Women of the River: Part Two

Women of the River: Part 2

Although we seldom see each other, river sisters share a generous spirit of helping each other. Because of our isolation and common roles, we depend on one another. Several who live in the canyon all year have green houses to jump-start their gardens. When Doug and I come in April, we bring seeds and must wait until warmer weather to get them started. Each year a passing jet boat or the mail plane delivers extra seedlings from Barbara at 5-Mile Bar, Lynn at Shepp Ranch or Sue, up river at Yellow Pine Bar, all sharing their bounty with neighbors. Unexpected treats and gifts often arrive by plane or jet boat. Questions, answers, and advice flow back and forth, although it is usually me asking the questions and being the beneficiary of their wisdom. If there is any kind of emergency, an email to the river sisters always finds someone who is listening and can get help.

Most recently some friends were getting ready to float the river. On the day of their departure, the wife received word that her father was ill. They gave her family our email address so that they could stop at our place to get an update on his condition while on their trip. The day our friends were due to arrive at Campbell’s Ferry to check in with us, we received an email that her father was in serious condition and failing. When our friends arrived we relayed the message and it was determined that she should immediately fly out from the Ferry to Boise to get a plane home. I emailed the air taxi service in Cascade but when 30 minutes passed without a response I knew that Carol, who handles their email, must be doing something away from her desk. At Campbell’s Ferry email is our only quick and reliable communication with the outside world. We have a satellite phone but one can wait for a long time for a signal. Most places on the river are connected by backcountry radio but, for some reason, we cannot get reliable radio reception. After waiting for a response I sent an email out to the river sisters explaining the situation and asking for assistance…”Would someone please get on the radio to alert Arnold Aviation that they need to look at their email and get back to me.” Almost immediately I had a response from Barbara. She had contacted Arnold Aviation and let me know that a plane would be on its way within minutes. Our friend was able to get out in time to be with her father before he died.

Sometimes it is not an emergency but just the knowledge that someone else is facing the same challenges and concerns, struggling with the same issues or sharing the same joys is comforting.  My friends in the “outside world” often find it hard to relate to life in the wilderness…”What do you DO out there?” A recent email from my friend, Sue, perfectly captures a day in the river sisters’ lives. I felt Sue had entered my brain, captured my thoughts and expressed them far better than I ever could, so I gained her permission to share it.

First, a few cues to the short hand and river language in Sue’s email:

The inverter…. converts direct current electricity from solar or hydro-power stored in a battery bank into household 110 current. We all have systems to generate electricity. When they act up you can’t call the power company. YOU deal with it.

 

Ypb…short for Yellow Pine Bar where Sue lives.

 

Float groups…white water rafters coming down the Salmon River, either self-guided or outfitted groups. They regularly stop at our places on the river and come up to talk or look at the natives.

 

Fire Suppression Reservoir…AKA, the swimming pool at YPB.

 

Sun oven…basically a black metal box with a glass lid that lifts and aluminum panels that fold out like the Mars rover to direct sunlight through the glass into the black box where you put the food to be cooked. Depending on the weather, temperatures can get up to nearly 400 degrees but typically range from 250 to 300 degrees. Since the sun oven sits outside, it doesn’t heat up the cabin like a stove and it is not eating up your electricity. You have to remember to keep repositioning it to keep the best angle from the sun for a consistent temperature but, should you forget, at least nothing will burn because the temperature will drop as the sun angle changes.

 

Shepp…Shepp Ranch, a place down river where river sister Lynn lives.

 

Sue is a brilliant writer. See for yourself:

Salmon River Sirens!

Every day, this is what happens.

I say to my sweaty self…..”TODAY I will email my girls……………

…….once the power at ypb is stabilized enough to dare USE any sacred electricity.” Major Inverter/Battery drama is ongoing with daunting messages on the display panel and excessive zingy, colorful flashing lights all I can think of is “alien abduction!”

…….or….”I’ll email river sisters after this float group leaves.”……then another one or two follow and I’m talked-out (yes, that can actually happen to me! :)………

……”I’ll email canyon broads when I’m finished cool-morning weeding … harvesting …. choring …. laundering ….. mowing”…… but either there’s zero power left to compute after fridge and freezer have their way with it, OR a group arrives, OR I’m grumpy from the heat and all digits on hands and feet are puffy like Vienna sausages even if I worship shade and guzzle lots of water……….

So at this moment, I’m not checking the power panel to see if there’s enough juice to compute. I’ll just wait for the smoke billow or an alarm to go off 🙂

If floaters show up, they can wander around since they do anyway. And so what if there’s a big basket of peas to shell, strawberries to top, and beets that need their skins’ slipped in hot water……(oh god….is it just me or is it hotter than Satan’s basement and who even wants to THINK about stirring hot jam in a steamy pot unless it’s dark-dark….or JAM-uary?)

