Wild Flower

When I arrived in that country, the first evening I slept on the floor. A knocking awakened me - at the door stood the man in reflector sunglasses. This was before reflector sunglasses were a thing.

We strapped a borrowed canoe to his white Japanese pickup, stern in the box and bow on the hood. Below the bridge over the Wheaton, we were swept into the river’s flying mane. 

Pretty soon we nearly lost everything.

All day on the river. All night in the tent. 

In the morning at the river’s mouth, both of us expecting the lake to be the easy part, we rose to a cold wind off the glacier. Rollers. Whitecaps. We left the canoe turned over in buckbrush and began the long walk out. 

Cobblestones. Gravel. Grassland and dunes. Harsh beauty. No footprints. 

Late afternoon, we glimpsed log cabins in the distance. I looked back to the hills above the lake, muted in purple and green. He bent to pick a wild forget-me-not from the sand, and he gave it to me. His eyes were the colour of the river. I turned, and he was gone. 

I got back to the road at dusk, to discover five years had gone by.