The Book of Yaak

by Rick Bass

  He's tired of all the muscle rivers of the past nine days and, believe it or not, of all the muscle-fish. He's content to cast and let his line drift and smoke his cigar in the rain.

  The Yaak is a tiny river, but an important one, especially with the loss of the upper Kootenai River (and the now-extinct Ural Valley) to the wretched dam that formed Lake Koo-canusa, in order to send more juice to California. The Yaak flows from four forks down into what remains of the Kootenai, a river that reminds one of the Mississippi. And the Kootenai then flows, Yaak-laden, into the Columbia, where it becomes fragmented by dams—lakes where salmon once ran wild.

  It boggles my mind to stand in one of the cedar forests high in the mountains of Yaak and watch a creek—say, Fix Creek—go trickling down through the forest, a foot wide and a foot deep—and to picture it being received by the Yaak, and then by the Kootenai, and then by the Columbia, and then by the ocean.

  This is my home.

  I know that in writing about a river, you're supposed to concentrate on the fish—and then, narrowing the focus further, upon the catching of them.

  Tim's a good guide, a great guide. He can find you a big deer. It's not real good elk country—too many roads, not enough security areas, according to biologists—but he can give it the best shot of anybody. His maniacal sense of sportsmanship has altered me. We shoot only about every tenth grouse. Too slow! we'll cry to each other when a bird crosses the other's path, or Young bird! or Old bird! Let 'er go! —year by year increasing our ridiculous standards, out of our love for this savage place, until a grouse just about has to be going 90 mph downhill through doghair lodgepole in the rain for us to get the green light.

  I wonder sometimes if I in turn influence Tim with my duct-tape-ness. We often forget to be hard-core hunters. While hunting with him, I carry plastic Ziploc bags and collect bear scat to give to the biologists for DNA testing of genetic vigor. While drifting the Yaak we stop and search for pretty river rocks. We collect water samples. When we're out together 011 the water, we do just about everything but fish. Tim tells me the names of the insects, teaches me to cast, but time and time again I skew the subject, and talk about baseball or football—about his moribund, erratic Patriots or my choke-bound Oilers.

  If it's spring, we discuss the autumn; if it's fall, we discuss the spring. In the summer and fall, when it rains, we talk about how nice it is to be dry.

  I jabber a mile a minute, and never about fishing, and rarely about hunting, but always, it seems, about the valley.

  Tim rows in closer to shore to examine the skeleton of a bull moose that has drowned in one of the deep holes, and tells me about the time he caught an eight-inch rainbow by dragging a nymph through the moose's algae-hued skeleton ten feet down—the fish rising from the pelvis to take the nymph and then trying to turn back to the sanctuary of the vertebrae, but no luck. Tim reeled the fish in, though after a moment he gently released him.

  I know you're not going to travel this far to catch an eight-inch rainbow. But maybe you can travel over to your desk and pick up a pen. Sort through the papers until you find a stray postcard and write the three congressmen.

  The five gentlemen and I drift. It's a pleasure to watch them cast. The word Tim uses to describe the river is "intimate." The Kootenai is where he makes his money (as much as any guide ever makes, which is to say, not much), and the Yaak is what he saves for a few special lazy days of the year.

  It's still raining, but slants of light beam through the foglike clouds along the river; the fog hangs in the tops of the giant spruce and cedar and fir trees. These trees are a function of the thin soil, tight gray clay over glacial cobble, and the soil is a function of the bedrock, which is in turn a function of the earth's belly, the earth's anatomy—what she desires to belch up here in this spongy, lush river country.

  At times it is more of a creek than a river, like a child's ride in a raft through an amusement park, with the theme of "jungle." You can reach out and touch either bank, in places. Deer rise from the tall grass to peer at you, only their heads visible over the banks: big-eyed does, wide-ribbed in pregnancy, and bucks in velvet nubs.

  "Short casts," Tim tells the occasional wanderer who inquires about fishing the Yaak with him. "Short casts. Inti mate. You can see everything. You can see the moss growing on the rocks. You can see the caddis nymphs, the stonefly nymphs, crawling under their rocks. You can see the fish. Intimate," he says.