Just had to check in and say HELLO! MISS YOU! HOPING ALL IS WELL DOWN RIVER!

Thought of you all last night as I made my way to the Fire Suppression Reservoir. Haven’t dipped into that holding tank of chlorinated water yet this year, so why not a midnight submersion?

Tossy-turny sleeping these days, right?

Even if I’m fairly certain I’m on the other side of the plenty-long adventure of hormonal heat waves, beads pool up even when a body is still and supine.

To the pool she goes to ooh and aah over the moon and splendor of water, knowing the odds of strangers showing up are minimal, and that “hooray! it’s dark enough to not spend even a second screening the 1/4″ layer of dead whatnot’s from the surface.”

The only thing that would have brought it over the top would have been if you guys had been present with chilled Prossecco, and maybe some of those Alabama dark chocolate bites of dreaminess Lynn shared with us this spring at Shepp!

We would have given the crickets a run for their chirping money for sure with giggling in free-style water ballet, or just plain splashed and jawed!

Pretty sure this nocturnal reprieve out yonder will become a habit. Slept like a Disney character afterwards.

Garden-wise, I’m sure you all have the same things going on – weary looking plants by early afternoon, some things WAY ahead of the normal or abnormal (garlic is out and cleaned up by June 30th?).

Everywhere you look, something needs to be tied, picked up, harvested, freed a bit from the biggest-leafed purslane I can recall, or otherwise hydrated (if you have H2o) so the layin’ down plants can make it to sun down.

I’ve already pulled some fried flowers & pea vines that succumbed to the determined triple digit marathon.

The dream I had of 2015 being the year of ‘not’ weeding the ever-so-long flower beds flanking the garden by way of weed fabric and heavily mulched perennials with random barrels and pots of annuals hither and yon. (always wanted to say that:) isn’t quite what I originally envisioned.

Now it’s crystal clear that, in my attempt to fill the fuel barrel “pots” Greg cut in sections for me, I shouldn’t have been so skimpy with the dirt involved in filling them.

That’s what you get for cheating. I thought it was genius, saving on potting soil and/or dirt mix by loading up the bottom 2/3rds of the barrel sections with feed sacks filled with non-toxic trash – aluminum and tin cans, balls of discarded chicken wire, bunched up newspaper or old weed-guard fabric, flakes of straw……anything with bulk to take up some space to ration what I thought was an ample amount of amassed dirt from all kinds of sources.

But now, the top foot or so of skimpy-dirt piled atop “trash” has wiggled and settled down into the crannies of bulk below.

It’s like looking down a man-hole in order to see the annuals down there in the dark, sunk to bottom.

Feel like I should throw them a rope:)

But there’s still plenty of unexpected beauty and bounty – all so jungle-like at this stage with the squash vines traveling like you know they will but can’t “see” that at planting time……..and how, as much as you convince yourself that you’ll stay ahead of the trellising, deadheading or harvesting game, and that you’ll pick ALL the cucumbers that are the best sized baby dills so there’s not that jalopy that magically appears a day later…………..

Whoosh!

It’s just “plants gone wild” cause you’re too preoccupied with playing tag with water, chit-chatting with visitors, troubleshooting inverter woes, sweating in motion or while idling, nursing an injured tourist, putting something in, or taking something out of the Sun Oven, trying to be efficient (as in “not lazy”) in all things domestic (okay….who has vacuumed or washed windows everywhere else but their own domicile?)

And how can you not stare out into space to think about Winter or pass up on a hot minute of laying in the sun-burned lawn to look for animals shapes (or Jared Leto) in the clouds?

All I know is, wouldn’t it be so humbling, entertaining, and most likely mildly (or wildly) embarrassing, to be able to play back the audio version of thoughts, revelations, and conversations we have with ourselves in just one day?

That’s why I’m a HUGE fan of the fresh slate of morning – to have another stab at making it the best day it can be, promises made to take things less seriously in some respects and more seriously in others.

There’s just so much promise and optimism in the AM – in all the seasons, but especially summer when most days feel like a fire-drill even if we “live for a living” for the most part.

Don’t you love the welcomed humidity in the garden after the plants have sucked in their 10 minute drink?

I swear song birds sing the happiest they’ll sing all day. The air is clean and filled with butterflies, giving no indication of fires that burn in the canyon or mayhem that ensues out there in the big world.

To me, the simple act of re-filling the hummer feeders feels like the most satisfactory thing a person can do while holding a coffee cup.

And so, I just had to send you girls a cyber hug to let you know that, through the hundreds of things that go on in a day and how it isn’t always possible to connect as often as I’d love to, you are the people I’d most like to share my hundreds with – telepathically or typingly:)

May all be “morning” in your worlds down river.  I’ll meet you at the pool at midnight!

oxoxo sue