The sky rises endlessly an impossible blue like a robin's egg or turquoise, a color that for some reason always reminds me of horses. The colors east of the Cascades are different than here on the west side; over there it's higher, bleached out, all faded like a well-loved pair of jeans somehow made crisp and hard by drying in the sun, and the sky is brilliant.

The cinnamon brown bark of the huge long-needled ponderosa pines and the dark scrubby lodgepole pines cast dappled shade on sage and sedge grass. Wild currant and hazelnut grow stunted from the snows.

Along the riverbank the grass grows waist-high and lush, and if I look closely at the matted deer beds I can see small wild purple asters blooming in the undergrowth, and wild strawberries, and yerba buena with its running tendrils and when I crush it between my fingers it smells sweet and good.

The smooth black water shines like a mirror and reflects the colors. Liquid emeralds, so dark green and deep and dark and treacherous, long dead trees fallen and slipped down the bank jut like bleached white bones from the water. Something wilder.