Not all the rafts are tucked away for the season, oh no. Tom, our fishing guru, has the Super Puma stationed down on the Grande Ronde for a steelhead fishing season that -- no joke – is eclipsing historic numbers of fish passing the dams further down the river.

If you’ve got the steelhead nerve, you’d best get out here. But don’t tell me about it when you catch some of them silver torpedoes. Morgan and I had a float planned, just the two of us, to go down from Minam to Troy and ... well … oh, it pains me to write this. I’m sobbing right now. Where’s my hanky? Oh, man, that looks like a … well, never mind that.

What I’m getting at is, I took the responsible route and waved off our impromptu steelhead trip for other, good, important reasons. Grownup reasons. Getting things done. Taking care of business. Priorities and all that. But I’m beginning to crack. I may heave responsibility on the dust heap and go fishing yet.

So we know where Tom is. He’s where I should be. On the Grande Ronde.

Here’s the rest of your Winding Waters crew update:

Just saw Penny in the grocery store parking lot an hour ago. She was buying cups for a Wallowa Resources board meeting.

Paul’s been on a tear lately. He was down in Caracas fishing for marlin with his brothers, I believe. He said something about catching 20 marlin. I suspect he’s lying. I need to see those pictures, Paul. And after that, he headed to Kentucky, or Indiana, or somewhere, as a chaperone, I guess, for a high school group attending an FSA convention. I confess I haven’t the first notion what FSA stands for. But I do know what FBLA stands for, so let’s just say he’s at one of those conventions.

Morgan’s been busy, cooking for a group of steelheaders. Then he’s heading home to Virginia to see the fam for a while.

Let’s see … Mike Baird’s been cutting firewood when he’s not teaching school. I know that because I’ve been out there cutting it with him. Fix the bar on your chainsaw, Mike. I’m tired of splitting curvy pieces of wood.

Sam Macke’s heading this way pretty soon to pack into Hells Canyon with that same Mike Baird for elk season.

And young Baird, Patrick, had his first big college test this week at the University of Oregon. Always guess “C” Patrick, on a multiple choice test when you’re not sure. That’s how I got my degree.

And I’ve been taking pictures of ants. That photo there is in my kitchen sink, looking down on a hitchhiker that ended up in my plum harvest. I liberated him shortly after noticing him floating around during the plum cleaning. Those air bubbles on the plums are a little bit crazy too.

All right, I’m off to do responsible things. While knowing I should be on the river, fishing. Go in my stead. Someone needs to be down there latching into those silver torpedoes.

You want the good news or the bad news? Doesn’t matter, they’re the same.

What might be considered bad news is I lost the weight-lifting contest. No big surprise if you’ve seen my arms.

This test of brawn went down at Black Butte Ranch, a purty place if ever there was, located over in Central Oregon in the charming villa of Sisters, not too far removed from the charming metropolis of Bend.

My college buddies and I convened for three days at this little-bit ritzy joint where Cyrus owns one of the condos.

Last time we’d been in the same room together and played poker far into the night for several days running, it was out in Washington D.C. We were quartered in a hotel room attached to a hospital wing.

In that hospital wing, our bueno amigo Mike Jordan was all tubes and flimsy hospital gowns, jello on a tray, recovering from a surgery nobody would wish on anybody.

I mean, this was intrusive. There was talk of percentages of patients who don’t survive such procedures. The good news in this instance is that Mike underwent this horrid scalpel overhaul and since then his cancer hasn’t shown back up. And it had some rather extensive real estate holdings inside his insides there for a while. It was bad news of the worse sort. My best friend in the wide world. New baby boy. Loving wife. Everything going his way except for stage four stomach cancer.

That was two years ago. As I said, Mike’s checkups have been clean since. So it meant a lot to have him there, healthy, for this case of friends getting together.

We’re walking out of the rec center at Black Butte after swimming, passing the weight room, and go in for an impromptu benchpressing tournament. I wanted to see if I could still bench my weight. I mean, I’ve been rowing boats all summer. That’s got to help.

So we started at 170 and worked up. I made it up to 250 pounds. I have serious doubts about the units of weights and measurement on that piece of fitness equipment, because there’s no way I’ll ever truly lift 250.

Any case, Mike and Cy advance to the final round and Cy gets 270 up with some fighting back from the 270. In his defense, 270 didn’t even have to resist against me. It just lay there while my arms shook and wondered what I thought I was trying to do.

Mike got 270 up just fine. So he won. And he deferred when we changed the pin to 290. Nah, he said. He didn’t think he could manage it.

I know him pretty well. He wasn’t struggling with lifting that 270 as much as he was trying to make it look like. What a liar. And 290 wouldn’t have been a problem. I’m guessing he figured there was no need to go on as his friends were done and him showing how much stronger he was wouldn’t be necessary. Or polite. Nice. Sporting. Whatever.

Well, Mike. You’re wrong there, friend. From reclining on an adjustable hospital bed to reclining on a health spa’s benchpress, where he easily out-lifts me, Cy, Darren, Scott and Jude. That’s, uh . . . losing that contest doesn’t bother me. At all. Not a bit.

