There was a deafening crash, and the noise rolled along like thunder. Waves of pressure kicked up swirls of dust on the open plain, and a new gaping crack in the ground, deep and wide, exposed the sweet smell of raw earth and rock. Loose stones and fine, sandy soil spilled into this ineffable new feature, startling in a landscape that had gotten very used to itself, one not familiar with such change.
   Things like rocks and fallen sand hadn’t yet had a chance to stop moving before being swept away by the leading edge of stark-raving, seemingly unrestrained, madness. Floods etched their names indelibly across the harsh canyon walls for epochs innumerable, ripping into the panicked parade anything too weak to resist. Change remained the only constant, a marathon of manipulation for a flashing eternity: a never-ending grain of time unknown.
   Millions of years later, when everything that was ever going to fall in had fallen in, and most of what was ever going to move had moved, a flowing green ribbon, perforated with white puffs, laced through emerald wilderness on a here-and-again descent towards its saline homeland. It had rounded-off a great deal of it’s harsh edges and angles. Barring blinks of catastrophe and tardigrade-yet-patient alterations, it had found its pure form. And Meelar and I were going to run it.
                                                        * * *
   It was two months since Tuesday had gone missing. I had looked for her everywhere I could think of, and more than a few places that didn’t make any sense at all, just hoping, like when you lose your keys and look in the refrigerator, just in case. Things that don’t make sense happen all the time. But the keys aren’t ever in the refrigerator, and Tuesday was nowhere to be found. The search parties had mostly disbanded, and I had gone back to a discontented existence in her absence. Things were too much like they were before I met her, and sometimes I would cry at night, when no one was around to see or hear. Have you ever missed someone so much you don’t even feel like yourself without them?
   I had moved out of my apartment to move-in with my mom, who was getting really sick. I think I had given up on finding Tuesday well before Winter Solstice, had stopped boating entirely, stopped hanging out with my friends, stopped posting here... stopped doing almost everything I had done before. I had started drinking too much. I had gained weight and went flabby. I was watching too much TV. Any TV is too much, I think, but I’d been watching a lot. My mind had gone into self-destruct mode. I’d almost bought something from a RonCo infomercial before I realized how bad I was getting.
   And then my mom died just after the new year started. She had wanted to see the new millennium, and she did. She’d made arrangements for her death: I had her cremated and scattered her ashes from the rock in the center of Selway Falls, the one with the tree growing out of the top. I cried for a little while, but things like that are easier to deal with when you see them coming, have time to prepare, don’t feel surprised or cheated. Mom had lived a full life. Beyond the fact that she was gone, there was no real reason to feel pain.
   It was my wake-up call though. I’d been moping, pouting even. One step away from throwing a tantrum because my life wasn’t fair. Mom would have kicked my ass if she’d had the energy. When she was gone, I had only myself. No one was going to kick my ass for me. I got my shit together: I started eating a little better, drinking a little less, walking my dog again. I pulled my boat down, sat in it to see if the outfitting needed tweaking, and then called Meelar. I took a pair of scissors and cut the plug off the back of the TV.
                                                        * * *
   One of the only good things TV’s ever taught me is that the world is not a mystery to be solved. There are things hidden from our perceptions, sure. But they’re not secrets. We’re looking around, and sometimes we find things, sometimes they remain hidden; like walking across a field and finding a penny, or walking right past it. I used to watch Twin Peaks every week when it was on, and I wanted to believe that there was a grove of Sycamore trees, and if you were there when the planets were aligned just so, and had twelve rainbow trout and a pure heart, you could find the entrance to the White Lodge, and know things that you didn’t know before. I wanted to believe that if you woke up inside a dream, and looked at your hands, you could quiz the makers of the world, and answer questions that there seemed no answers to.
   But I realized later that those shows ended because they had to. The secrets weren’t something someone had discovered, and wanted to teach the rest of us. They were fabricated to create something interesting. Steppenwolf’s great knowledge was never revealed because Hesse himself didn’t know what it was. He couldn’t. There are no omens or oracles, or jinxes or juju. Our worlds are created by ourselves and each other. I agree with what Kurt Vonnegut once said: “This promising of great secrets which are just beyond our grasp- I don’t think they exist... The mysteries that remain to be solved have to do with relating to each other.”
                                                        * * *
   Meelar had been waiting for me for less than five minutes. That’s what he said, but his sense of time is so out of whack he once drove east all the way through Nevada trying to get to Tahoe from Oakland. When he started seeing signs for Salt Lake City, he had to turn around and drive all the way back. By that time we had run the Truckee twice, lost all of Tuesday’s money at a Harrah’s black jack table, and gone home. He showed up a day later, and was pissed we hadn’t waited for him. Son of a bitch is lucky he hadn’t taken a wrong turn at Winnemucca and wound up at the Canadian border with at joint hanging out of his mouth.
