Patrick Smith’s Naturalist’s Guide to Nature Writing

Finally three or four patches of blue showed improbably in the west, and disappeared. The rest of the sky looked as bad as ever, but taking the brief blue as my omen I knocked the tent down, rolled stakes and poles inside it, and tied it into the canoe with the other gear. I lashed a tarp over the whole cargo and of its rear edge made a protective awning for the pup. When I picked up his blanket, he came to life. His existence theretofore had been a series of known rituals, one of them tug of war with that mouth-perforated sheet of wool. He squealed and growled and shook his head, pulling his head backwards as he held onto it. I dragged him that way down to the canoe, wadded the blanket between the awning and the white cedar ribs, and put him there on top of it. From beneath the canvas then he gazed out at me with sadness, or what looked like it…

The wind was stout and wetly cold, and seemed southerly. But you can seldom tell exactly on the river; the snaking trough of its valley twists wind and turns it back against itself usually, it seems, against a canoe. I had loaded badly, the heavy boxes were amidships rather than forward, and the wind catching the light bow shoved it perversely upstream as I pushed away, and I was drifting backward through a fast riffle. I fought it around in time to see and miss a rock, and kept it straight by hard paddling, and knew I would have to stop again before long and rebestow the load. It didn’t matter much; I had no idea of making distance and wanted only to be ready to quit when the rain started again.

Gray sky, gray pale green of the willows not yet turned by frost, and gray black-green of the cedar on the hills, gray-red and gray-yellow of the tall oaks and cottonwoods and pecans, ingrained gray of great sandstone boulders tumbled along the shore. Gray blow of the gray wind, counterthrust of the gray current…

John Graves, Goodbye to a River