  Purple anvil-shaped thunderheads tower behind us, rising between the forested mountains all the way to the outer arc of the atmosphere, and perhaps beyond: we are so wet, so drenched, and it is still raining so steadily, that perhaps it is raining on the moon.

  We pass beneath an old wooden covered bridge. Soon we will be out in the riffles where the rainbow trout leap. Black and silver, they look like anchovies.

  We trade off riding in different boats and rafts, to chat; to get to know one another. It's not about fishing. It's about being in the Yaak. It's about feeling the magic of all the little feeder creeks, cedar streams, not so rich in nutrients, but rich in magic, emptying into the Yaak's little belly. Later in the summer there will be a drought, whose only saving grace will be that the temperatures never get too hot; though the river will drop drastically, lower than it's ever been measured in white man's history; and in August, fires will move through on the south-facing slopes, cleaning out the underbrush, the dried-up buffalo berry that has grown up following old logging operations, and cleansing some of the lodgepole stands up high of pine beetles. And in September, on Labor Day, as on every Labor Day, the rains will return, extinguishing the fires, and beginning to give ease to the suffering creeks, and the fish will begin gathering at their mouths, readying to spawn in the fall rains, as they have almost every year through the millennia.

  (Tim, a lover of waters, has moved up and down practically every creek in northwestern Montana, every backwater beaver-slough he can find, taking pictures of the occasional freak brook trout or the incredibly rare westslope cutthroat. Not surprisingly, those creeks that haven't been streamside- or headwaters-logged tolerate the droughts much better than the clearcut stretches.)

  We pass beneath giant cedars. A few more fish. I hook a ten-inch rainbow, which will be the heavy of the day. Wild rainbows, and wild westslope cutthroats, and the gorgeous little brook trout. It's not unusual, Tim says, to catch all three; while just below, in the Kootenai, the bull trout breathing water breathed by sturgeon, and each year these creeks get filled in with more and more sediment, get lower and lower, and each year the bulls wait to make their heroic runs one more time.

  We talk about books, we talk about politics, we talk about dogs and food and friends and assholes. We talk about the ocean and about Africa and about childhood. Charles is smoking a pipe now, and the smoke mixes with the fog. These damn little fish keep hooking themselves on our casts. Some of us put our rods down and just ride. The water turns dark, deep. Like any small river, the Yaak can be overfished by a single guy intent upon only meat, and in the past, it has been. The days of big fish in big holes are no longer with us, but because the river's small, the little fish still hide behind almost every rock.

  Later on, at supper, we'll hit the five gents up for letters to save this wild green place. We'll tell them how, in all the years, there's never been a single acre of wilderness protected; how the international timber companies have long had their way with this forgotten place. We'll tell them that it's time to hold the Montana delegation responsible. Tim will discuss the Kootenai, and the Libby Darn operations, at length. The sign-up sheet will be passed, and the new letter writers recruited before dessert is passed out—if they want any dessert. A trade; the army, the small battalion, growing by four.

  All that will come later. Right now it's time only for river intimacy. Green drakes begin to rise from the water, and I im is overjoyed: in seven years, he's never seen them on the Yaak. He wants to believe that the river is recovering. We're drifting through a meadow now, where every y
ear before cattle had grazed, but this year the cattle are gone, and the willows have grown at least a foot, and the green drakes are swarming, landing on our arms as if trying to tell us things.

  A purple thundercloud drifts up the river to meet us—lashes us with stinging rain. We laugh like school kids walking home in a storm. We come around one corner—aspens, white pine, alder, ash, all clinging to a rock outcrop—and turn into a cool dark tunnel of cedar and spruce. Another bend, and now an old spruce stretches across the little river, spiny limbs splayed everywhere, resting a few inches above the water and spanning it completely. The tree is so big that it must have been a giant before whites first moved into the valley in the early 1900s. It's probably fifty inches across; it's too low to go under, and too high for us to drag our boats up over it.

