river

Hard to Beat a Sunny Day

It’s hard to beat a sunny day there at the river’s edge. Like the day we run upstream with inner tubes, scrambling over rocks and logs as the dog chases and barks. It’s all easy then – this living. Terrific, people say when they come and see the mountain and water, the sand and small…

Ancient

We are ancient, or think we are. Our tired knees and bruised heels tell us so as we climb from the valley floor to the lookout, the one perched high on the ridge above the valley. We spend an hour here before descending to the lake for camp. We make dinner and eat as the…

Cattails

My son runs ahead of my husband and I on a thin path that trails off into mudflats. We’ve parked along a narrow road that stops abruptly in front of a dike. We cannot see the water but we can see, just barely, the tops of cattails. We have come here, to the Skagit River…