   Anyway, I parked my truck and put the keys under the bumper. I dropped some beer in a drag bag, tied it to a rock, walked to the riverside gravel bar, and let the bag gently down into the slow and shallow current where we take out. Bottles of Moose Drool. Six of them. I’ve cut my foot on broken glass at the river before, and once extracted an inch-long shard from my dog’s paw, so I should know better than to bring bottles and rocks together, but when something’s free I like to take what’s given. When mom died, I’d cleaned out her basement, along with everything else in the house. She’d bought, but never found an occasion to drink, a lot of beer. And she’d always known the difference between good and bad, beer and everything else included. I guess she’d hidden them from me when she noticed my decline. Love you, mom. As an afterthought, I wrapped the bottles in a neoprene shirt for protection, and put the bag back in the river.
   Meelar already had my boat and gear on his racks when I walked back, so I hiked-up my jeans and began to slide through the passenger-side window of his piece-of-shit Mazda. The door doesn’t open. Well, actually it does, but it falls off it’s hinges, so the window is less hassle and I wanted to get going. “Don’t get mud on the seat,” he said as I threw a leg over. The upholstery was shredded and I guess it’s tough to get the stains out of that yellow foam stuff. I settled in and we headed off for the put-in.
                                                        * * *
   My run wasn’t pretty. Maybe I’ll tell that story another time. At any rate, we made it to the take-out, and I was pulling the beer bag out of the river before I even took my helmet off. When I unrolled the shirt, two of the bottles were gone. There were still four Moose Drools, but someone had taken two. Funny thing, though: they had replaced them with two cans of Heidelberg. I laughed out loud. Must have been some other kayakers out there today, probably running the lower section. Anyone else would have taken all of it. Only boaters would be cool enough to trade. I can’t blame them, either. We had better beer. Whoever that was, if you’re out there reading this, no hard feelings at all. That was a rare and welcome laugh you gave to me; a fair trade straight across.
   Meelar and I drank the Drool, and I gave him the Heidi-pops. We talked about nothing in particular for more than an hour, still in our wet boating gear, not paying attention to the evening slowly approaching. We hadn’t talked in too long.
   Later, we drove back up to his car, put his boat up, shook hands, made plans to make another run the next day. I waited to make sure his car started. It didn’t. I got out and pushed it and he popped the clutch. A big stinky blue cloud erupted from the tailpipe. He gunned the motor and took off straight for the row of boulders that block off the little parking lot at the put-in. He was going really fast, and at the last available second, swung the whole car around with a tight e-brake turn. No wonder his car’s a piece of shit. I got back in my truck and turned it around with a conservative three-point turn. Meelar frowned and shook his head in disgust. He waved and left. I headed for home.
                                                        * * *
   When I parked my truck in front of my mom’s old house, I sensed that something was up. Sometimes intuition screams and yells and smacks you with a brick in the head. Sometimes it just sends a whisper on a light breeze. I barely heard it, and even still, ignored it. My head has been playing funny games all my life.
   I pulled my boat off the racks, grabbed my gear bag, and walked around back to the porch. After hanging-up my wet stuff and leaning my boat on the washing machine, I walked through the back door, into the kitchen. The door bumped closed behind me, pulled shut by a weak spring. The whisper floated by again. When I walked upstairs to my room, taking the steps slowly, one by one, I found myself lost in confused thought. I pushed open the door, which I never, ever closed, and could simply not believe my eyes. I blinked, and gaped. Tuesday’s body lay face down on my bed.
   For a second, panic took over, but I could not move. Then, I heard her slight sigh, and heard her slow and deep breathing. Her clothes were wet and dirty, but not overly so. She was dressed as she was when she disappeared. I stood and watched for I don’t know how long. I suppose, as Edward Abby might have said, she was sleeping the sleep of the just: the just plain tired. I backed away, shuffled slowly downstairs.
                                                        * * *
   I don’t know how to end this. I’ve been sitting here at my desk for most of the evening, sometimes typing but mostly swamped by a raw combination of fear, relief, confusion, elation, and something else: unnamed, untamed, uninhibited emotion. I’m exhausted. There’s a pot of warm split-pea on the stove, been there for over three hours, has a skin on top now. Tuesday’s still asleep.
   I have a slaughterhouse-full of questions, but I think I’ll let them all go, back out to pasture, to take care of themselves on their own time, if ever at all. The most obvious is “Where?” It’s too obvious, though. Maybe she got lost; or needed to find something. Maybe she had questions of her own, and they couldn’t be answered without a deep sojourn, inside and out. Maybe a lot of things, like maybe I should be patient. That sounds good.
   I didn’t listen to a lot of what my mom used to say, but some of it stuck anyway. Most of her advice came in the form of clichés, such as: “Count your blessings”. Okay then, let’s see: one,... Well, that’s plenty for me.
                                                        * * *
   I guess I’m finished here. I thank you for your time, sir and ma’am. If you’ve made it this far, you’ve made it to the end of a new beginning. I hope you feel your interest has been justified; mine’s still piqued. I hope you can go somewhere and be comfortable, and be with someone that makes you happy. I hope you have a good life, and feel free to share it with me. I’ll see you on the water.

Elvez, 2-29-01