Because we did boxing right after that and I got back at him with a powerhouse uppercut that knocked his. . . . No. That last part there I made up.

He came out to visit last July and we floated the Grande Ronde. I’ve got a picture of him on the oars but it’s buried in my old laptop that took a dive. I’ll revive that busted computer if it’s the last thing I do.

So in the meantime, do your pushups so you can beat your friends in a benchpress contest and here’s some fall photos of the Minam River, also cloud beshrouded Elkhorn Mountains on the other side of the Eagle Caps.

Right down to the sugar in the bowl. That’s how I heard the trade described. Two Idaho ranches, one up by Indian Valley, the other along the Lower Salmon River. Furniture stayed where it was in both haciendas, which made perfect sense once I beheld the road to and fro the ranch on the Salmon. It’s considerable steep. Winding. I wouldn’t want to haul a kitchen table, bed frames and chairs up that thing in a wagon.

Doris Johnson was a youngster when her father made this ranch trade and she headed for an idyllic sweep of country miles out from McCall, Idaho, then through the mining town on Warren. Doris was cooking for the family and ranch crew by the time she was nine years old. Horsebacking it for miles to get the mail. Wintering in a canvas tent while the house was being built. Real Little House on the Prairie stuff, if the prairie was a river canyon.

Doris is one of the finest people I’ve crossed paths with. She’s not with us any more, and the occasion for me to see that lower Salmon country I’d heard her describe was a memorial service for Doris and her son, Donny. Their ashes were spread upstream of the ranch. And for a resting place, it’s hard to imagine a finer spot.

I’d heard of the swimming hole. It’s further upstream from the ranch. You walk through a gate, follow the path through pine trees. Climb a rocky rise and there it is on the left. Big, big pool. The water in this stretch of river is ultra clear, but this swimming hole pocket shows dark water from being so deep. I can see spending hours and days there. Kid or adult, it’s an attractive place to be.

And there’s no denying that many people share that impression. There are pictographs on rock walls marking the first people to spend time here. Terraced gardens from what I gather were Chinese settlers. Mining equipment left over from old-time and more recent gold seekers. Telephone wire strung through the trees. Barb wire here and there. An old burned-out cabin site. Foundation and chimney rock remnants. Tin roof panels.

But with all of this imprint on the land, it still comes across as unspoiled. Or did to me, anyway. Lots of folks would disagree with me on that. But I’ll sit tight with my definition that seeing evidence of other people being there just simply didn’t spoil it for me. It’s a special place. And I’m pretty sure most folks who’ve been there put their hands on their hips and looked around, soaked in the river, the sandy beach across the stream, the mature trees, the rocky outcrops, the goodness of the spot, and unless you’re a real hardcase you’d just have to breathe it in, nod to yourself and say, this is good.

So thanks, Jacey, for taking me there. And, Doris, thanks for telling me about it. A person couldn’t help but get attached to that place and I hope to go back sometime, spend a while in that meadow by the swimming hole.

This river travel we enjoy, I’d say it hangs on being around spots like this. I like that about guiding. Coming up to a bend in the river and being able to tell the folks in my raft that they’re going to like what they see in a minute here.

Just like Doris describing that swimming hole.

Yegads. I have been gathering. And harvesting. Or trying to. It turns out I’m pretty OK with driving to the supermarket and pushing a wire basket around on wheels to collect my provisions. Because I’m in the midst of attempting a relapse into the hunter/gatherer thing and, folks, it’s harder than you might think.

I didn’t gather much. Couple sackfuls of plums. O, but what plums. I dried most of them and threw the ones that got chewed by yellowjackets at the yellowjackets.

Then there’s firewood. Been gathering a powerful heap of that. Got to lay in a bunch of small length stuff to feed the wood-fire hottub.

But this hunting business. Hooweee.

Got snowed on. And not a dusting. A foot’s worth. 12 inches of heavy, wet, white.

Were it not for the Winding Waters wall tent, things would have been bad. As it was, I had a wood stove set up in the tent, with a Mr. Heater backup kicker, so we played rummy and sipped hot cocoa through the worst of it.

Yesterday I managed to pour coffee over my thigh. Yep, snow on the ground and I manage a second-degree burn from pouring something on myself. Hmm. But those polypropylene longjohns sure do hold the heat in, I can vouch for that.

Morgan's been on a furious cooking tour. First up in the mountains for a fish survey crew, then last week for an annual get-together over in Umatilla country. Next, he's catering for steelheaders down on the Grand Ronde -- which, I should mention, is starting to go off and I've heard reports from our fish man Tom that the steelhead have arrived.

Repeat, all units, the steelhead have arrived.

So get out the rod and reel. Or the garden basket to gather the last of the zucchini. It's gathering season, folks. Lay in your supplies.

In a completely unrelated visual realm, that picture up there is from the Wapshilla Ranch on the Salmon River. So now you know.