I was recently sent a couple of books,
Grand Canyon and Other Selected Poems by Amil Quayle, and a newer copy of
Gathered Waters, the anthology of river poems Cort Conley edited. I used to keep a copy of
Gathered Waters in my river library, tucked alongside
Wind in the Willows, my Stevens guide, the bird books, star chart, and whatever else I could squeeze into the gnarly old yellow 50-cal. Once in awhile I'd sneak along a 20-mil, if John wasn't at the warehouse when we loaded to see it and give me a hard time. I told Cort that this summer and he knew as only a fellow boatman would know that if I'd had a copy all those years it was quite likely pretty raggedy now, pages blotted with coffee that leapt from the thermos some October trip, or MIA in my garage moldering in the ammo can. We talked about books and old river guides and people we knew. I wondered when I picked up Amil's book and started reading and could not stop reading, if Cort knew it would be that way and figured he probably did as only a fellow river runner would know. I'd told him how I hadn't kept my subscription to the Boatman's Quarterly Review because of the odd rising lump I would feel whenever I saw an issue; I would open the mailbox and something in my gut would turn and I would know I was not there anymore, in a way that had far less to do with jealousy than the cold hard fact that other people
were. Every now and then news I wasn't planning on ever hearing: Kenton. Lars Holbeck. Or expecting, like Mikey in Alaska with a son. Bumping into Spanky in Boise, a Spanky that is now the late 30-something year old version of himself, same crooked smile he had when he was twenty and a pain in the ass but we knew he had it in him and he was our well-loved pain in the ass; now with a wife and a baby on the way and 500 acres of alfalfa to see about. I suppose I knew about my own life motoring right along, and change, the favorite river shorts with elastic so time worn and brittle they are old timer river guide museum-worthy, the sudden looking up and thinking
my last trip was when? But I still dream about it, last night Todd as the T.L and all of us sleeping like a tangle of puppies on a wet sand beach. Stone Creek?
Some things you don't forget, or let go of, then wonder if you ever had a full grasp of to begin with. Until somebody comes along and gives you the hand you needed, or puts something in your hand that makes it all come back clearly. I loved Amil's poems, and as a poet myself (a term I don't even like) I can scarcely read anything much of poetry these days. Wendell Berry and Mary Oliver I will always love and because I am of the old liberal arts education sort of upbringing I know Blake and Yeats and Thomas. And Ezra Pound. Most poetry is too narcissitic it seems, too trivially narcissitic despite (because of?) the post modern trend to avoid sentimentalism.
Amil's is beautiful and real and caused an odd lump to rise in my throat and I needed to feel that lump, to let it congeal and harden, take shape. We river runners have a thing about rocks. They are the banes of our (boat's) existence, the crunch at the tip of the oar, the beacon telling us this way or whatthefuckwereyouthinking. They eclipse our downriver view, they shed light on what we thought we knew and damn well did not. We would not be, for them. The book is now blotted with coffee stains. Cort, I owe you one.
Now they are the "old days" for us
But in the sixties we would listen to Ted Hatch
Talk about the "old days"
When his father and Rod Sanderson,
Nevilles and the others were running.
I never thought then would soon be the "old days" for us
But they are,
And hazy faces glide by
Among the problems of growing old,
Smile out from the bitterness
Residue of a retired river runner
Who does not fit in, never did,
Not in this world without a river to run.
Even the mules at Phantom Ranch
See the river every day
On their way down or up.
--Amil Quayle, The Mules at Phantom Ranch
