabin. After listening to what everyone else noticed, I couldn’t help but notice I’m no good at noticing.

But I learned a lot. And laughed a bunch. Except for the third night at Hominy Bar. I’ve been having poor luck with my contact lenses lately. They’ve been doing this trick where they make my eyeballs take on the look and feel of a hot, burning cinder after a day of wearing them. I’m going to have that looked at. But many thanks to my kind nurses who came up with eye drops and prescribed hot compresses. My eyeball feels fine now, thank you very much.

About these here photos: That one with the kayak is Ann pulling off some yoga moves from the precarious platform of an inflatable one-person boat. I shall not be trying to replicate that. But she made it look graceful.
Other one’s a beauty of Morgan’s boat drifting through some sunlight, and even with my burning eye and the smell of creosote coming from my contact, I couldn’t help but notice what an awfully purty scene that was in the lower stretch of Hells Canyon.

Ah, yeah. It’s been a swell summer and I confess these sundowns getting earlier and earlier isn’t something I’m jazzed about.

Heading out early tomorrow, though, for another run down the Salmon. And looking forward to it. With a new pair of contacts.

I got my yearly lesson on perspective last trip. Tom Kearns has a way with the brushes and watercolors. He occasionally rides ahead on the gearboat, rather than taking the deluxe day tour. That way he gets to camp early to allow for more time to paint. He’s been rafting with Winding Waters for five years now, on the annual Christofferson float trip. I’ve had the pleasure of him being a stowaway on my gearboat for the past three summers.

The painting shown here is one of Tom’s that I commissioned last summer. By ‘commissioned,’ I mean ‘extorted.’ I kept admiring his sketches and finished products, then finally just had to have one. He nicely set me up. Mr. Kearns also did that line drawing of the gearboat you click on from the main page to get to this one.

Consider that narrow rectangle he settled on. For those who have been inside Hells Canyon, you know that outside of those margins there’s a massive view running around that might possibly be contained inside a large enough frame. But you lose detail with every step back. Until. At some point. It just. Doesn’t. Quite. Do it justice.

I dig these selective slices of canyon and river Tom zeroes in on. You could argue a case of ‘less is more,’ and not be wrong. But what I like is the focus on ‘this is plenty.’ Sure, that big, wide canyon is a wonder to look at … but the parts can be just as much so.

Indulge me for a paragraph: It’s impressive that a space shuttle can get up into the heavens, orbit, serve some Tang, then get back. Stay with me. I’m driving at something here. I once talked with an engineer who worked on the heat-resistant tiles used on the shuttles. These things can be exposed to a bajillion degrees and not burn you if you pick them up. I may be exaggerating a shade, but that’s how I remember the conversation. As generally impressed as I was with putting a shuttle into space, that specific exposure to one tiny, small facet made me appreciate the whole shebang all the more.

Tom Kearns likes painting those specifics. High water marks. Lichen. Reflections. Crevices. Sedimentary layers. Basalt columns. Shadows. Eddy lines. Ripples.

If I had to get an understanding of Hells Canyon across to someone without them ever setting foot down there, I’d start with a big wide-angle shot to give a sense of scale. Then I’d start placing close-ups from Tom Kearns on the easel. I like the way that guy looks at the world.