  The current has quickened, here in this dark tunnel, and we back-paddle to avoid being drawn into the limbs and turned sideways. We're all aware of the furious, silent power of water, even relatively mild water—the strength of its mass—and the way things can turn bad quickly.

  Carefully I climb up on top of the tree—thrashing through the maw of branches—and Tim anchors, and hands the saw up to me.

  The saw's wet and won't start at first. We're a long way from anywhere. It's raining harder still. Finally the saw coughs, then ignites, with a belch of blue smoke and a roar, and I choke it back to a purr, then start blipping off branches to clear a working area. Sawdust showers all three boats, all five fishermen. The rain beating down quickly mixes with the sawdust to coat them all with a sodden paste. A bit of bar oil drips into the river, sending a heartbreaking iridescent rainbow downcurrent. So much for the pious talk of the afternoon.

  I begin making my crosscuts in the huge tree. The roar is deafening. How will I be able to hear grouse flush this fall?

  So much for intimate. The green wood sags. Our worst fear is of binding the saw, and I'm careful, but can't get beneath the log with the blade—not unless I put it underwater.

  There's a creaking, and the log drops an inch, pinches the saw tight. Now we're screwed. We take turns clambering onto the log and pulling, wrenching and twisting—a fly-fisherman's version of The Sword in the Stone. A fly-fishing guide's nightmare. Surely he's wondering why he brought me.

  The rain lashes at us. Finally Tim, in the strength of desperation, is able to free the saw. I start it back up. Nothing runs like a Stihl.

  I'm standing in the bow of his new boat making a new cut, and making good progress, when a new sound begins to emanate from the saw, a splintery sound, accompanied by a certain bucking and vibration of the boat. Ahh, I think, we're into the heartwood now.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I notice a new color of sawdust beginning to appear in the pile around our ankles: it's cream-colored, the same color as Tim's boat.

  He's such a gentleman! "That's O.K.," he says, when I lift the saw and stare, aghast, at the cut in the gunwale: as if I aimed to sink us! "Just a ding," he says.

  Tim doesn't belong up here, really. He's like those other four gents. He's too courteous, and too professional. I'm afraid of giving him my virus, the one that makes you fond of duct tape; afraid of infecting him somehow with a woods-piggishness, a kind of savagery that is not uncommon in Yaak. I want him to be immune from it; and so far, he is. His New England heritage, etc. I'd already torn up his truck; he'd parked it behind my old beater one day, and I backed into it. "Ah, that's O.K.," he'd said then, too. "Just a ding."

  It's a different place, up here. There's certain roughness of spirit; a wildness. You can see it in the old cars and trucks, in all the rotting things. A certain endurance, a willingness to go on, even when a bit crippled up by hard times, by deep snows, or whatever. But Tim's a pro, and such a nice guy: I feel guilty, as if my looseness, my Yaakness, might cramp his style. As if the valley might cramp his style.

  He loves it, too. At least as much as I do. I guess if he were going to turn into a savage, it would have already happened.

  I finish the cut, avoiding the boat this time. The log drops with a crash, swings free; the current surges. New structure—a new hole for the worm fishermen. We pull up anchor and release ourselves through the slot, like salmon through a gate. The rain finally lets up; sunlight pours down the mountains. We enter long, slow water—flat water, with much rowing to be done. We're cold, chilled to the deep bone. Fresh sawdust floats downriver with us, preceding us for a mile or so.

  Shadows deepen. There's one touchy moment when we come to a spot in the river where a man has draped a 220-volt electrical line across the river at neck level, as if to electroshock us; but it turns out he's only doing some welding on the other side of the river. In the dimness, we might not have seen it. Tim knows the man, is friendly with him, as he is with everyone. He gives the magic password, and the man lifts his cable high enough for us to go by unelectrocuted.

  We take out in deepening, buggy twilight, slapping mosquitoes, and go up to the tavern to watch one of the basketball playoffs. Later we feast on wild game accompanied by wine and cigars and stories.

