Mountains Of Memory: A Fire Lookout'S Life

21. Disappearances

The temperatures have remained surprisingly cold since the last storm blew in — thirties during the day and twenties at night, with strong winds — so the little snow that fell, an inch or two, remains as it lay a couple of days ago, piled up in cornices in the cabin’s windward sides, forming balls in the turned-up boughs of the conifers, dusting the ground with powder. I recite Emerson’s “The Snowstorm” as I walk down the trail: Announced by all the trumpets of the sky, Arrives the snow, and driving o’er the fields, Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air Hides hills and woods, the river, and the heaven, And veils the farm-house at the garden’s end. The sled and traveller stopped, the courier’s feet Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed In a tumultuous privacy of storm. Come see the north wind’s masonry Out of an unseen quarry evermore Furnished with tile, the fierce artificer Curves his white bastions with projected roof Round every windward stake, or tree, or door. Speeding, the myriad-handed, his wild work So fanciful, so savage, nought cares he For number or proportion. Mockingly, On coop or kennel he hangs Parian wreaths; 21 . disappearances A swan-like form invests the hidden thorn; Fills up the farmer’s lane from wall to wall, Maugre the farmer’s sighs, and at the gate, A tapering turret overtops the work. And when his hours are numbered, and the world Is all his own; retiring, as he were not, Leaves, when the sun appears, astonished Art To mimic in slow structures, stone by stone, The frolic architecture of the snow. I love that last line in particular. No sun appears today in these parts though. The clouds, hovering at around ten thousand feet, seem stalled over the Salmon River Mountains. The morning weather forecast confirms as much; Ollie at Dispatch, reading the report, spoke of this cold front as a season-ending “terminator,” chasing all seasonal employees back to their winter homes. Far down in the basin, I see dark birds flap through the mist, hear them croaking for blood. Ravens. Closer, I see a couple of Canada jays flitting about the trees, searching for food in these cold hard times. A lone Clark’s nutcracker is also on the prowl, its black and white wings on showy display. Otherwise, aside from the occasional gust of wind, it’s eerily quiet around the mountain. The cold and the silence enhance rather than stifle my senses, however, and I’m feeling ecstatic about being out-of-doors again, sniffing the fresh snow-scented air, kicking my toes against the solid rocks on the trail, feeling the bite of cold air on my cheeks. Despite the hangover, I’m quite alive and well on this late-September day in the River of No Return Wilderness. The River of No Return. The name is associated with, conjures up, all kinds of historical memories. Of Lewis and Clark, of course, their turning back, daunted by the geography of the Main Salmon River. Of Impassable Canyon, the lower stretch of the Middle Fork which defied the trail builders of the ccc era. And, sadly, of the number of river runners who have drowned trying to take on the Salmon and Middle Fork. I also think of another Western figure, nowhere near as well known as Lewis and Clark, someone who chose — so the legend goes, anyhow — not to return from the wilderness. Everett Ruess was a dreamy romantic raised in southern California in the early 1900s primarily by his mother, Stella, a devotee of the arts and an artist of sorts herself who wrote poetry and painted. In his late teens Ruess decided to shuck off the shackles of civiliza202 : w i n t e r tion and spend as much time as he could in the deserts of the Southwest: where better to minimize one’s needs than in the land of endless sun? With a burro to carry his meager subsistence rations and artist’s materials (he loved to sketch and once traded prints with Ansel Adams), he wandered from one desert to the next, in pursuit of his dream to achieve oneness with nature. Then in 1934 he vanished without a trace (as the saying goes) in the canyon country...