Picture, If You Will

We spent three nights camping on the banks of the Metolius River. Picture, if you will, a raging river, all white water and roaring, crashing over rocks and ripping over rapids.

The Metolius looks nothing like that.

The Metolius, at least our little section of it, is a lazy little stream, wide and shallow, and toe numbing cold. Instead of rocks and rapids, its filled with marshy islands and flowers that have managed to root themselves in driftwood logs. The Lewis River, at our last camping spot, roars and rages; the Metolius whispers.

One of the attractions of the spot is that it’s about a quarter of a mile from the headwaters of the river. The Metolius is not a spring fed river – it just pops right out of the ground. We tried to walk along the shore to the headwaters, but we encountered private property that was so private the owner built a fence across the river. Wrig was pretty upset that someone could own the forest. We tried to explain that we own property, too, and we wouldn’t be terribly happy about someone coming into our backyard to sleep or eat our veggies, but I’m not sure she was convinced.

So we had to drive the quarter mile to the headwaters.

Picture, if you will, high desert Oregon, east of the Cascades. Sagebrush and boulders. Dust. Neither tree nor shrub nor critter for miles around. Perhaps, for those of you who know it, something a little like Jamison Square. And out of this rock springs a spring. Behold! The Head of the Metolius River.

Well, the Head of the Metolius River looks nothing like that.

I’m not quite sure how to capture the headwaters. Verdant comes to mind. An explosion of bright green in the midst of a patchwork of sage and beige. But explosion is such a violent word and this was such a peaceful place. The air was moist and cool. The only sounds were the rustle of leaves and the whisper of butterfly wings. As we sat and listened to the silence, I could feel the hillside giving life to the river, and the river bringing life to the hillside.

The Head of the Metolius was nothing like I imagined it would be; instead, it was much, much better.