The Moon, the River, a Best Friend

By JEFF DARREN MUSE
Guest Columnist

Hamilton County resident Jeff Darren Muse. (Photo provided)

Columnist Scott Saalman is too busy reading books to write a Scaramouch column this week. He highly recommends Dear Park Ranger by Hamilton County resident Jeff Darren Muse, for your holiday book gift giving. What follows is one of the book’s essays, in its entirety. You can also see Jeff read this essay from his hospital bed at this Facebook link: facebook.com/100066199974843/videos/pcb.850668087149849/612738094420847.

August 27, 2007
Skagit River, WA

Ned and I started paddling at four o’clock this afternoon. An upriver wind chafed our faces as the milky green melt of four hundred glaciers carried us downstream. We meandered twenty-five miles from Rockport, under Concrete’s steel Tinkertoy, the Dalles Bridge, then beyond the bluffs of Cape Horn, where the Skagit doubles back for a horizon-wide view of craggy Sauk Mountain, named for the Sah-ku-méhu tribe. Late summer withers the peak’s avalanche chutes – tawny meadows, a hint of gold. Several miles later, at the old ferry crossing in Birdsview, we pulled ashore on this gravel bar, its beach woven with polished rocks and piles of bark-stripped logs. We ate cold pizza and watched the sun set. No tent. No hassle.

The dew is falling thick and fast, smearing these few words. Rising through the cottonwoods, a full moon casts the sand and driftwood around this camp in a shadow-carving glow. We settle into our sleeping bags on plastic tarps, curling the edges to protect our gear. It’s no use. We know we’ll wake up soaked.

“It’ll be sunny tomorrow,” Ned says, his last words for the night. Then I zip my bag around my body, the scrape of nylon giving way to water sounds, to rolling waves and eddies curling against the shoreline.

The moon, the river, a best friend. What feels like a best friend. Within weeks, he’ll be gone, back to Idaho, back to Driggs. “It actually snows there,” he once told me. Here, on this valley bottom, it mostly rains. And Ned doesn’t like rain.

* * *

The Skagit River meanders downstream of Rockport, Wash., in July 2007. (Photo by Jeff Darren Muse)

We’re on our way to Skagit Bay – or so we tell ourselves. Come morning, stocking caps on, we’ll shake off the dawn-wet chill like French Canadian voyageurs, taking breakfast after an hour or two in the canoe. Ned’s got the broad shoulders of an athlete, though not from gym weights or ball fields, but from mountaintops, sheer cliffs, places I don’t go. He may not know it, but I’m giddy, thrilled that the paddle in his hands is adventure enough for his days off. I supervise him at work, but rarely does it feel like that. I hired him, I told my boss, “because this place needs a Ned.” Our plan came together only last night as our schedules and aspirations aligned for the first time this summer. We’re thriving on the spontaneity of the trip, the uncertainty around each bend. “A quick journey,” I promised my wife. She shoved us off, waved.

All told, we’ll cover some seventy miles from my house in Rockport to the Skagit Delta on Puget Sound. If the wind and tides will let us, if our backs hold out, we’ll hit saltwater by early evening tomorrow. Thanks to her cell phone, a friend from headquarters will meet us wherever we end up – Mount Vernon, Fir Island, the Swinomish Channel in La Conner. “Just call me,” she said. “I’ve got a truck, plenty of room.”

But Ned and I agree – about paddling, about life – we want the sea. We want what glaciers want. We want as far as we can go.

How about you? How far? A Fishers resident not far from his 1969 birthplace, Jeff Darren Muse is the author of Dear Park Ranger: Essays on Manhood, Restlessness, and the Geography of Hope, published by Wayfarer Books in May 2023. Two months later, Muse was diagnosed as having terminal brain cancer. At that time, he and his wife lived in New Mexico, where they both worked for the National Park Service in careers that had begun decades earlier in Washington’s Skagit Valley. In Dear Park Ranger, you can learn about many people, places, and eras they have known throughout the United States. Likewise, check out jeffdarrenmuse.com for links to online and in-store purchasing for the holidays. In 2024, Muse has participated in numerous events and received honors from Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Awards, Nautilus Book Awards, and Indiana Authors Awards. Email him at jeffdarrenmuse@gmail.com.