Another Day on the River
Autumn, 2007

Dear George and Cele,

I thought it would be hard arriving at your little cabin in the woods this time, but just before your driveway a fawn started across the gravel road and my sadness fell away into wonder. Watching the deer daintily step into the stream to drink her fill, I had a smack-my-forehead moment: Everything here is the same, except that you have gone ahead together to stake out the best fishing hole in a better stream.

In all the years we’d stopped by to spend a few glorious days fishing for trout and telling fish tales, we’d learned from you two master anglers that you’d raised up four great daughters to become four great women.

We knew Anne, the crisis manager, by embrace, and became acquainted with the others through your faithful correspondence: Laurie, thoughtful and precise; Jane, the intuitive listener, Susan, the energetic organizer.

All, you reported with justifiable pride, had turned out to be good wives, devoted mothers, valued professionals, community voices, and perhaps best of all, lovers of the River.

From their first worm-on-a-hook days, George made sure the girls understood stream etiquette, how to cast with authority, and the power of a taut line. Cele made sure that if they weren’t bringing home dinner in a creel, they must at least appear with wildflowers, choke cherries, or a hawk’s feather. As they grew into adulthood, these lessons carried over into everyday life.

In the decades since you retired here in this backwater of paradise, your girls have tumbled -- singly, in pairs, sometimes all together -- out of station wagons, SUVs, and trucks; with or without boyfriends, then husbands; with or without kids -- to gather at the River for a day, a week, or if they were lucky, two.

It never mattered how long they stayed, what counted is that they came: to be together, to catch trout, to tell tales, to feed souls. A passing bear drawn to pools of light spilling from cabin windows would see every wall covered in framed family pictures.

Well-thumbed books, George’s many pipes, Cele’s favorite Impressionist prints, and a scattering of magazines and newspapers still in place testify to your lifelong ethic of learning.

Always, George and Cele, you were at the center of the whirlpools. Even when the canes, then walkers, and finally, wheelchairs, kept you out of the River, you were the magnets that drew us to your remote valley.

Each of you swore, in your respective 90th birthday toasts, that all the screen door slamming, barbeque smoke, raucous card games, and laugh-‘til-you-cry reunions would keep for as long as it was fun.

The summer of ’06, when all of Montana seemed ablaze, the Derby fire swept out of the mountains and roared along the River, sparing yours but taking many of your neighbors’ houses with it. Heartsick, you began to slip away.

When the smoke got so dense your girls evacuated you, you spent time in the hospital, then surprised everyone by coming home again. But time was short.

Cele went first, in the autumn; George waited for the flowers to bloom. As snowmelt tumbled down from the Continental Divide to scour the River in spring flood, he left to be with Cele, confident their girls knew what to do.

They did. After the standing-room-only celebrations of your lives, your girls made a pact.

“We must keep the River,” the oldest said. The others – with multiple children in college, big mortgages, modest retirement funds – agreed. A lawyer advised, a banker loaned, and the girls became a trust based on trust.

So, George and Cele, your cabin on the River is here for the ages –- or at least as long as your girls can still cast a line, gather daisies, spot a bluebird. It needs a better roof, a coat of paint, and a teenager to mow the lawn. But the outline of Cele’s beloved vegetable garden is here for someone to surely plant more tomatoes, corn and parsley next spring.

The bunkhouse, where all the grandkids giggled away hot summer nights telling scary stores, is ready for great-grandkids.

The picnic table needs a fresh oilcloth and the barbeque has to be replaced, but Cele’s Goofus Bug flies still fool the Rainbows and George’s wading stick is at the ready for the next generation of arthritic knees.

As I write this, George and Cele, your Anne is in the kitchen roasting potatoes and onions in your favorite way. Four fresh trout –- two caught by a daughter, two caught by a grandson –- are ready for the frying pan. A doe is bedded down under the lilac bush. A flock of wild turkeys has gleaned and moved on. A single ray of silver light lingers on the River.

We are gathered at the River.

As you hoped we would.

As it should be.

Love always,
Tad

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