The Human Pace

Walking returns the body to its original limits again, to something supple, sensitive, and vulnerable… Walking shares with making and working that crucial element of engagement of the body and the mind with the world, of knowing the world through the body and the body through the world.

Rebecca Solnit, Wanderlust: A History of Walking

I walked along the Middle Fork of the Salmon River for five days in August. My best friend and many times adventure partner Alana was getting married, and she and her now husband Cailin had chosen to do so on day two of a week-long rafting trip. 

The Middle Fork of the Salmon River is a designated Scenic and Wild River, undammed, and flowing through the heart of the largest wilderness area in the continental US at 2.3 million acres. Along its hundred and four miles the Middle Fork boasts over 100 class III and IV rapids, clusters of hot springs, and abundant wildlife, making it a bucket list destination for rafters; the chances of hitting the jackpot on the Middle Fork are less than 2%.

A strange choice then, maybe, to move through the Frank Church — River of No Return Wilderness on foot. But I’ve been enchanted by the magic of the human pace, and I felt drawn to walk the river’s margin alone rather than navigate its channel with my cohort. With a map and Margaret Fuller’s Trails of the Frank Church – River of No Return Wilderness, I set off down-river on foot.

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My increasing realization of the depth of experience available in a place has left me dissatisfied going anywhere without some foundational knowledge; I’d spent the week before our trip binge-learning as much as I could about the Frank Church. 

I learned that the Sheepeater, a clan of the Shoshone Tribe, were the first peoples of this place. They were nomadic and hunted the Middle Fork canyon in the summer months, leaving behind records of their success in red ochre on the river corridor’s overhanging rock walls. 

I learned that the geography of this place has been shaped over hundreds of millions of years. It was once a seabed, uplifted tectonically, then pocked with volcanoes that erupted continuously for three million years. Since then glaciers and other erosive forces have scraped much of the thin, granitic crust away, revealing the hardened magmatic formations below: the Idaho batholith. Its topography is dramatic with elevations ranging from 1,400 – 11,000 feet; the Middle Fork is the third deepest river canyon in the United States; only Hell’s Canyon and the main stem of the Salmon River are deeper.

I learned that, given the expansiveness of the Frank Church Wilderness, it was critical habitat for many of the state’s species of greatest conservation need, including the fisher, the wolverine, and the wilderness’ iconic species, the Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep. 

Until I arrived on site, this was all just disembodied information. I knew what I didn’t know on day one of my walk, and that was just about everything. My experience of feeling so at home at home – really knowing my surroundings – clarifies just how not at home I am when I leave. But I also knew my experience was only limited by my curiosity, and my curiosity was boundless. I hit the trail with the intention of getting to know the Middle Fork corridor as deeply as I could in the week of time I had to spend there. 

While I could identify several others, I was familiar with only one tree species upon setting out, the Douglas fir, and even it seemed different somehow. For good reason, I learned, when at the end of my first day hiking I mentioned it to my friend and fellow river companion Rob, a river ecologist from Boise.

“The Douglas fir here are different from what you’re used to,” Rob confirmed. These are mountain Douglas fir, which are smaller overall. In Western Washington you have coastal Douglas fir, which grow in more nutrient rich soil with more precipitation and therefore get much larger.”

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“Some side creeks are dangerous, but the most dangerous are bridged,” wrote Fuller in her description of the first length of trail I walked. I re-read her words while standing on the burnt out piling of a bridge on the nearside of a boisterous creek. 

She’d warned me in her revised introduction, “There have been so many fires since the second edition of this book came out in 2003, I have made no attempt to locate or name them. You should expect to see some burned trees or logs wherever you go in this wilderness… the trails will not be in pre-fire condition.”

The low water conditions that stymied the progress of my friends on the river afforded me safe crossing at every burned bridge and unbridged creek on day one. I followed their slow progress on the walkie-talkie I’d been assigned as I picked my way along the shore. 

The trail was sometimes hard to follow – overgrown with only the faintest suggestion of a prescribed route. Much of it is underwater in high water conditions, thick, tall grasses disappearing the trail entirely. 

In one such section the trail ended abruptly at a small pond’s edge. I could see a shadow suggesting its continuation on the far side, maybe 12 feet away. Between these two points was only water and a collection of debris that took me a long moment to organize into a beaver’s dam.

I tested it out with one foot. It felt surprisingly solid despite its humble materials. I scampered across as lightly as I could, feeling no give and sensing no disturbance underfoot. I laughed out loud on the far side, totally surprised by delight.

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When I arrived in camp, Rob presented me with a small bouquet of plant specimens he’d collected throughout the day to continue my education on the riparian plant life of the upper Middle Fork into the evening. 

I’d learned that the granitic soils that dusted the batholith were thin and low in nutrients, making them especially susceptible to erosion. Rob confirmed this by underlining the importance of the riparian shrubbery he presented me with to the stability of the riverbank: Geyer’s willow, syringa, serviceberry, alder. He’d also collected a strand of western virgin’s bower and a sprig of wild rose, complete with crimson rosehip, which, along with the syringa I had to imagine in bloom. 

We talked into the darkness about the features of the environment I had and would come across. We ventured into the reasons why each of us cared about what was out there, though that was harder to name. I went to bed that night blown away by the good fortune I’d had and the good company I’d kept that day – plant, human and otherwise.

Continued next week.