  Driving home that night, Tim will tell me, he saw a lynx with only three paws cross the road; the fourth paw was raw and stumpy, probably from a trap. But Tim said he could tell by the way the lynx crossed the road that it still wanted to go on. It would rest up, Tim thought, and recover.

  Healing

  JUST ON THE, OTHER SIDE of the valley, down at the bottom of the summit—between Libby and the beginning of the valley—there is a small building, a place of miracles, attached to the side of a garage barn. A sign out front advertises it as the Sports Therapy Clinic. It's run by a mother, Shirley, and her daughter, Connie. Part of their training, as I understand it—one of their specialties—lies in the treatment, the massage, of horses; but if your back, or neck, or anything, is hurting badly enough, they'll work on you, too, and you can take it to the bank that if there is anyone who can repair you—can piece you back together—it's them. Their hands—strong enough to push a horse's entire hindquarter back into position—stretch and knead and twist and torque your own puny hindquarters, and often you get the feeling (read: pain) that they might be in some zone or trance where all good artists go when they do their work, and that they are working on your spine as they would that of a horse or some other creature five times your size and more oblivious to pain.

  These are not light touches, nor particularly pleasant experiences—these sessions on the table. Sometimes it approaches torture. But you go there because it works. I shouldn't be letting the cat out of the bag—shouldn't be advertising the miraculousness of their work. In all my travels I've never found anyone else who could fix my torn and twisted back as well or completely as Shirley and Connie; what if people start coming to them from all over the world — what if overbooking leads to their being less accessible to our community?

  Certainly, the wooded country, the community and the landscape around us, demands them—requires the miracle of them, as everything that fits in a place is a miracle. Log truck drivers, sawyers, hunters, fishing guides (all that boat-rowing) and deskbound, hump-shouldered writers alike need them in the world, in this community. In late winter, when the snow turns to ice and on any given day you can see a fair percentage of the people in Libby flat on their backs, spinning, having just fallen on the ice—as if you have stumbled into some strange town where a cult of break-dancers exists — ten or twenty people spinning on the sidewalks at a time, some days—the two women will sometimes work eight, even ten hours a day, nonstop, trying to put back together all the pieces: trying to rearrange the sheath of muscles, and the flows of blood and energy, which wrap each person's skeletal system.

  There are charts and posters all over the walls of their little office: anatomical pathways of nerves, arteries, vessels, muscles, bones.... The way the tenseness in the left calf, for example, ties in, strangely enough, and transcribes itself to that pain behind the right shoulder blade. The way indigestion, or the pain in your lower abdomen, relates to the cra
mping in the arch of your foot. The way that when any one part gets too far out of balance, everything else shifts and tries to compensate but leads only to further unraveling and excruciating pain.

  A wood stove keeps the office, the massage tables, melt-muscle warm, even at twenty below. Sunlight pours in through the old-glass windows. There's a creek across the road. Shirley's husband's family homesteaded here—no electricity, no phone, certainly no running water. She and her husband, Harold, raised four kids—Harold is a logger— and the whole family of them, the history of them as well as the present tense of them, is of a place, as a tree is of a forest — and you find yourself wishing, selfishly of course, when Shirley works on you, that her hands, strengthened from working in the garden and on the horses, and on injured people, were not quite so vital.

  Not that Connie is any less brutal.

  Either of them will fix you.

  Sometimes, as they work on you, they'll talk about the world

  — about big things—as if to somehow balance the toxicity and angst that must be coming out of your muscles. They'll work on anyone, on everyone—hard-core timber beasts and hard-core environmentalists alike, no matter—forgiving each of us our tensely wired human flaws—but personally speaking, you don't ever want to argue too much with them, about anything, when you're on the table, and if some topic starts to veer too closely toward significant disagreement, you try and change the topic to something like, say, the smell of roses, or the coming of spring. With one hand clutching the back of your neck as an eagle's talon clutches a rabbit, and the other hand similarly gripping your calf, you don't want to upset them: you want to keep them relatively calm and even-keeled.