For many years, the cabin across the river from my house was owned by an elderly couple with ancestral ties to the neighborhood. They had dreamed of retiring here, and when they got a chance to buy that place, they did. They were a generation older than me, accustomed to living in a city, and neither in a physical condition well suited to winters here.
It seemed like a questionable idea from the get go.
It would be a lie to say that I took care of them. But that is a lie they repeatedly told their adult children, scattered around the country. I changed a few light globes when there were ladders involved, jump started the car now and then, and generally paid enough attention as I drove out to see that there were lights on in different windows from the day before, and smoke coming from the chimney.
They knew they could call if they needed a hand, but it’s not like I was fixing their dinner. Their family had been led to believe that the neighbors had developed a support system better than assisted living, which is curious because there really aren’t any other neighbors. We had a bond based on a mutual love of a place and the sounds of the river.
They have both been dead and gone for a long time now. Their children kept the cabin and use it as a vacation place through the warmer months, and close it down in the winter. I know a few of them — it’s a large family — and send an occasional update in the winter if they need to get their roof shoveled and the like.
The people in the house are probably their grandchildren by now, which would make the swarm of cousins playing in the river a sixth generation of that family.
The kids play in the river for hours every day, starting as soon as the air warms up a bit, and lasting until almost dark, objecting to coming in, even for meals. I assume they start the day getting baptized in sun screen and bug repellent, and are then turned loose in the river.
I can only imagine the response from non-free-range parents who would never let their kids walk to a neighborhood park, let alone playing in the river. Call the authorities!
Playing in the river is an essential life skill. They are engineering piles of rocks that steer the river in curving s-turn chutes, and swimming holes that are almost deep enough the get fully submerged in. The water level is dropping quickly this time of year, so getting much depth is a challenge.
When the sun gets too hot, they move upstream and play in the cool shade under the bridge. There is a mud flat beach formed on the downstream side. The riverbed widens out below the bridge and the sand drops out. Under the bridge is a different, cave-like world. It shakes when the logging trucks drive over it.
They learn the difference between an inadvertent splash and a deliberate soaking from a well-tossed rock. They learn to watch out for each other’s toes, and how two or three of them can work together to roll a boulder, and when a mashed finger is worth running inside to Mom or something you just suck up because there is a swimming hole to be built.
A month ago, when the runoff was raging and the river was crashing boulders around with the force of the water, nobody would let their kid get within 50 feet of it. Now, at the slack summer flow, it’s a playground.
So far, I’ve resisted tossing a rock off the bridge to create surprise splash, but it’s not out of the question. I know a thing or two about playing in the river, too.
I re-read Norman Maclean’s book “A River Runs Through It” this week. It’s one of my favorite, and fascinating to read it at different stages of life when, like the unseen currents in the river, a familiar story reveals something entirely new.
The decision to read it again was prompted by a wonderful piece in The New Yorker by Kathryn Schultz. She said when her own writing hit a wall, reading Maclean was always an inspiration. It’s a book about place and family and love and trying to help.
Help is a complicated thing, and often rejected by those it’s offered to, yet the offering itself is also help. To both parties.
The book also has a lot of fly fishing in there. For somebody who doesn’t fish, it doesn’t get in the way.
The book was made into a very good movie (though nothing’s as good as the book), and the combination exploded the world of fly fishers. It sold gear and clothes and created a whole culture. It wreaked havoc on Montana, when everybody in New York and Chicago decided they needed a home in Montana where they could price out the locals and fly fish like Brad Pitt in the movie — though presumably not end up dead in an alley.
In the meantime, the next generation is out there again this morning, playing in the river where pretty much all you need to know is learned. A river runs through it.
Tom Clyde practiced law in Park City for many years. He lives on a working ranch in Woodland and has been writing this column since 1986.
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